The Past As Prologue Novels & Stories

Also, in the way he looks, it'll not be a surprise if he's really one. Kai finished the first glass. He turned his gaze to Liana, who averted her eyes after getting caught that she's staring. Kai shamelessly studied her features. From her short hair, to her tan skin, to her lips painted in red up to her chinky eyes, down to her neck. Liana felt the stare all throughout, though she didn't do anything about it. Kai sighed and looked away. She looks a lot like his past lover. He would've believed it's her if it's not for the neck mole that Stella, his past lover doesn't have.

Outside, the city continued its relentless forward motion, but inside our apartment—in this space we'd created together—time felt slower, more peaceful, more genuinely ours. The hunt was over, the accounts were closed, the future stretched ahead unburdened by obligation to past trauma. This was the final chapter of the story that had begun with consciousness manipulation research and systematic betrayal: Not dramatic confrontation or elaborate revenge, but simple, profound peace. The kind of peace that came from genuinely healing, genuinely trusting, genuinely choosing to build something because you wanted to rather than because you were reacting to damage.

> “Reckoning.” The fire popped, a single spark leaping. The boy stirred. He stood slowly, looked at the Prophets, and said, quiet but certain, “You think remembering too far creates prophecy. But maybe prophecy begins when someone listens long enough.” The Prophets turned. For the first time, they seemed… unsettled. Azriel stepped forward. “He’s right. We didn’t crown memory to control the future. We did it to heal the past.” The lead Prophet’s voice softened. “And yet your flame already shapes what comes next.”

I held my breath outside the study. My heart ached with every word uttered inside. The conversation carried on inside. “Mr. Brody, Lulu has a gentle heart and a trusting nature. Please, take care of her.” “Don’t worry, sir. If Lulu hadn’t risked her life to save me from that fire five years ago, I wouldn’t be here today. I’ll protect her for the rest of my life.” Cole Brody paused for a moment before continuing, “However, getting Lulu pregnant was just repayment for her kindness, nothing more. Bethany is threatening to break up with me over it. Who knows what other crazy things she might do out of jealousy?”

Back then, he would follow me around with a runny nose and claim to protect me. I shook off the thought and continued talking to him. We got along well. When it was time to leave, he kindly offered to drive me home. On the way back, he joked that when we were kids, I would say I was going to marry him. I just smiled awkwardly. He stopped the car and looked at me seriously. “Wendy, I want you to know that I liked you back then, and I still do. I’ll wait for the day you open up to me. There’s no rush. I’ll always be here, just like before.”

I grabbed it and looked at all the contents on my cellphone. "Did I go back to the past? I've read novels about traveling to the past, or maybe transmigrating, but I think it's all just fiction. However, now I'm experiencing it," I muttered to myself, looking around my room. I was determined to make sure of everything, so I rushed into the bathroom to get ready to go to the office. During the trip to the office, I really felt that all of this felt real to me. Suddenly, I seemed to remember something.

Open the fucking door. I didn’t want to. Now that I stood before the gateway to the past and its desecrations, I did not want to open that door. I’d been stalling, hiding behind my thoughts, feebly resisting the inevitability of the coming action. As eager as I’d been to get here, I was now even more eager to have it over with, the foreboding, the foreknowledge having assumed its tangible form as I let my senses process the event of the chapel. Because it wasn’t just a building, this construction of human hands. It didn’t just exist in time and space. It happened, in the way a slaughterhouse happened. It performed, it accomplished, in the way a hunting knife, as it opened throats, performed

I didn't realize that tears were trailing down my cheeks until I felt Hunter's fingers wipe them away. "What happened to your mother, and what happened to Megan, it was horrible. And if I could, I'd take all that pain away, but I can't. But that's the thing Scarlett, tragedies happen, they're a bitter part of life and you can't do anything about it. But what you can do is choose not to let tragedy control your life." His eyes locked with mine, swimming with a hundred different emotions. "You see, it's important to be shaped by tragedy but never let tragedy define you. That's the only way we can be the best version of ourselves."

This is a letter I am writing now. Not to the past — I have written enough to the past, and the past has answered as fully as a past can answer, which is to say that it is now correctly named and placed in the record where it belongs, and what remains of it in me is neither wound nor weight but history: the specific sequence of events that produced the specific person I am. I carry it the way a building carries its foundation layer — invisibly, structurally, necessarily.

Not replacing what he had known. Adding to it. "She always will have been," Sera said. He looked at her. "That phrase," he said. "You say it sometimes. Always will have been." "Because the past is permanent," she said. "Whatever happened has happened and cannot be unhappened. The records we build now make what was invisible in the past permanently visible. Isola spent fourteen years watching and recording and it is now permanently true that she did that. Nobody can take that back." She paused. "The present changes the meaning of the past without erasing it."