Within the few seconds of the loud sound of a heavy object dropping was heard, Helio rushed over to the opposite side of the building to check what had been the commotion. Despite the estate being only three storeys from the front, by the time he reached the back side, he noticed two more levels of the estate lowered into the ground as the ground was dug out to match the height.
He jumped over the two storey high ground and landed on his feet in a crouching position, only reaching the side of the estate's square building. Multiple thoughts emerged into his mind as the sound echoed into his ears back and forth. Many injured children were brought out and many elderly hostages too, but only one person was missing who didn't come out.
Based on Cedric, she was going to check in on something that bothered her and he didn't really get the chance to tell about the strong underboss who was behind all the master plans of this business. Even though Helio had no doubt that Aefia would eventually succeed, a small nerve ticked in his brain where there was a small probability for the expected incident to happen, but never zero.
The absurd part was, he heard this sound multiple times after coming into this world and entering the other worlds too. Although, just to confirm it, he wanted to check whether the case was true. By running most of the way, he managed to reach within a short time frame as he stopped at the last edge to breathe in and relax his lungs. If it were a beast, he would have to be prepared too.
Just in case, he held out the bright green edged dagger up in front to be able to ward off any danger that might be coming and slowly looked over to the other side while poping his head to see instead. But the scene was definitely something he wasn't expecting, something worth saying would sound like a lie to anyone's ears as he slowly observed a few more seconds before rushing over to the person on the completely white staircase.
Blood dripped from the first step to the other and rolled down to the other, like a liquid red carpet was laid out, expect made of blood itself. Not only that, it was splattered against the entire staircase area and visible from even the top floor at this point. There was no doubt that the worst case scenario had actually happened.
The person on the ground stayed still, with disheveled hair scattered against her face, and dried with a slight hint of blood crust on it. The eyes were still open with pupils looking as if it was just staring into the sky with nothing else to make it blink, and the faint smell of blood was rinsed away by the ashes and flames from inside the building.
Helio ran, but then stopped a short distance from her fallen body and let out a laugh. "You can stop acting, if you are trying to fool someone." He slowly walked over, waiting for a response, even a surprise would count. But not even her fingers twitched, let alone blink. By crouching, he noticed how she was hardly breathing.
He glanced at the stab wounds that were somehow covered by her hands, two places one in her ribs and the other slightly below her liver's location. The realization hit him as he noticed the bleeding scalp and closed the eyes while lifting the head onto his lap. After lifting the hands away, he noticed the piece of rolled paper tucked under her sleeve, and pulled it out.
He spread it open and read through the blood-stained paper and stared with shock at the person laying still. The hair from her face were removed away, as he smiled a little with a sigh of relieve. "You have a way or two to scare people for some reasons. I was almost scared to death honestly, and I have underestimated your intelligence yet again."
He pulled out a bottle of water from his inventory as he fed the two peels found in the paper onto her mouth while using a little bit of water to wipe away the bloody prints from her face as her facial expression settled slightly. Curiously, Helio glanced up at the place where she supposedly fell from.
"It's burning. Did she jump to escape the fire? Or was this a planned sucide? She isn't dumb to do such a thing anyway, and she isn't practically dead yet." He spoke while continuing with healing the stabbed areas before she had regained her consciousness. "Although, how did she know that the thing about how dying in this world sends you to Earth, was a lie?" The note on his finger crumbled under the pressure of them.
***
In complete darkness, Aefia jolted awake to feel her wound or to see the damage accumulated by her. Surprisingly, there wasn't even a hint of pain from her body nor prove of a battle. The darkness sent shivers up her arms as a wave of claustrophobia went into her mind, alongside panic included. She stood up to run, not really knowing what to do at this sort of situation, but just a second ago, she was hanging in the air with the sunshade's end piercing into her left lung.
She placed a few steps in the form of a run, but a voice echoed through the darkness and turned around immediately to catch an eye at the familiarity of it. "I don't remember ever fearing the dark." A girl the same height as Aefia walked towards her while facing her back. "I am not claustrophobic as you are, are you really me?"
The same clothing as the one she wore on the day she left Earth, eyes the colour of the void she was in, expressionless and ambitious with hair tied up in a ponytail, the front shorter part of it covering until her eyebrows, shadowing her eyes slightly. Footsteps felt softly on the ground as the mirror image walked towards her.
"I am not a beast who can imitate just anyone they see or think they can copy." Aefia spoke with confidence and a small smile creeping against her face. The mirror image walked up to her face, raised her hand and striked the left side.
"Are you really that negatively minded that you think your past self is a monster? I don't remember, being this evil when it comes to meeting someone familiar. Even when I was meeting an actual evil person, I would have made sure to not be that harsh." The mirror image spoke with her plain expressionless face, no smile nor an angry stare.
"Then who are you exactly?" Aefia spoke while holding the part of her face that was hit. "Even I don't remember once being such harsh to myself. Are you really me from the past? Then how is it so that you are so different from what I am?" She spoke while wiping the smile off her face and staying out of eye contact. The mirror image held out a hand to hold her chin and face her.
"Isn't it because a person can't tell how much they have changed unless someone tells them?" She spoke, not angrily but it seemed as if it were to promise harshness. This expression, it was definitely familiar and something that was a regular thing for her now.
"The last time I checked, you have become what you most feared yourself of becoming. Why have you become such a thing, Aefia Smod?" The mirror image spoke while stepping back from her. Inside her mind, she was wondering many things. The last name was something that defined precisely her 'changed' self.
Her pupils shrunk, absolutely no expression remained in her eyes only multiple thoughts rushing in and out. The mirror image closed her eyes, waiting for a response with anticipation that stated she was not like that. But the response she got back was what sent them both into a creepy staring contest.
"And how do you expect...that a situation won't alter the way someone thinks or expresses their thoughts." Aefia returned while lowering her eyes. But the mirror image didn't blink, and her eyes just stayed open as she stared into her soul with a gentle pair of eyes.
"The Mafia organization didn't alter your personality, but you hadn't forgetten how you were once diagnosed with bipolar disorder...Then I am taking that you have recovered from that mental illness, since you are surprised at this now." The opposite person spoke with a cold stare, still unblinking. Eventually, she moved towards another space in the inescapable void.
"There was one thing...about your life that you really hated. And because of that, you got entangled into that mafia organization of your uncle's and unwillingly helped it gain some name. I want to know, have you forgotten how you used to solve your problems back then? You saved Nada, from an unwanted marriage, from the hands of your greedy aunts, from the critisicm of the office people. And did you get anything in return?"
"What do I want in return? She is already suffering it." Aefia's death stare appeared out of instincts. The mirror image seemed shocked at first, then smiled again, "isn't this prove enough that you have severely changed." She stopped walking and turned around to face her again. It was obvious what the reason behind this conversation, was to showcase her weakness in front of her.
With that realization in mind, another topic of conversation erupted. "Then how do I become my past self again?" Aefia spoke with a similar facial expression as the mirror image. "Are you a villain?" An answer came back, which carved curiousity into her mind. What kind of question is this?
"No. I am not from a novel, this is not a transmigration or reincarnation tale that you are telling." And the conversation flowed. "Then remember that. You are best at acting and faking, continue with that. Act when you want the situation to seem good, and fake when you meet up with a chaos."
"That's not me." Aefia turned towards the mirror image. But no reply came back for a very long time, until the mirror image walked closer to her and stopping just a few steps away from the standing position. "Do you know you are dead?" The abnormal question hang in the air with deep meanings in it.
"Let me be precise...do you know you are dead...both mentally and physically?" She put her hands behind her back and stood with all her expressions washing off her face and leaving an absurdly pale layer where her eyes and hair stood out because of it.
"I remember dying." Aefia responded with a somewhat confused and serious tone. But her mixed feelings about this was somewhere out of reach to identify. "I remember dying just now, and reappearing here."
"Maybe you just don't know how you died mentally, yet...but I am willing to explain it for you." The mirror image spoke with her eyes closed. "Did you forget? How you forgot yourself and your consciousness? While letting that woman kill you the rest of the way? I share your thoughts...and you were precisely thinking of it as a way to consider...a murder-suicide."
Her eyes widened with seriousness in them, "you made it so that you could disguise it as a murder, but you had just made it seem like a bait. You knew you had the chance to escape if you wanted, you had everything by your grasps and you still hesitated to use them. Anyone, who thinks like that...is considered dead in the mind. Because they lack the sanity...while also..." She trailed off and dissappeared.
Aefia moved forward to inspect the area the mirror image just had been standing at, but a breathe was felt near her ears and a voice rang into them. "When a magic user loses their right mind, they become a beast, don't they? So...are you a beast?" The identical girl spoke in a whispering voice into her mind as she turned around with shock, while stepping back.
Was I always like that? With a few seconds to calm down, she spoke in a few words. "Anything else to say?" While fixing her expression and with another horrifying facial expression, the mirror image opened her mouth one more time while pointing into the distant void and a small figure walking. "Yes, with her."
A smaller version of Aefia, around three or so, playing with the water mug and the warm drink inside it. Immediately, she placed it in the ground and kicked it as the child glanced towards them both quickly and placed the mug back on the floor, keeping it standing. Finishing it, she stood in place without a movement, looking down. Isn't that, when I heard the quote 'don't cry over spilt milk'?
"She is us, but younger. The thing I wanted to say to you and the reason you are still here, is because you will need to learn the fact that, your life would alter for every time you change as a person. Say the first person, they would have led a life with their personality, and once you change that personality, life alters again." The image behind her spoke as she came to stand beside her. "And the future stays untouched for a very long time."
"I understand that part." Aefia nodded as she observed the young girl desperately trying to put the milk back into the mug, while sometimes stopping to see if they were saying anything to her. She forced a smile everytime the young girl glanced her way.
"But you won't understand where I say...everytime you die, in any world outside Earth, you will sacrifice a past version of yourself in order to escape this void world. It is basically still your mind, but we can't do anything because you are the last fragment from your currently 'dead' physical form. So you will need to sacrifice and merge your current mind with a past self of your mind, to leave this disturbing world as you think."
The mirror image of her spoke with a serious look. "And after you sacrifice and merge with them, you will be lead into two disadvantages. One is, where you will forget a specific memory of yours and two is where you will be conscious of the way you have changed and act like the other version you had sacrificed."
"Do I really need to be alive? Can't I just stay here?"
"Don't you want to go back to Earth? If you stay here, you are officially dead. You can only get back to Earth with the help of dimensional shifting, not death." The mirror image signed the young child and she began to rush up to them. "And of course, I will not let you live here."
Aefia spread out her hand as the child jumped onto her and sent her flying backwards, while within that small second she glanced at the mirror image to get a few more words back. "If you could endure it back then, you can endure now even." And looked the child's smiling face as her eyes shut themselves.