Three important facts.
The world was rich with spirits and magic.
The government didn't want it to be.
I was particularly connected to magic things.
I was a young boy, not quite even a teenager yet, and I was a survivor in an area destroyed in the war against the fantastical. Where most wars leave barren earth and grey rubble, magical wars have a.... different outcome. You see, the area was still full of vibrant life, the green and purple plants were thriving, animals roamed, and fireflies flew lazily in the air. But the city had still been leveled. I lived in the ruins of buildings, only surviving because of my peculiarities. Because when spirits fight, the area becomes so saturated with the magical fallout that most humans either die from exposure or mutate into something no longer human. In that regard I suppose I wasn't peculiar at all, because it would be a clear stretch to say I was completely human.
I don't know how long I had lived in the fallout zone, most of my life I think. I vaguely remembered having parents at one point, but the spirits I lived with were more my family than anything else. Not all of them could speak, and most had strange and alien shaped bodies, but they all cared for me and had raised me since my parents were either killed or separated from me in the battle all those years ago. I would have lived there my whole life if the humans hadn't interfered.
Apparently the military had created something like a radiation suit to protect against raw magical energy; because it was early evening when I saw humans and trucks and tanks come into my city, all wrapped up in protective gear and carrying weapons specifically designed to kill spirits.
I didn't remember humans very well, and I had never seen a weapons before, so despite the caution from my surrogate family I ventured closer to take a look. Their suits were splotched green and purple to blend into the landscape, and paired with the glass domes on their heads they almost fit in with some of the spirits I knew. I didn't understand why I should be so afraid.
I followed them for miles as they ventured into the heart of the zone. A few fell deeper in, either from their own weakness or a flaw in their suit, and had to be evacuated by med teams. I overheard talk about "finding and destroying their power source" that I didn't understand. We didn't have a central source of power, the area was just saturated with the byproduct of strong spirits unleashing magic attacks. Despite the facts, it seems the humans were bringing in a bomb to try and reclaim this place for humanity.
I only had one warning before everything happened: the single command for me to run. I knew better than to disobey, so I ran. And behind me, every spirit I knew and loved descended on the troops all at once. I could feel the lives of both spirits AND humans being cut short. I didn't even understand what this war was being fought over.
The spirits held off on any of their big attacks until I was out of range, and then they made short work of the human troops. And I do mean short work. The attack began at twilight, and was over before it was fully dark.
I cautiously ventured back after the area was signaled safe again. I wasn't sure why, I guess I just wanted a closer look at the creatures who were the same species as me? I hadn't really understood that I would be coming down to see a field of death. I mean, of course I had seen human bodies before, this city was littered with them, but all the bodies I knew were old and mostly covered in crystal, fungus, or plant growth. These bodies were fresh and the scent of blood smothered me. I hadn't known bodies were like this. When a spirit dies, it disappears back into the cosmos, humans..... are messy. They were just scattered around with the soft glowing crystals I was used to now sharp and piercing through them, or the vines that helped me explore now wrapped and strangling. I didn't know the gentle creatures who raised me even could be violent, let alone so... efficiently.
It wasn't just humans who had died. Many of the faces I knew were suddenly missing. And even without words, I knew that I would never see my friends again.
I heard barking and radio chatter, so I followed it. I found a single soldier lying in a field of slime molds and daisies. His breathing was rattled, and he was trying to call for help on his radio. A dog was circling the field and crying.
I stepped out into the open.
I don't know what that soldier (who was a boy??? He couldn't have been more than five years older than me) saw when I stepped into the open, but his eyes widened and he stopped talking in the radio, then reached out to me. I crept forward. He had the root system of the flowers growing more into his skin every minute, and when he spoke it was rough and labored. "Hey, it's okay, don't be scared."
I wasn't scared.
I knelt near him and he held my hand tightly. He gave me his dog tags, and cried as he died. As was prone to happen in magic fallout zones, his ghost was briefly visible after death before it was absorbed into the plants consuming not only his body, but his soul too. The spirits had taught me to view this as a peaceful thing, sparing humans of the pain of an afterlife.
The dog ran to my side, the tendrils of his fur a bright yellow from absorbing the power of the daisies. The dog followed me from then on, apparently having developed some of the fear-induced attachment to me from the remnants of the soldier's soul he absorbed.
After this, the spirits knew simply creating a fallout zone would no longer stave off the human attacks, and the full force of the war would begin again, so they sent me away to go live with my own kind. They gave me what knowledge they had on human life and behaviors, told me to act as a war orphan, and told me to keep secret my connection to magic. I didn't want to leave, but I understood. Or thought I did.
Human society was strange. It was okay at first, I walked down long dirt roads with only the occasional car passing by that didn't even slow for a boy and his dog. But eventually I reached a town. I was to seek out a home and school. All one facility. A place of education that also offered housing. I began asking people I passed if they knew of a place, but I was met with mostly dismissal and odd looks. I was eventually sent to a resource office and they helped me be enrolled in a school for dis-homed kids.
This is when I learned that humans hated magic. Of course I knew humans and spirits were at war, but I hadn't understood it was a personal hate. No one knew, obviously, that I had undergone the Change of magic exposure (I learned in class that the Change was typically visibly significant) but both my peers and teachers were subconsciously picking up on my unnatural mannerisms and how I was just somehow Off.
I learned that the Change was colloquially called being "touched" by the magic and that cruel kids called anyone who was different touched. They called me that on my first day.
It was hard to learn about human things. The spirits had never really talked about the war, only that they hid inside magic zones to avoid being attacked, but humans talked about it ALL THE TIME. They said spirits would destroy the planet, were an affront to god, were a national threat, and that they even destroyed the very souls of man. The last part at least was mostly true, spirits gained a significant boost in power from consuming human souls, but I didn't really see the problem with that if the afterlife had a god that would send you to hell.
Aside from that, the spirits hadn't been the aggressive party in a single battle in the history books, it was all preemptive "preventative" strikes from the military against havens where spirits gathered. In the last hundred years, since humans developed weapons of mass destruction, spirits escalated their defensive attacks until discovering that a strong enough unleashing of magic power left enough saturated energy to make an area unlivable for humans. After the creation of nearly a hundred fallout zones around the world, the war finally cooled into a stalemate. Until now, at humans were finally figuring out how to shield against it, and can finally make raids into these fallout zones.
I also learned that there used to be a large chunk of the human population called "mages" who could survive in close proximity with spirits and even in fallout zones without undergoing the Change. Due to a recessive gene, they themselves could use and channel magic and often walked with spirits or took them on as familiars. After the First Fallout mages were officially outlawed as magic was deemed too dangerous. The mages were made to register their status and gene therapy research was funded to try and learn to deactivate the made gene to cut them off from magic. After too much death, it did actually work, but not before many mages sided with the spirits in the war, were killed in experiments, or were imprisoned for using magic.
I didn't need to be a genius to figure out what I was.
In the modern day, mages were incredibly rare, and many of the people born with the mage gene were unable to even do magic, but were still regulated as to what jobs they could hold and whether they were allowed to have kids. The only person more hated in my class was a girl who was a latent mage. She often watched videos of a woman online who advocated for mage rights. I found the online mage community interesting. None of them could do magic or had met spirits, but they all tried to "reclaim their culture" by painting their faces like spirit markings and dressing in whimsical looking clothes. I felt bad for them.
The only human I actually got along with was the old man who swept the floors. He was practically invisible to everyone else, but I was comforted by his fatherly presence. It reminded me of some of the spirits back home. I eventually came to learn that he was born a full mage, and had been made latent through gene therapy when he had been a boy. It took me even longer to learn that he had known I was a full mage since day one. We talked in hushed tones and half-statements. He told me the name of his great nephew who had died in service months just ago, the same name on the dog tags I had.
I wasn't trained to cast specific spells, but I looked at my dog, my familiar, and knew this old man deserved some comfort in his long painful life. I had the old man sit on the ground and pet the dog, and I used just a little power to release some of the pollen from my familiar. I could feel the man's hurt ease a little bit as whatever was left of his nephew's soul washed over him.
Getting caught in that moment was worth the good I did for that man.