ALL NOVEL Chapter 117: A Terrible Resolve
She has always thought of the world as a dream or perhaps a nightmare she can’t run away from. Living in constant phantom pain, carrying her child who’s stuck in her soul.
There are days where she feels heartless. Days where it was best to be one. How could you live in a world like this again? She has given her heart and soul to a world long forgotten, and perhaps she has forgotten the silence of it either.
She blinks and reaches out to a face that remains the same. A face she could recognize, no, perhaps a face that changed to fit the soul established within.
When he is near she is Katey Lores. But without him she is Gia Silva, a heartless woman who has become the founder of a megacorporation exploiting the earth and giving so little back to the world.
Her measure of kindness was not the same as theirs. She understood now. How they see kind back in her world would make one question their sanity in this. Time and space. Magic and demons and angels in legends. Reincarnation and the possession of a body.
She had a hypothesis.
How he came to this world.
She’s not entirely sure yet.
The chances of connecting time and space made it impossible. Sometimes she thinks this is an illusion to fool her. Fool her mind and soul. Make her forget. Delude her into thinking this. Then again, it is hard not to think they are bound the moment they meet again. Separated by time and space, only to meet up again despite obstacles being it.
Trying to forget. Foolishly chasing a dream she didn’t even think possible at some point. In a way, realistically, she did not think this would be possible. Truly. Not even once.
Once in a while, her thoughts would go to the thought of she found out early. If she had known he was her partner back then. Would she have spent the century heartless? Granted, the kids she took in, made them as her children alleviated the century of trying to achieve such a feat. It didn’t stop her from thinking what it would be like. Through her, she had used the knowledge of her past to slingshot this world into a future. Accelerating the technology she knows would be beneficial and keeping the tech made for war to the use of her own people.
The world is technologically advanced. But they are years ahead of them. Fighter jets with railguns attached to them. Silent hoverships packed with enough weapons to level an entire nation. Recently, they have turned their heads to the stars, using the tunneling method she had discovered to travel the distance of stars.
While they have recently started occupying the moon. Her family already have made their home in the craters of mars, using the moons to watch over anyone who’d come. Using tunneled gates to skip the distance needed to travel. Even if the earth doesn’t welcome them in the future, they’d find a home in the stars.
She caressed his head.
She remembered the day they met, at a bar in their old city. He had been sitting alone, lost in thought, and she couldn't help but be drawn to him. Nursing her drink and trying to ignore the noise and chaos around her. She had come to the bar alone, looking for a distraction from the loneliness she had been feeling. But now, as she watched the couples and groups laughing and chatting, she only felt more alone.
Just as she was about to call it a night and head home, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see him standing there, a small smile on his face.
"Can I buy you a drink?" he asked.
She was surprised by the offer, but something about the way he looked at her made her say yes. They struck up a conversation and she found herself laughing and talking easily with him. She couldn't help but feel a spark of attraction for him.
As the night went on, they talked and laughed, and she found herself falling for him. They exchanged contact information before leaving the bar and started dating soon after.
After a few years they were happily married, expecting a child and a home filled with love and laughter despite their world bring wrought with danger and death. As she thought back on that night at the bar, she couldn't help but smile. She had never expected to meet her husband in a noisy, crowded bar, but she was grateful for the chance encounter that had brought them together. She never did visit bars due to the nature of her work leaving her tired most of the time.
Sitting in the dimly lit cabin, the only sound is the soft crackling of the fire in the fireplace. She usually comes to this remote cabin to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but now, as she sat in the silence while her partner was sleeping, she realized she still brought her loneliness with her.
She wrapped a blanket tightly around her shoulders, trying to ward off the chill that seemed to seep into her bones. She had thought that being out in nature would help her feel less troubled, but instead, the vastness of the wilderness only served to highlight her smallness and insignificance.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought about how alone she had felt for a century. She had come to this cabin to escape the loneliness that had been consuming her, but now it felt like it was suffocating her.
She stood up and walked over to the window, looking out at the dark, star-filled sky. "Why do I feel like this?" she whispered to herself.
She sat back down on the couch and buried her face in her hands, letting out a deep sigh. She knew she needed to talk to someone, to get help, but the thought of reaching out filled her with a sense of hopelessness. The cabin felt like a prison, trapping her in her loneliness, with no way out.
She can’t speak up yet. Not to the man she had slept with. She thought back to the scene of her partner fighting against Leona. She held so much back. Her hands clenched into fists as she glared in front of her. Her partner, a kind and hardworking man, was wounded by them. Although she was sure of the regeneration ability of her partner. It still made her blood boil with anger and frustration.
She couldn't believe the lengths these people were willing to go to know. Then again, their schemes are shallow.
She put down her fist gently on the table. "How dare they," she exclaimed, her voice shaking with cold anger. "I guess Leona suspects something. Then again, she has always had a sharp intuition."
She got out of the bed and sat on the porch, staring out at the landscape that stretched out before her. She had lived in this cabin for over a century and has seen many changes over the years. Her hands were rough and calloused from years of hard work, her eyes were clear and wise.
She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh as she thought back on her long life. She had seen so much hardship and struggle, but through it all, the one constant had been her loneliness.
She remembered the years of loneliness and isolation, especially during the incursions that needed her to fight. She had to work harder than ever to make sure they would flourish, and there were many nights when she went to bed with her mind still on the days ahead. One hundred years. A lot can happen in the one hundred years and she’s guessing that her husband feels like he didn’t know her.
You hide your secrets deep. Even back in the other world, she refused to let her husband see this side of her. Isn’t it naturally to only show what would make you look good in front of the love of your life? Even in their previous life, they were a strange bunch, and she’d ride or die with her husband. Then again, she did die from a car breaking her spine and a glass shard in her eye.
She will never forget. That haunted look on her husband’s face as she desperately forced her body to cooperate with her will. And knowing what happened to Kato now… who told her that his pain was still not healed. Everyone has a different kind of pain.
But she had persevered, and through the years, she had found solace by focusing herself on a goal. She had learned to find happiness in the simple things, like watching the sun rise over the fields or finding joy in research. Because back then she couldn’t appreciate them.
She opened her eyes and looked out at the fields again. She knew that her time on this earth might suddenly come to an end, but she was at peace with it. At least she thought so before meeting her husband again. She had lived a long and fulfilling life, and although it had been marked by loneliness, it had also been filled with purpose. And yet he appeared, throwing her mind into chaos. Breaking that acceptance of someone or something ending her.
Unable to find someone who’d accept her weakness. The mask she wore could be removed when in front of him. If anything, she’s glad that he could look at her as Katey Lores. The woman who he found kind and warmhearted. A woman who could rein in her anger and be warmed to others.
Not as Gia Silva. A horrible woman who had done a lot of awful things in the world. She did not want to let others know of this woman enamored by her husband.
How she’d love to be in this cabin and live a life with him. Not worry about the state of the world and just let others take care of the mess they had made.
But she can’t.
Not yet.
She closed her eyes and then opened it.
She now stood on the edge of the fiery abyss, staring down into the depths of hell. She had come to this place momentarily, determined to close one the gates of hell and put an end to the spawning of demons.
She had been training for this moment for years, studying ancient texts and learning the secrets of magic and ritual. And stitching the hole in the world had become familiar.
She took a deep breath, focusing her energy and will. She called upon the powers of the elements, summoning the winds to sweep through the gates and extinguish the flames. She chanted ancient incantations, calling upon the spirits of the dead to aid her in her task.
As she poured her energy into the spell, she could feel the gates of hell begin to shake and groan. With a final burst of power, she slammed the gates shut, sealing the abyss and sending the lesser demons back to hell.
She recalled feeling drained but victorious. And yet it did not scare her as much as seeing her partner wounded. A terrible wave of guilt came to her again. Recalling the thought of almost killing her husband, and then burning his body put her into a state of panic.
And yet the dogged stubbornness still remained in her. She couldn’t leave those duties yet. Nonetheless, the wanting remained in her.
It came to Katey that being with her partner makes her want to go back to the comfort she had missed. It might have been worse back then, and yet those days they played house were memories she didn’t dare to forget. She could go back to those days, finally. And yet here she was afraid of it.
She can’t just go back to it without finishing her business.
Was this her reward?
Perhaps not.
And knowing her husband got helped by an Outsider to come back alive made her anxious.
She has always thought of anger as beneath as a woman who has lived for a century now. And the thought of them using her Kato for their schemes, tricks, and purposes gave her a wrath she didn’t think she had.
If they are worried about the demons coming from hell. Then they should worry more about the demon she might become if they do dare hurt her family and loved ones again.
She will not lose them again.
She’d rather burn the world and turn its skies orange than let them take them away from her again.
