"This will only end if I put things back in their rightful place."
Lola felt her body lean back, her eyes fixed on the pair shining beneath the shadow of his hood. The man stood before her in a priestly robe with a hood draped over his head. His face was swallowed by darkness, but she could feel his gaze on her.
"Put things back in their rightful place?" she repeated, torn between disbelief and ridicule at how that sounded. "Who... do you think you are?"
The man studied her expression, tilting his head slightly. "We used to be good friends... Lola."
"Huh?"
"In our first life," he pointed out. "Not the one you rember, but the real one."
Her brows knitted as she stared at him, trying to understand everything he was saying. Perhaps she was even buying herself ti until she figured out what was happening. Or how she could get her limp legs moving again.
"You were younger back then, loved by your mother, Jasmine, and your father. If I rember correctly, his na was Mike. They were devout believers who raised their daughter from nothing," he remarked. "Both of them worked hard to rise above the hardships they grew up with. They fell in love young and tried their best to live better lives, especially for their daughter."
"What..." she trailed off, astounded by this narrative as if it were so kind of parallel world. "...the fuck?"
He chuckled. "You wouldn’t even say things like that. You were very... proper back then. I rember you planned to enter the monastery to beco a nun. You loved doing missionary and volunteer work, and you were very helpful to the church."
At this point, Lola was convinced the man was insane. Completely crazy! Jasmine and Mike being proper parents? Those two were rotten to begin with! And Lola? With the church? That sounded like a hallucination.
"You would’ve beco a nun and even promised you’d serve in my church," he added, unbothered by the growing doubt in her eyes. His eyelids drooped dangerously as he continued, "But then, you t him."
"Huh?"
"Atlas Bennet, who had visited the church for the first ti," he clarified. "He wanted you at first sight."
Lola blinked, her cheeks slowly turning red. She scratched her cheek with her forefinger, and a sheepish voice slipped out.
"Really?"
"You look happy, Lola."
She bit her lip, montarily forgetting about her paralyzed legs and the danger of the entire situation. "Is it obvious? Hehe."
"He raped you."
"What?"
"He wanted you, and he got you," he stressed. "By taking you for himself, he changed your life into sothing you never planned. You left the monastery carrying his child, and as if to mock you and , he held a wedding in the sa church you served. And he... made officiate your wedding."
True or not, Lola felt the story was ridiculous. However, if what he was saying were true, it sounded like an unpleasant relationship—a forced marriage, and not the one she had with Atlas.
"That’s not true," she denied. "Atlas would never—"
"Then the Zorken family, along with its new leader, Atlas Zorken, targeted the church for reasons of his own," he continued, not particularly bothered whether she believed him or not. He didn’t expect her to believe him in the first place. "After taking down the church, he turned his attention to the other founding families and set this whole world on fire as they started another World War."
He paused and sighed. "I didn’t get to see how that turned out because I died, as the last survivor of the church. Do you know who killed ?"
"..." Lola pressed her lips into a thin line, her eyes shaking. "I... did?"
He nodded. "You fooled . You told you were leaving him and that you wanted to run away. But then, when I ca, you..." He trailed off, drawing a deep breath and shaking his head.
"I thought that was the end," he skipped the details. "But the heavens listened to . The heavens witnessed our church burn down as an act of greed. And so, He sent back to the beginning so we could all avoid it."
"You..." Lola’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. "...can you even hear yourself? Do you realize how much crap you’re spewing?"
She laughed. "Forget about Jasmine and Mike being good parents—"
"But they were, Lola."
"What the—"
"They used to be good people. A loyal and supportive couple who supported their daughter’s desire to beco a nun, and even her sudden change of mind." He chuckled. "So I thought that if I made them a little less supportive... and took you away from the church, I was doing this world a favor."
Hearing that, Lola felt her heart suddenly drop. "What?"
"Unfortunately, tweaking your parents’ lives and removing you from the church wasn’t enough. If anything, it only hastened your fate and made you et him earlier than you should have," he sighed heavily. "Worse, in the second tiline, you’re still the last face I saw."
His eyes softened as he rembered the look on her face the second ti around. Her face, each ti, was etched clearly into his mory. After all, it was the last thing he had seen in his first two lives.
The first and the second... he was forced to look at her dead face in the coffin. Each ti, she was dead.
"You’re not making a lot of sense," she hissed. "Fine. Let’s say Jasmine, Mike, and I are involved. That we were like what you said we were. But do you really think I’ll believe that?"
She laughed, thinking of a plot hole in his story. "Atlas wouldn’t have been in the Zorken family if not for Penny. He took over the Shadow Order in Zoren’s stead."
"Right," he nodded. "Of course, it wouldn’t make sense to you. After all, you only know the story of the third life—the one before this one. To understand it, it will take ti. It begins with the old woman of the Pierson family, Old Mrs. Pierson."
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