Chapter 99: Claimed by the Past
Olivia still held her head, trying to withstand the throbbing sensation that felt as if it were splitting her skull.
Every word Delia had uttered previously about jealousy, about poverty, about hatred all mixed with the foreign memories trying to tear their way into her mind.
"...he still chooses you."
The voice echoed, not in the balcony space, but in every empty corner of her memory. Who was ’he’? Why did her heart feel as if it were being sliced by a knife every time the image of the silver-haired man appeared?
"What are you trying to hide from me...?" Olivia lifted her head, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
However, when her focus sharpened, the world seemed to stop spinning.
Delia stood too close. So close that Olivia could smell perfume mixed with a strange, metallic scent. For the first time, Delia’s face no longer displayed an erupting fire of hatred.
Instead, there was a calmness that was very, very terrifying. It was the face of someone who had finally reached the final point of a plan that had been orchestrated for centuries.
"Actually, I have been very jealous of you, Olivia," Delia’s voice became soft, almost like a lethal lullaby.
"Since long ago. Since we were still in a world where you were the sun and I was merely dust beneath your feet."
The afternoon breeze on the fifth floor suddenly turned wild, roaring so loudly that their hair flew, obstructing their vision.
Olivia stepped back, her instincts screaming a grave warning of danger, yet her feet felt frozen.
"I don’t understand what you’re talking about!" Olivia shouted, trying to fight the wind that was pushing her body.
"You don’t need to understand," Delia replied with the sweetest, yet most cruel smile Olivia had ever seen.
"Because everything ends now."
Olivia’s eyes widened. Before her brain could process the danger, Delia raised both her hands quickly, precisely, and with cold determination. She pushed.
That push was not merely physical energy; it felt like a strike of power that tore Olivia’s soul from her body.
"DELIA—!"
Olivia’s scream was buried in the roaring wind.
The world around her became distorted. The glass windows of the magnificent office building seemed to wave at her, mocking her fall.
The orange twilight sky turned pitch black in her eyes. Her body fell faster, further from the balcony, further from the reality she had tried to build.
Up there, Delia’s silhouette looked small, standing grandly at the edge of the balcony railing. She did not run to help. She only stood, watching Olivia fall with the same smile a smile that felt very familiar, far too familiar.
Flashback.
At that exact moment, Olivia’s brain exploded with a horrifying visual.
She saw a dark basement, lit by hundreds of flickering candles. Dozens of people in black robes were kneeling, and on a bloody stone altar, someone stood with their back to the light someone with the same smile as Delia’s.
It was not her first time dying.
"Agh—!"
Blood flowed warmly from Olivia’s lips, splattered by the wind that struck her face cruelly. The force of the wind was too strong, but the pain no longer mattered. Olivia’s thoughts were now focused on one question that killed her soul
Is this the second time I have died? Or have I already died a thousand times, and is Delia the executioner who always waits at every door of my death?
The tears flowing from the corners of her eyes became crystals in the air, shattering and vanishing before they could touch the ground. Her body continued to slide down. Falling. Falling into the darkness that beckoned her home.
Right before her consciousness cut out completely, before the darkness snatched everything away, she heard a voice.
It was not a normal human voice. It was a voice that shook the earth, a voice carrying the burden of longing that had spanned thousands of years the voice of a man who seemed to have been waiting at the gates of death to welcome her.
"...Olivia."
The voice was too close. It no longer came from a dream. It came from the direction of the ground that was fast approaching.
Dark.
Everything drowned in absolute void. And within that darkness, Olivia no longer felt afraid.
Because she knew, when she woke up later, she would no longer be the ordinary Olivia. She was the Olivia who had returned to her true destiny.
No sky. No earth. No sound. Nothing.
Olivia floated in a breathless emptiness. She did not know how long she had been there a space outside of time, outside of space, outside of existence.
A second, a minute, or perhaps hours? She could not feel her own body, as if she had unraveled into meaningless atoms.
There was no pain, no sense of self. Only pitch-black darkness, swallowing every remnant of memory about who she truly was.
"So..." she whispered, the voice sounding foreign to her own ears.
"Is this death?"
No one answered. The silence was the cruelest answer she had ever received.
Slowly, Olivia began to accept the fact that perhaps everything was over. Delia had won. She had lost. Her life ended in the quietest way, abandoned in the crevices of a reality without doors.
However, in the midst of that lethal silence, a subtle vibration touched the space of her mind.
"...Olivia."
The voice came from a place very far away, like a whisper traversing thousands of light-years. Her body or whatever was left of her jolted.
That voice. The voice that always haunted her dreams, the voice of the man whose face was always covered in mist.
"...who are you?" Olivia whispered, her voice now full of desperation.
There was no answer.
Yet, suddenly, something touched the tips of her fingers. A warm touch. Soft. It felt like embers placed on frozen ice, forcing her blood to flow again. Someone was trying to pull her, pulling her out of this endless darkness.
The darkness began to crack. White lines appeared, splitting the void. A small light appeared at the edge of her vision a point of light that grew larger, becoming so blinding that Olivia had to squeeze her eyes shut because the brilliance felt like a knife piercing her eyelids.
"OUT OF THE WAY!"
The shout shattered the silence, shaking her soul.
"Fool! Quickly, move that woman!"
The sound of clattering iron wheels, the sound of horses neighing loudly, followed by the screams of panicked people. Olivia choked, her lungs shocked, trying to inhale air for the first time. She coughed violently, her chest stinging as if she had just swallowed ash
"Akh—"
Her head throbbed, as if an invisible hand were squeezing her brain. Her body felt heavy, as if pulled by gravity far stronger than the modern world. With her remaining strength, she forced herself to wake up. Every movement felt like metal scraping against her skin.
And as she opened her eyes, her world was destroyed.
Not paved roads. No more neon-lit office buildings. Not the city she knew. Before her now was a wide, rough stone path.
Around her, horse-drawn carriages sped through the narrow space; people wearing robes, corsets, and strange clothing were looking at her with faces mixed with disgust and shock.
Stone buildings, tall and magnificent with terrifying gargoyle carvings, towered toward a golden-blue sky.
"She’s alive?!"
"That woman woke up! My God, hurry, get her out of the middle of the road!"
The voices sounded so foreign, yet their meaning pierced directly into Olivia’s nerves. She looked at herself a white shirt, a knee-length skirt that was now tattered, clothing very out of place in this ancient world. Her breath became short, gasping like a fish stranded on land.
She turned to the left, then to the right, searching for one clue of the reality she knew. It was all in vain. Finally, her eyes locked onto the most magnificent stone building at the end of the road a palace or cathedral, she wasn’t sure. In front of it, a large flag was waving proudly in the wind.
That symbol.
The emblem of a bird burning above a crown. For some reason, her chest felt tight when looking at it. The symbol felt so familiar, as if she had stared at it thousands of times in dreams.
Or perhaps... that symbol was a secret she had long forgotten in a life much deeper than her modern memories.
Olivia froze in the middle of that stone road. She had not only returned to the past. She had returned into the story she had left behind.
Olivia looked around with choked breaths, her chest heaving as she tried to inhale air that felt foreign the smell of charcoal, the dense dust of the road, and the scent of spices that stung her nose.
Every inch of the view tortured her senses: the sound of horse hooves breaking the silence of the cobblestone street, the stone walls that looked like silent witnesses to hundreds of years of history, and the crowd in robes and corsets passing her by with looks full of suspicion.
Nothing made sense. This was not her office set. This was not Kuala Lumpur. This was not the world she knew.
"Wh... where am I?" she whispered, her voice soft, nearly drowning in the bustle of the busy market.
No one cared. A man riding a horse pulled the reins harshly, causing the animal to neigh, then vented his anger.
"If you want to die, don’t do it in the middle of the road! You crazy woman!"
Cynical laughter sounded from the crowd around her, mocking Olivia’s presence, as she appeared like an alien being in the middle of an era where she did not belong.
Olivia tried to force her still-weak legs to stand, but the stone floor felt cold and hard, unfriendly.
When she lifted her head to seek help or simply a space to escape, her eyes fixed on something that made her heart stop beating.
At the end of the road, on the peak of a high, cold hill, stood a castle. It was gigantic, magnificent, and shrouded in a heavy aura of mystery.
Her chest suddenly felt tight, as if an invisible hand were clutching her heart from within. She had never been here, yet every brick of that castle felt so intimate.
A sharp throb pierced directly into her brain’s nerves. Her vision blurred; the world around her began to spin at a dizzying speed.
Fragments of images flashed violently
flickering candlelight in a long, dark corridor, a pair of gold-colored eyes looking with deep sorrow, and a whisper from far away, calling her name in a tone full of longing
"...Olivia."
"Agh!" Olivia gave a small scream, her hands gripping her own head tightly, trying to withstand the pain that felt as if it were splitting her skull in two.
In that struggle, she did not notice an old woman on the side of the road who had approached her. The woman had a face with a thousand wrinkles, a pair of eyes that were dim yet held a thousand secrets. She reached out a rough, veined hand, touching Olivia’s shoulder.
"Your face is as pale as a ghost just risen from the grave," the old woman’s voice was raspy, like the friction of dry leaves.
"Where are you from, young child? Your clothes... what world do you come from?"
Olivia opened her mouth, trying to assemble a sentence, but no answer came out. How could she explain about the office? About computers?
All of that felt like a stale dream.
She did not know how she arrived here. She did not know if this was a punishment or an opportunity.
And most frighteningly, she did not know why her surroundings felt familiar.
She was just a stranger in a world that was supposed to be her own. And as she gazed at her surroundings, she began to wonder if she had come here to live, or if she had actually just walked into her own grave?
