The Devil's Temptation!

Annalise took her time to gather herself, keeping her mind focused as she approached her parents graveyard and before she realized it, her feet had stopped right in front of it.

The headstones stood proudly, diligently keeping to their duty as time wore away the messages they bore, dead flowers were being crumbled in the hands of Anna as she replaced them with fresh ones. She always changes the flowers whenever they withered but due to the crises she’s currently facing, it became difficult to keep to that duty.

How odd it suddenly felt to stand before her parents graveyard in the dewy grass, knowing someday, she would never be able to leave it again, she’ll end up just like them.

The whole family of Mateo would be gone, her grandfather went by the name Boris and her father was the only son he had, in the end, all the Boris family would end up beneath the earth, with no survivors.

The overwhelming grief that took over her after standing in front of the place she never thought she’d be able to step foot into again, made her knees buckle as they sank into the thick grass. She placed one side of her cheek against the cold stone to fill their presence and as always, she knew they were with her as her heavy heart was starting to weigh down a little.

They must be watching her from the heavens but it didn’t stop her from crying her eyes out. She was a weak daughter, she wasn’t as brave as her father or courageous and strong-willed like her mother and she hated the fact she was coming to terms with it.

She missed them so much and just coming here only filled her head with happy memories of them.

“You know the best memories we tend to have makes us sad, cause we know they won’t happen again.” Came the familiar voice of a certain someone, a very_familiar voice that rang in Anna’s head for a few seconds and it made her eyes dilate in disbelief. Having a rough guess on who it might just be, she slowly raised her head up, only to meet the chocolate-brown eyes of a very familiar lady and a quick gasp of shock left her lips.

.....

“It’s you again!” She bristled back in shock as she stared at the look-alike who leaned against the headstone, also on her knees, watching her and all of a sudden, her expression turned guilty.

“Don’t let me interrupt you, go ahead and cry yourself to sleep.” Her sweet words sounded mocking rather than comforting to the ears and it didn’t really sit with Anna at all.

How is she here again???

“I must be imagining your presence, this is all just my head messing with me.” She closed her eyes as a sigh left her lips, quietly trying to convince herself that all this was just in her head, that the lady before her wasn’t real, but when she opened them back, her look-alike was still there, waving in a lady-like gesture.

“Did I leave?” She asked with a half-teased smile, earning a frown from Anna who has had enough of her strange mystifying presence.

“What do you want?”

“I’m you,” the lady corrected as a matter-of-fact, “so basically you’re asking me what do ‘we’ want.” She rose to her feet, turning her back to the perplexed Annalise, “so tell me Anna, what is it we want?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And you will never know, that’s the problem we have Anna,” the lady said in a not so quiet tone, “maybe until we lay on our deathbed for the second time will we realize our hearts desire but by then, it’ll be too late.”

“Second time?” Anna’s hearing didn’t fail to grasp that particular word and the lady turned to look at Anna with a knowing smile.

“What is it we want? Think, your parents are never coming back and you might just join them sooner than you know.” Her tone was as harsh as that of a serpent, frightening Anna herself but she quickly recovered from it, only to shake her head in cluelessness, still not getting it.

“He wants you.” She finally said with a lot of conviction, “you want him too and you can’t lie to me cause I’m you, I know your deepest little secrets, I know every thoughts of yours, I also know what’s going through your mind even as we speak, and your emotions, I feel them too, but I’m done feeling sad for you.”

There was a strange message behind her every word and Anna couldn’t possibly grasp what she was trying to tell her. Who wants her? Who does she want? None of it was making sense and it was giving the already conflicted Anna a headache.

“Anna.”

The deep familiar voice behind her startled her to her wits as she broke from her thoughts, looking forward, the lady was no longer there, like she just disappeared out of the blue and when Annalise turned around, Roshan stood at the far end of the graveyard as he beckoned her over.

“Roshan?”

Quickly wiping her tears away with the hem of her dress, she got to her feet and stepped out of the graveyard, standing before Roshan who equally looked conflicted about something, leaving her worried.

“What’s the problem?” She proceeded to ask the glacier who was looking visibly confused about something.

“Quick question, how did this end up in your house?” He held out the locket in his hand for Anna to see, leaving her gaze to fall directly on it, but she appeared clueless as to what the locket was.

“A locket?” She squinted her eyes at it, “did you buy it?”

He shook his head before meeting her stare, “apparently, I found it in your room.”

“My what?”

Confused by his words and finding it queer, Annalise took the locket and opened it for herself, only to see the name of Aveline written boldly on it. Her heart stopped beating for a second as the name was more than visible to her shock-filled eyes.

“Aveline??” Switching glances from the locket to Roshan, she shook her head in skepticism, “It’s... it’s not mine.”

“This just keeps getting confusing,” he ran his fingers through his hair as he looked up into the sky, exhaling through his nostrils as he tried to think things through before something finally crawled into his head and his eyes snapped open.

“The puzzles...” Roshan met her troubled stare before uttering, “you were born with a meteor mark, a meteor mark theoretically means the sign of early rebirth according to the Grimoire and if you were really reborned, if the words on those scrolls are valid, that means... you’ve lived before.”

Hearing him speak, the place fell silent as they just stared and Anna suddenly ran out of words. Her mouth was open as though she wanted to object but before she could do that, the words of the second lady clicked, “second death?”

Roshan couldn’t help it himself, the clues, the words, her mark, Aveline.. they were all starting to click, “could it be you were once Aveline in your previous life, I mean did we meet in the past?”

Anna’s heart drummed in rhythm at his questions, she didn’t want to believe such a thing was possible but she would be a fool not to follow his clues. When she first saw Roshan, she found him familiar and those deja Vu that refused to leave her.

Was it possible?

Without saying a word to Roshan who anticipatedly waited for her answer, she turned and was about to leave when he grabbed her arm, stopping her.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Euphrasia palace.” She quickly responded, “I...I want to see someone.”

“You can’t go there now.”

“Why?”

“Cause the gathering...” his voice suddenly trailed off but he said it anyway, “Arlow’s is dead.”

“W_what?” Those words shot through her brain with no mercy and her face paled at the news. He nodded, signifying he wasn’t joking around, “he died last night.”

“Did you kill him?” The question left her lips before she even realized what she had asked, but Roshan remained mute, unwilling to respond to that.