0: The Boy Without a Self

One hundred and ten years after Abel, the world has learned to live with miracles. The names that once changed history now belong to monuments, emergency protocols and stories told by people who were never there. Humanity survived. Cities were rebuilt. The impossible became something institutions learned to regulate. Sixteen-year-old Eze wants very little to do with any of it. He has no home worth returning to, an inconvenient talent for getting into places he shouldn't, and a habit of understanding systems far better than he understands people. When a meteor appears over the city and half the population prepares for the end of the world, Eze already knows it won't happen. So he climbs to the roof of a condemned building to decide something else. There, he meets Elijah. A stranger who came looking specifically for him. A stranger who knows things he shouldn't. And the first person in a very long time to look at Eze as though the most important thing about him isn't where he is, what he's done, or what might be wrong with him. Eze does not know why he was found. He does not know why certain people are beginning to take an interest in him. And he certainly does not know that there is something about his existence that should not be possible. Because everyone has a Self. Everyone except Eze. And long before he was born, someone made sure of it. 0: The Boy Without a Self is the continuation of ABEL, following a new generation through the consequences of a history they only partly understand. It is a story about identity, freedom, love, death, creation, and the uncomfortable question at the centre of all of them: If everything that made you who you are was taken away, what would still remain?