Those Bygone Years

The day my brother, Chester Rodney, came to the orphanage to take me home, my boyfriend Dominic Huxley looked at me coldly and said, "If you choose to acknowledge your birth family, we're over." I knew he had his pride—he could never accept the difference in our social standing. So, for him, I turned my back on the family I had yearned for my whole life. In the decades that followed, I toiled without complaint, saving every cent to help him rise to success. By the time I was not yet fifty, overwork had worn me down. Lying on my deathbed, my breathing shallow and weak, I watched Dominic on television. He was now an acclaimed scientist, just awarded the nation's highest research honor. Tears welled in his eyes as he thanked another woman. "All these years," he said, "I never felt worthy of Alicia. But now, maybe I can use this award as the prologue to a love I've owed her for decades." The "Alicia" he spoke of was the woman mistakenly switched with me at birth—the false heiress the Rodney family raised as their own. The camera zoomed out. Alicia Rodney stood radiant, graceful, and perfectly preserved by years of luxury, blushing as she accepted the trophy. "I waited for you for decades," she said sweetly, "but marriage is still something I'll need to ask my brother about." Chester, who had long taken over the family, looked at her with an indulgent tenderness tinged with something unspoken. "I was adopted by our uncle back then for one reason—to protect Alicia. Making the only princess of the Rodney family happy has always been my life's mission." Only then did I realize—everything I thought I had chosen freely, every sacrifice I made without regret, was nothing but a trap, carefully woven by two men, all for Alicia. The betrayal pierced my heart. I died without peace. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day Chester came to take me home from the orphanage. I glanced past the two men eyeing me with subtle disdain. Without hesitation, I stepped into the car. "Take me home," I said. This time, I'd send whoever stole my life back to the gutter they slithered from.

I was twelve when Henry Shaw took me home from the orphanage, gave me a new name, put me through school, and gave me a good life. Ten years later, his first love returned from abroad. Her name sounded like mine, and her face looked like a mirror image. I quickly realized I had been a stand-in all along. Crushing the diagnosis in my pocket, I decided that I was going to live the rest of my life for myself, even if I did not have much time left.

After falling head over heels for Joe Smith for three years, I finally got the proposal I had been waiting for. However, on the day of our wedding, he did not show up until the wee hours of the morning. When I found him, Joe was drinking happily with a young girl in his arms. “I’m already tired of her clinginess. She’s a joke. Who else would want her?” Much later, he made me a wedding ring and proposed with my favorite jasmine flowers. But a muscular man opened the door instead. The man had two scratch marks on his neck and smirked at the disheveled Joe. “Isn’t it a bit too shameless of you to propose to a married woman?”

I was locked in a fridge for 40 days while the uncensored photos of me spread like wildfire across the internet. In the face of the salacious rumors about me, my mother reacted by reposting them. Then, she turned to warn my sister, "Look at how disgusting the entertainment industry is. Don't join it, alright? Stay home and inherit your sister's assets instead. My dearest daughter must be innocent and pure, unlike her." She forgot. She forgot I only joined this 'disgusting' industry to pay for her cancer treatment.

I'm having a mental breakdown as I face a clogged drain with my feverish and fussing daughter in my arms. Meanwhile, my husband has reserved a hotel to celebrate another woman's birthday. My mother-in-law spits on the floor. "This is what you deserve. You can't even capture a man's heart!" I clench a fist around the winning lottery ticket in my pocket. I want to get a divorce.

When I'm eight months pregnant, my husband, Levi West, becomes a donor to help his ex-girlfriend get pregnant. He even brings her and their illegitimate child home, wanting me to serve them. I refuse, and he calls me inhumane. "Audie's lost her husband—what's so bad about her wanting to have a child? You're a woman, too! How can you be so cruel?" I leave the house in anger, but Levi doesn't care. "Where can a country girl like you go when you're so heavily pregnant? You're going to come back and beg me to take you in again!" I head to the hospital to get an abortion. Then, I return to the countryside and rear pigs with my grandmother. Later, when Levi sees my flat belly and asks to see our child, I throw a handful of ashes in his face. "There you go. It's all there."

In front of the orphanage gates, Rebecca Schwartz, the impoverished student I had been sponsoring, stood glaring at me with a face full of disdain. "If you don't let Freddie come along, I'm not going to your house either," she declared, her tone sharp and unyielding. In the past, blinded by love and hopelessly infatuated, I would have caved to her demands, humbling myself just to keep the peace. But things were different now—I had been reborn. Staring at this despicable pair, who had once caused my tragic demise, a tidal wave of fury surged within me. Yet, it settled into nothing more than a faint, icy smile on my lips. "Then stay here," I said, my voice cold and steady. "Rot in this place alongside your precious Freddie. After all, trash like you belong in the garbage heap."

Gabi Ariola worked in an old cinema that seen bygone years. The queerest thing about this cinema was a display of a wedding gown. It was encased in glass for all to see. The town people and visitors alike often wondered the story behind the wedding gown. The owner of the cinema, Julian Mariano is a queer old man who has an eccentricity that few people understand except for his only beloved nephew Rafa Mariano. The odd owner constantly visited the cinema to watch reruns of “An affair to Remember” every third of July. Gabi soon learns the truth about the wedding gown when she accidentally snoops around and fitted the dress. She realized that it will bring her to the past when the bride disappears. In 1891, she was rescued by Rafael Marquez. She realized that her only ticket back to the present was to find the owner of the Wedding Gown. She also learns that love was timeless and she was bound to choose between the past or the present.

In a previous Earth of the bygone era. The creatures of the legends walked alongside man. Wizards, witches, sorcerers, and a host of other beings shared our world.The world was divided into 5 continents ruled by some of the greatest nations.The most powerful among these empires was the Vatasya kingdom. Ruled by the ruthless and powerful King Tarekdeo.He had upsurped several kingdoms he is looking for the princess Toshani.The crown Prince Rudra has been assigned with the task of finding her. He has secret of his own. Toshani was his former love. Maya was a warrior who have vowed to kill the tyrant king Tarekdeo and finish his rule. She had lost her family as well as her memory during the raid on her village. When Rudra and Maya came face to face he was shocked by her resemblance to Toshani. However Maya vehemently denied being the lost princess. She couldn't resist him nor his wicked ways.

Ellie has two years at The Academy before she can escape to freedom and leave her life amongst werewolves behind. Two years left of Mark's taunting, two years left of the elite's bullying, two years left of staring at Jake wondering if he could ever see her as more than a friend. When a student turns up dead, Ellie finds herself in the midst of a mystery that may just make those two years seem infinitely worse.