♱ Chapter • 131 ♱

♱ •⋅ 1750 B.C. ⋅• ♱

Elaine had relived it. Again and again.

Even if I tried to understand, even if I tried with all my might to be understanding, I still knew I was unable to measure how painful it had really been for her.

"At first... I saw Callisto as a salvation" she said with tears in her eyes and all I could do was try to hug her, comfort her like an idiot who didn’t know where to start. " It was all horrible, painful and then he was there. It was comfortable, it was hot... I wanted so much to be happy, but I was afraid. That "God" had given me everything and all I could do was to be obedient and do what he told me to do, but... what if he told me to take Callisto’s life? What if what I needed was to rip the heart out of the one being who deigned to be kind to me? It was painful..." she murmured between tears running down her cheeks like water in a waterfall "it was horrible, at least the first time."

My mouth opened, but like a complete idiot, I couldn’t say anything.

"I questioned myself a thousand times in the first life" she continued and at that moment I understood that for Elaine, it was very important to say that. It was more important to be able to speak than necessarily be comforted, so I just listened to it. I heard her as my eyes were fixed on her "I wanted to save everyone, I swear I wanted... I..."

She looked at the floor, as if she was really blaming herself, but a faint smile appeared on her face.

"I wanted to, but I confess that my fear was greater than my will to save Callisto or Loren. I thought if Callisto died, if he really had to die, if I couldn’t do anything... then at least I wouldn’t be thrown into that endless darkness anymore. Even if Callisto wasn’t there, that God would still be, right? After all... I did everything for him, even lost who I learned to love" her voice was jammed as she said that "I thought I loved him, really thought and there was even a time where I thought I was loved too. That Callisto had for me the same feeling he had for his wife."

'Oh' I thought 'then that Elaine wasn’t so unreal,' I flattered my lips.

With every word of Elaine, the book I had read became more obvious, clearer.

The sacrifice of the demon king was not a silly book, it was the first life of a child who was afraid of darkness. It was the story of a human who despaired at the idea of being dumped in that dark and scary place, because what the novel was about - it wasn’t even 1% of the real things Elaine had to go through.

Famine.

Dor.

Cold.

Solitude.

Contempt.

Humiliation.

Abuses.

Slavery.

My beautiful, lovely, amazing woman had been tortured by the mortals who then deified her. She was thrown as a newborn to her own fate, abandoned on a street corner and survived in the streets, in the decaying orphanages. She was kicked, beaten, abused, enslaved. Elaine suffered so much before slowly until the cathedral of Samael, that perhaps it was common that she thought of that God as her savior.

She was just a helpless and frightened child, nothing more and nothing less, she had been just an innocent being who needed someone’s help, a hand. His misfortune was that the hand that was extended to him was full of thorns.

I pressed your fingers on mine.

"It’s okay" I muttered and the saint’s eyes smiled at me "I believe you" I whispered "and I’m sorry..."

My voice became embargoed by the pain she conveyed in her gaze. From the melancholy I carried and like a direct arrow in my heart, I remembered each of those scenes, each look, each word that Elaine had addressed to me.

Elaine had always been like this, right? That look that I could not understand, those expressions that seemed too complicated for them to be the small being in front of me.

Everything seemed to fit, even that look she had at first.

I bit my lip hard.

"Keir..." she called me and my name in her mouth looked sweet... kind - is she crying? " she asked me as her fingers touched my face."

"I..." my voice was choked by the tears that kept coming down "it just seems to... hurt. It seems to hurt a lot and... I can’t do anything" I whimpered like a real child "I wanted to help you, I wish I could at least lessen your pain, but I can’t. I can’t because you’ve lived and relived it a thousand times, you..." I shook Elaine’s hand as if trying to hold her to me "I don’t want to see you suffer, I don’t want you to cry, something to cause you pain, I don’t want to, I really don’t want to..."

She laughed, a laugh so loud I wondered if it was real.

"Keir" my name on your lips seemed even an old tune being uttered "I’m glad I met you, I’m truly happy, because yes... it was horrible. It was painful, frightening and agonizing" there was melancholy in her sweet voice "there were days when all I wished for was not to be alive, was simply that damn window through which I was forced to watch everything repeat itself, to close. I’d rather hang up, I’d really rather death be optional, but... after I saw you that day in front of the cathedral, after you helped me at Lucifer’s palace, after you calmed me down that night of nightmares. I could not help but think that if I were asked, I would gladly repeat this whole cycle."

"What is it?"

I stared at her perplexed.

"I would live every day, every life, every pain" whispered and her face approached mine, her forehead glued to mine "I would relive it all if in the end I could see you again, if I could know you again, because... in all my existence, knowing you was the best thing that ever happened to me."

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