I was once again sleeping.

The copper ring that was my humble abode rested on the dusty floor.

Strange sounds woke me up. I exited the ring and looked in the distance.

It had been a full thousand years or so since my last master passed away.

Before he died, he tried to have one of his descendants become my master. Doing so would ensure his lineage prosperity and safety. Little did he know that the day he became senile and forgot my ring, he was assassinated. There was nothing I could have done to save him as I was not with him. To use my powers, I needed a conduit which was his body and the prerequisite was that the copper ring was at least a meter away from him or on his person.

Soon, his family followed him to the grave. The castle was looted and put on fire.

No one looked twice towards the unremarkable copper ring that my master always wore. Before the castle was put on fire, I was hoping that someone would take the ring away.

No one did.

I burned along with the castle and then was forgotten in the ruins for a thousand years.

People seldom entered these ruins. They assumed that there was nothing of real value.

“The same shepherd again...” I said as I looked on the horizon. There, a youth herding sheep could be seen.

“How I wished he could find this ring. But he’s too far for me to act...the mana that I’ve been saving up until now can’t allow me to bring the ring close to him. He’s too far.” I complained.

Using the ring as a conduit was hard as it had no passageways to act as a conduit for mana like a human body did.

For what seemed like an eternity, I waited for the youth to come closer.

He did not.

I was once again helpless as I saw him leave.

Seasons passed. I stayed engrossed in the same boring routine until one day, the youth came back.

This time he was even closer than I had anticipated.

Just close enough to send the ring flying to his face. Which I did.

The ring levitated as I channeled the little mana I had left into a levitation spell. It flew towards the youth.

The youth only saw a little white ball of light coming towards him. He probably thought that he was seeing things.

The shepherd never had the time to know what was happening before he was knocked unconscious on the forehead by the ball of light.

“Did I kill him?” I asked myself. Inwardly, I was thinking that if my heart was that of mortal, it would’ve exploded by now. I was worried that my only shot at leaving a thousand years of loneliness behind was wasted.

He woke up a dozen minutes later holding his swollen forehead and cursing.

He appeared to be remembering something as he abruptly turned around looking in the direction the white ball of light had come from.

He was relieved to find nothing, but his aching head was a testament that something had happened.

He worriedly started counting his sheep. It was only when he had finished counting that he smiled. Clearly, he was afraid that during his little nap, some of the sheep had gone missing.

All that time, the copper ring was floating behind him as the last of its mana dwindled.

I was furiously praying that he’d turn around and see the magic ring.

He turned around only to see the copper ring by accident, after which he fell on his behind in shock.

At that moment, I was grinning. I had won. Finally, my gamble had paid off.

There was no way he’d leave behind such a magical object. After all, humans were too curious for their own good.

He stood up while cursing at himself for being such a coward.

He advanced with extreme caution.

Finally, the mana ran out and the ring fell.

He instinctively caught the ring before it touched the ground.

At that moment, I could access his memories.

I knew everything that had happened in his nineteen years of life.

His name was Kyle.

No known last name.

He was an orphan that grew up in an orphanage that he ran away from when he was sixteen.

He journeyed to the nearest town with nothing in his pockets.

He became a beggar for a few months until a couple pitied him enough to give him a job. He then became a shepherd.

“Sigh...I can feel that his life is as boring as mine.” I thought.

After making sure that there was nothing unusual about the copper ring, he smiled and carefully wore it on his index finger.

“Good.” I thought. Finally, I could make my entrance.

Hopefully, he doesn’t faint from shock.

I left the ring in a hurry and materialized in front of him.

“Aaaaaah...” He screamed. He once again fell on his behind looking at me in a horrified manner.

Fortunately, he was too scared to link the ring to my appearance. Or it never crossed his mind.

He was also too scared to even move.

“Who...who are you?” Kyle asked.

I understood that he wanted to confirm that I was not real. After all, seeing things out of the ordinary was something that no one could understand.

I was prepared to see him faint, but he seemed to be mentally prepared for anything.

Perhaps, seeing a white light in the middle of the day and seeing a levitating ring had changed him somehow.

“You can relax. I’m not here to hurt you.” I said.

I looked as young as him and wore a black attire. Nothing about me looked suspicious, except the fact that one could see through me as they would a ghost.

The act of me talking had scared him even more. He was thinking that he had finally lost it.

“What...what are you here for?” He asked with a weak voice.

How was I to tell him that I had just turned his life upside down because I was dead bored in an old castle for a thousand years?

Well, he wasn’t crazy. At least for the moment.

And I was at fault for thinking that a mortal would just accept my existence without being a little crazy.

“What I am here for?...hum...let’s see...Well, to tell you the truth, I was bored and thought it’d be a good idea to come out and have some fun...you have no idea how lucky you are now that you ran into me.” I said.

He was trying hard to process my words. I could feel it through the connection we had with the ring.

To help him understand, I told him: “I am a benevolent spirit. I grant wishes to anyone who is in need.”

He bought it.

It was fast.

Well, it was the line I always used back in the day, and it seemed to always work.

He stood up with difficulty and mustered all the courage he had and asked: “What kind of wishes can you grant?”

“Anything. Well, I can’t bring the dead back to life and I can’t give you my powers. If you ignore those two, you can ask anything else.” I said with a grin. I couldn’t help myself. I had to be needed to be able to stay with him.

He once again mustered all his courage and said: “I want you to disappear.”

“Wha...what?” I could not believe it.