Chapter 151: The Past Catching Up

In the dead hours of the night, when the Laguna had gone quiet but never truly slept, Lara was still wide awake.

Her fingers drifted over the smooth edges of the book Yannis had given her, tracing it like it might breathe under her touch.

Her fingertip touched the combination lock.

A beat passed. Then she punched in the numbers.

5–2–2–1.

Her birthday, written backwards.

A soft click split the silence then the lock gave in.

Lara opened the book slowly, almost cautiously—like it might bite.

It wasn’t a journal. It was a photo book.

And not the kind people leave on coffee tables.

This one felt… deliberate and complete.

More detailed than the first.

It mapped her life—piece by piece—from when she was barely more than a toddler.

Her breath hitched as she flipped to the earliest page.

She expected softness. Warmth. Something familiar.

A one-year-old girl with copper-brown curls, chubby cheeks, and a gap-toothed grin, reaching for the camera.

But that wasn’t what she saw.

The first photo was of her at two years old.

Lara frowned.

Two?

Her fingers hovered over the image, not quite touching it.

Was that really her?

The child in the photo stared blankly ahead, stiff, almost posed. No spark. No mischief. No life.

And worst of all—no connection.

There was nothing.

No familial pull, not like what she felt before… not like when she stayed in Norse Manor, in that room that was supposed to belong to the “real” Lara. There, the air itself felt heavy with memory. Familiar. Claimed.

But this? This felt like flipping through a stranger’s life.

A stranger wearing her face. A thin unease crept up her spine.

She shut it down.

Not now.

Lara turned the page.

Then another.

She scanned quickly at first, searching for something normal—birthday parties, balloons, messy cakes, laughter frozen in time.

But there was nothing.

Page after page, still nothing.

Her jaw tightened.

Then, finally, a birthday.

Age seven.

She stopped.

In the photo, her parents stood beside her—but not really with her. Both of them angled slightly away from the camera, their faces caught only in partial profile, like they didn’t want to be fully seen.

Like they weren’t meant to be remembered.

And there she was.

Seven-year-old Lara.

Sitting in front of a plain cake. A single candle shaped like the number 7 burning weakly at the center.

No decorations. No noise. No joy.

Lara leaned in closer.

A bitter smile tugged at her lips.

Funny, isn’t it?

Yannis wanted her to remember.

To piece her past back together.

And yet here it was—documented, preserved—and still incomplete. Still hiding.

Even her parents wouldn’t face her fully.

Her gaze dropped to the child in the photo.

Her younger self.

And that’s when it hit her.

The eyes were scared and empty

No excitement. No impatience to blow out the candle. No trace of happiness.

Nothing.

Lara’s chest tightened.

It was her birthday.

So why did she look like she was already learning how not to feel?

…

Lara didn’t turn the page right away.

Her fingers stayed frozen on the corner, her eyes locked on that girl—on herself.

She was seven years old. She looked like she already knew something she shouldn’t.

A quiet kind of knowing. One, not learned but survived.

Her throat tightened.

“Why do I look like that?” she whispered.

No one answered her question.

She exhaled. Her breath, slow and uneven. Then she forced the page to turn.

It was her first grade.

Everything about it should have felt harmless—tiny chairs, bright posters, alphabet charts curling at the edges like tired smiles.

It was supposed to be a normal and safe place.

But her eyes didn’t stay there. They went straight to the back. To the corner.

To the desk that didn’t belong. Small. Isolated. Pushed away from the others as if it had done something wrong.

And there she was.

Head slightly bowed. She was not reading. Not writing. Not even fidgeting.

Just… still. Too still.

Lara leaned closer.

And then, it hit her. Not a full memory. But something sharper.

A crack.

A bleed-through.

That picture was taken on a Monday, and a week before that, on a Saturday, she suffered a lot.

Her father brought her to a village at the outskirts of a small forest.

Her mission: To survive the night and find her own food.

And the forest did not sleep.

It watched.

Lara at seven was smaller and weaker. She stood frozen between towering trees that stretched too high, their branches clawing into her like they were trying to tear her open.

The air was wrong. It was too thick and too quiet.

Until it wasn’t.

A snap.

Somewhere behind her, she whipped around.

There was nothing. Just shadows layered on shadows.

Her breathing came out too loud, too fast. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered to herself, voice shaking. “Don’t cry, don’t cry—”

Because crying made noise.

And noise meant something could find her.

The branches creaked above.

It was slow and dragging, like the sound you hear from horror movies.

Like something heavy was shifting its weight.

In the dark, the trees didn’t look like trees anymore.

They looked like grotesque figures, tall and twisted.

Leaning closer, the longer you stared.

Their branches bent and curved into long, reaching shapes—arms that didn’t end, fingers that didn’t stop. They were waiting, watching, reaching.

Lara stumbled back, her foot catching on something—roots.

Or human hands. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

A sound cut through the air.

It was low, unfamiliar, definitely not human.

Not anything she could name.

Her chest seized.

What was that?

Another sound answered it.

It was closer this time.

Then another.

Echoing.

Surrounding.

The forest was alive.

And it knew she didn’t belong.

“I have to go home,” she whispered, turning in a slow, panicked circle. “I have to—Dad said—”

Her voice broke.

Dad said.

Her stomach dropped. He wasn’t coming back for her. Not tonight. Not until morning. If she made it to the morning.

The realization settled in like ice in her veins.

This wasn’t a game.

This wasn’t a lesson.

This was abandonment dressed up as survival.

Her legs shook.

She wrapped her arms around herself, small hands gripping tight like she could hold her body together.

The sounds didn’t stop.

Leaves crunching where she wasn’t stepping.

Branches snapping where nothing should be moving.

Breathing—

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