"Magic attracts magic. He is destined to live far from ordinary people. He will discover his abnormality, which is beyond his control," the Sorcerer Supreme said to her disciples as she looked at the bright star in the eastern sky. "His talent is far greater than yours, and this is not necessarily a good thing. The oddities you have not encountered, he will encounter in his future life. There is no need to envy him, Mordo, Kaecilius. I will impose responsibilities on him that do not belong to him; he is in pain."
Jezebel was wracked with abdominal pain—she was abandoned, or rather, she abandoned herself. She had no relatives in the vast city of New York.
When she fled her country to escape an arranged marriage, she only had a few U.S. dollars, all of which had been paid to the human trafficker. If not for the small hammer she found on the ship, she might not have kept her virginity.
But she did not regret it, even though the cramped space on the smuggling ship was only enough for everyone to stand, and even excretion was difficult. People kept getting sick, feverish, and were thrown off the ship. She never regretted escaping that country.
She did not want to marry the bald old man, Mr. Carter, next door. From the age of ten, Jezebel would tremble whenever Mr. Carter's greasy gaze slid over her, but when she was nineteen, he proposed to her father, offering 100,000 dollars in exchange for her hand, and her father agreed without hesitation.
Not only because Jezebel's brother, who had not served in the military, would need a large enough wedding room in the future, and the large group of younger siblings at home also needed enough money, but also because a pilgrimage required a large sum of money.
She wanted to scream—there were very few families as poor as theirs, but their community was full of poor people. The men only nodded and chanted scriptures, and all economic income came from the women. Her family could not afford for her to study mathematics and natural sciences.
Jezebel did not want her future to be like those women holding children and staring blankly on the dusty streets. She had seen how they were, only coming alive on the day they received government subsidies. Jezebel could imagine that if she married Mr. Carter, she would surely become a lifeless puppet like those women.
She had not resisted, but it only brought her father's beatings and double the labor. Her father hoped she would be a docile wife in the future, at least... a wife who could make Mr. Carter pay.
During that time, she constantly recited the holy name of Jehovah, hoping that a prophet would lead her away from this place—then suddenly one day, the water flowing from the faucet turned into blood. This phenomenon occurred for seven consecutive days, but her father said it was just rusty pipes and did not take it to heart.
Jezebel, who had only studied the Pentateuch, was pleasantly surprised. She believed it was a revelation, just as Moses persuaded Pharaoh. So she unhesitatingly stole the U.S. dollars her mother earned from work and ran away, coming to this country, rumored to flow with milk and honey, proclaiming democracy and freedom, hoping for a new life.
However, how could a young woman who had only studied basic religious knowledge and nothing else find work? Even if her hands were diligent, without identification, she could not sign any contracts with anyone.
Jezebel could only live precariously on meager daily wages. For this, she even had to pretend to be a pagan, wearing a veil to cover her fair beauty to avoid harassment from street thugs. But suddenly one day, she felt a wave of nausea—a fellow immigrant working with her told her she was pregnant.
She could hardly believe her ears; she was still a young woman!
The more she thought, the more flustered she became. After examining her body, she confirmed her virginity. But as her belly grew day by day, she also dreamed of a person bathed in light who told her: "Bear him, and you will be sanctified by it."
This terrified her because this was the God of pagan stories. Even if this God was real, she did not believe she could receive God's blessing, nor was she Maria. Jezebel did not know if this was a hallucination or a real Holy Spirit.
But she was indeed somewhat reluctant. This child was destined to be a child without a father, and she would not hastily marry a Joseph. In any case, doctrine did not allow her to have an abortion. For this, she gave up seeking help from a doctor.
So Jezebel, dragging her heavy body, worked diligently, but her meager wages were not enough to support the mother and the fetus's nutrition. She grew thinner day by day, her limbs weak, making it difficult to even work. Losing her job also meant losing her lodging, but fortunately, a priest took her in after hearing her story (though the priest did not believe it, he did so out of sympathy), allowing her to wipe benches during the day to get some flatbread and leftover wine from communion. She could also live in the church's parking lot, where the priest provided her with bedding and hot water.
Jezebel was very grateful for the priest's help. As the child in her womb grew, she became increasingly immobile, but she still forced herself to eat to ensure the child could be born healthy.
She had a premonition that on this bright, cold, starry night, her child would be born, but her body was already in terrible condition due to long-term malnutrition. The child in her womb was like a parasite, constantly and greedily absorbing nutrients from the mother's body.
When the Sorcerer Ancient One, dressed in yellow robes, appeared before her, she could only shed tears, barely half-sit up, and weakly beg the Sorcerer Supreme to save her child.
"I have come following the star." The Sorcerer Ancient One squatted beside Jezebel, pointing one hand to the star above. She told Jezebel, "Your child is about to be born, and he will become my disciple."
The Ancient One opened the box in her hand and placed the gold, frankincense, and myrrh beside Jezebel, using magic to sustain Jezebel's life force, which was like a flickering candle in the wind. When the child was born, the Sorcerer Ancient One saw circular wounds on all ten fingers of the crying infant, with red light flowing from the wounds, but Jezebel did not see it.
"I can no longer save you. Your life during pregnancy was too terrible." In the Sorcerer Supreme's eyes, a soft white light surrounded Jezebel. It was this white light that stabilized her body, which should have collapsed. But after this extraordinary child was born, this positive energy also dissipated, and even the Ancient One's magic could no longer sustain Jezebel's body. At the brink of death, she closed her eyes in tears.
"Salomon," she said.
"Salomon Damnett, he will be the one who creates miracles," the Sorcerer Ancient One said. Jezebel nodded with her last bit of strength.
"Your soul will go to heaven."
Subsequently, a huge white beam of light shot up into the sky, and sacred songs, inaudible to ordinary people, resonated through the heavens. Jezebel closed her eyes. The Sorcerer Supreme wrapped the child in a red shroud. The wounds on the infant's fingers immediately healed, leaving only ten circular marks. The Ancient One opened a portal and brought the deceased Jezebel and her newborn child back to Kamar-Taj.
When the church priest was awakened by the massive beam of light and came to the parking lot, he only saw the gold, frankincense, and myrrh left on Jezebel's bed. The young woman was nowhere to be found.
When the Sorcerer Supreme returned to Kamar-Taj, her young disciples immediately gathered around, having already sensed the abnormalities in the city. But the Ancient One stopped their questions, instead handing them the child, and then buried Jezebel in a tomb near Kamar-Taj.
On the night Salomon Damnett was born, the number of abyssal creatures invading Earth suddenly increased. Although they were all spontaneous actions of low-level demons, they were enough to keep the Kamar-Taj sorcerers busy for a while. Finally, the Sorcerer Supreme personally went to the abyss and visited several abyssal lords to end this disturbance.
Regarding the wounds on Salomon Damnett's fingers, the Sorcerer Supreme called them stigmata—the Sorcerer Ancient One wrapped them with a shroud to stop the bleeding, then used magic to heal them, and the stigmata disappeared. Salomon Damnett himself was deeply immersed in overlapping memories. After being brought back to Kamar-Taj, he was entrusted to several female sorcerers with childcare experience, but when he opened his eyes, he no longer cried but showed confusion.
In his mind were many different memories: sometimes he was a shut-in who stayed in his room all day, living an ordinary and uninteresting life; sometimes he was a sorcerer favored by a god, later falling into madness due to obsession, turned to ashes by another god, and after three hundred years, became a lich, finally killed by twelve Holy Knights; sometimes he had the memories of an Archmage from Golarion, becoming a minion of the Old Ones.
Not only that, with the departure of the Sorcerer Supreme, the stigmata on his ten fingers glowed intermittently, but before his soul finally plunged into madness, all the stigmata extinguished.
Salomon Damnett could finally sleep peacefully.
I wonder if anyone noticed the Annunciation trope. Tilda, the actress who played the Sorcerer Ancient One, also played Gabriel... It was truly fitting for the Sorcerer Supreme to deliver the news.