CHAPTER 1 : PROLOGUE
3:21am, 1st December 2031.
Within the dark forest, a slender figure ran between the trees. Her clothes were tattered and dirty, her hair was choppy and flew behind her as she sped through the forest. Running for her life, she didn't care about the thorns and rocks piercing her feet. She just wanted to live.
At the same time, she didn't want to breathe. Every cold breath was so painful that it twisted her face into a painful pinch. She looked behind to see her pursuers not too far away. She increased the speed despite the pain. Pain would eventually go away. She needed to live.
But fate wouldn't have it.
A rock as big as her head tripped her right into a patch of thorns. The thorns pierced into her body. Blood seeped out of the tiny little wounds, painting her entire body in red. She gasped in pain, tears pooling in her eyes.
"Samirah, give up."
Samirah's lifted her face to look back. It was scratched in many places. Salty tears made her entire face itch but the pain was not comparable to the pain she felt in her heart.
She couldn't see his face clearly but his voice couldn't get any more familiar. She once wished to wake up to that sound and fall asleep to it. Tonight she wished to escape from it. It had become a nightmare.
"Let me go, please," Samirah painfully lifted her body from the thorns, gasping in pain as they left her body with wounds. She knelt in front of the man she once loved but now feared and hated.
"I gave you everything. My love, my respect, trust. I gave up my pack, my family for you. I am not asking for anything else, just let me live. I will never come back to trouble you. Just let me go, please Alan. I beg you," Samirah bowed and touched the ground with her forehead. She begged and cried for her life.
Alan smiled at the sight of her begging and said, "You gave me everything, Samirah. Now give me your life as well."
"Why? What will you gain from killing me? When you let me out of that cell, I thought you finally had pity on me! But it was just a play for you! Just a game to hunt me down! When did I ever go against your word? I betrayed everyone for you! Left everyone back for your sake! But you betrayed me and schemed with my best friend! I put all of my trust in you two but you used me for your selfish needs and threw me away! You framed me! Now you want to kill me! Don't you have a little bit of pity for me? I don't want anything! just let me -"
Before she could finish, a long knife glinted under the moonlight and slashed accross her neck in a smooth arc. Blood seeped down her throat in a line. Samirah gurgled up blood, her eyes popped in pain.
She was miserable even in the last moments of life. She saw Alan's face when the moonlight reflected from the knife onto his face. It was the face she fell in love with, it was the face that hurt her the most.
She regretted it. Regretted falling in love. If she could do it all again, she'd not be so foolish anymore.
Her body went limp on the bed of thorns. The wounds didn't hurt anymore. Her eyes were already dull and her mouth agape, dripping blood. Blood pooled around her body, slowly spreading a metallic smell into the forest.
Alan sneered and turned around to leave. Samirah's body was left in the forest to rot.
The next morning, her death was announced to the world. She was titled a traitor who betrayed the ones who trusted her the most.
Alan and Thea tearfully recited the false story of how she broke away from them when they tried to bring her into the right path, but she didn't listen. In the end she ventured into the forest and ended up being attacked by wild animals. It was a pitiful death, but no one pitied her.
Samirah, a woman betrayed by her loved ones, was cursed by others.
She couldn't rest even in death. Her life was painful, death restless.
Without rest, she found herself wandering. Unknowingly returning eight years in the past where she was yet to make the decision that ruined her entire life.