196 Unpunished
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Looking at her palms that seemed to glow with a luminous white light, she figured that it wasn’t only her palms that were glowing, but practically every part of her body was illuminating this mystical white light.
Looking ahead, Anna’s eyes squinted in silent inquiries at the strange unfamiliar people walking in front of her, and their skins were also glowing with this same tremendous light that had left her staring in awe.
Placing a hand to the left side of her chest, it took a few more patient tests for her mind to accept the fact that she couldn’t feel the beating of her heartbeat anymore, like there was nothing there and to be honest, she sort of felt empty on the inside, which was enough sign to give her the idea that she was dead.
She’s dead??
“Why did you stop walking?” Asked an old woman who had made it to Anna’s side. Since the befuddled Anna wasn’t expecting anyone to speak to her, the voice of the old woman had unintendedly startled her.
She wasn’t even aware that they could still speak.
“I..s_stopped?” Looking around at her environment like a lost puppy, It finally dawned on the dazed being that all these people were on a journey to the afterlife. They were currently walking through a bridge that didn’t seem to have an ending.
Below the bridge was a big river that burbled along its bed; it was so big that it left the disoriented Anna speculating on where the river might end. There was nothing else except for the bridge and the river below, even the sky above appeared with a ray of bright sunshine.
.....
It all ended there.
Atypically, everyone was silently following the bridge without raising any questions.
Where does the bridge even lead to?
“Keep walking child.” The old woman’s appealing, yet cool voice broke Anna from her train of thoughts. Since she had no idea on what she’s meant to do here, with a nod of her head, she continued to walk through the bridge, but with the old woman keeping her company.
“Where is this place?” She proceeded to ask in a whisper that echoed softly, the strange environment was gravely quiet to the point Anna thought her whispering alone was too loud.
“This is the river of the three crossing.” The old woman responded lightly with a tranquil expression resting on her face, a face that had naturally wrinkled with age.
“River of what?”
“This is the river every soul in the world must cross in order to make it to the afterlife.” She added, leaving Anna’s eyes to momentarily widen as she looked at the people who walked ahead of her, and those who walked behind her.
The young, the old, the rich, the poor were all present and Anna found it shocking that this amount of people were really dead.
“You mean everyone here is.....dead?!!” The ‘dead’ barely came out audible as the shock of it all affected the pitch of her voice.
Does that explain the mystifying glowing of their skins?
She was dead!
At the thought of her death, her mind immediately drifted to Roshan, his profile vividly displayed in her head like a dream and she was happy that she still remembered his face, his eyes, basically everything about him.
But then, her expression steadily dropped and was replaced with a dim look when an unknown sadness suddenly took over her thoughts, and crept into her system.
This means she’ll never get to see Roshan again??
She could still remember everything, how she ended up in the forest, Luderick taking her blood and the whole devastating scenario just kept replaying in her head. She saved Roshan from being hit by Adryan’s arrow, but the results of it cost her her life.
When she spotted Adryan in the forest back in Viscarrian, she wasn’t given enough time to recover from the shock of seeing him, because there was an arrow pointing towards Roshan and that was the only thing her senses had picked up on.
But what was he doing in Viscarrian? How did he even locate the place?
Unfortunately, she won’t be able to get those answers since she’s nothing but a soul heading to the afterlife. But, wasn’t it said that the moment you step into the afterlife, you tend to forget everything that has to do with the mortal world, including the memories, love, pain, her parents, everything would be wiped off like it never even happened.
“You appear worried, is anything the matter?” The woman popped another question that brought Anna’s attention back to her, and her brows creased in obvious befuddlement.
“How is it possible that I can still feel?” Although that wasn’t her main problem, she chose to bring it up since that part was another mystery, but the old woman just smiled faintly as they continued to walk.
“The heart never stops feeling child,” she cooly said while keeping her eyes fixed ahead, “it is the core existence of our everyday lives, so you can’t expect it to stop feeling just cause you no longer have your original body.”
Anna silently pondered on those words, or maybe it’s her mentality that hasn’t made her emotions fade yet.
Could it?
“How long have we been walking?” She asked, but the old woman just shook her head and said, “that cannot be predicted in a place like this, but we have made it past the two Rivers, this is the last one and at the end of the river, everyone gets to start a new life somewhere.”
“A new life?”
All of a sudden, the once clear sky above them suddenly started to darken when they neared the end of the bridge, but strangely, no one except Anna seemed to notice it.
The clouds above had turned darker than a rainstorm, there wasn’t any sign of rain, but Anna could see a flash of lightning in those clouds that rumbled angrily.
Before she could take any step forward, a powerful lightning struck the next step she would have taken, leaving Anna to instantly bristle back and at that moment, she heard a thundering voice.
“Cursed by the heart! Thy mustn’t go unpunished!”
“My curse???” Another sharp lightning struck the bridge, leading the panicked Anna to quickly stagger back and unknown to her, she already neared the edge of the bridge, thus, leading her to accidentally tumble backwards without warning.
“Ahh!!”
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