Ana fainted immediately after screaming her lungs out.
The next time she woke up, the sun was already high in the sky, lazily drifting through clouds that still bore the scent of the night's downpour. The air carried subtle undertones of earth and ozone—humid, electric, post-calamity. Ana was lying out in the open air. On the balcony of an apartment she didn't remember buying—but knew, with gut-deep certainty, had been purchased by her body-snatcher.
She rose from the cold marble floor with a grunt, her bones aching and her body spent, as if something had tried to claw its way out of her and had only half-succeeded.
Her face was streaked with dry tear tracks. Her hands were raw, knuckles torn and bleeding, nails cracked and broken. She wore a nightgown—half-torn, clinging to her like shame. She looked like a ruin. She felt like one.
Her body felt... unfamiliar. Off-balance. Wrong in the small, quiet ways that only she would notice. Her legs were longer. Her figure more proportioned. Everything tighter, leaner, curated. Like someone had rewritten her DNA without asking.
She remembered being an eighteen-year-old girl.
Loved by parents who still smelled like home. Obsessed with stars, math, propulsion systems, and dreams too big for her town.
She had wanted to build spaceships.
Now?
Now she was standing on the marble balcony of some goddamn high-rise condo like a tech billionaire's mistress. Or worse—like a self-made myth, left behind by a girl who'd murdered her way through this life in Ana's stolen skin.
Like being broken.
And a fucking murderer.
She crossed the length of the condo and barreled toward the decorative mirror hanging on the hallway wall. Without hesitation, she punched it—hard.
The glass shattered on impact, splintering into a million crystalline pieces, almost like dust, as the silver frame twisted under the force of her blow.
The impulse was half-fury, half-confirmation.
She needed to know.
To feel it break under her fist.
When she saw the silver frame cracked down the middle, she shuddered.
Because she knew.
She hadn't imagined the storm last night.
She hadn't imagined the way the skies had screamed with her.
She hadn't imagined the god-like figures watching her through the lightning—silent, distant, almost as if… they had finally found something they had long been searching for.
Anastasia felt disoriented. Still so fucking lost in the concrete prison the bitch had abandoned her in. Her soul felt caged, still trembling in the aftermath of being seen.
So she did what was expected of her.
She cleaned up the mirror. Cleaned the balcony. Made herself some eggs. Took a shower.
Then she logged into a second-hand site and listed every personal belonging in the condo for sale. Anything she didn't pack, she sold.
She sold the condo.
Booked a flight to her hometown.
All while riding the dull, numbing buzz that had spread through every inch of her existence. Her mind moved like a machine, going through every motion on auto-pilot while her heart lagged behind, dragged through old memories and unanswered questions like a corpse.
Yet somehow, Ana was feeling the world more vividly.
Every second slowed. Every frame sharpened.
It was like her brain had decided to capture each movement, each breath, and strategize every fucking angle.
She didn't know if it was the onset of a depressive episode, a psychotic break, or something ancient and otherworldly bleeding through her skin.
Maybe all of it.
Maybe none of it.
.
.
.
With a double-cheese chicken sandwich clutched in her hand and no appetite to match, Ana sighed as she dragged herself through the airport at Calmera—the closest international terminal to her hometown.
She didn't look special.
Just another girl in a sagging grey sweater, sleeves too long, fit too awkward, boxy enough to make her figure disappear. Except she could not disappear , this face was too fucking pretty for that . She knew because eyes still followed her. Hungry. Curious. Predatory.
Like she was meat dropped into a den full of teeth.
She hated the body the bitch had "generously" left her.
It topped her metaphorical list of cons.
Right after getting her parents killed.
After turning her body into a weapon.
And after enrolling in biochemical engineering—a field Ana had never even liked.
She had wanted aerospace. Rockets. Stars.
Instead, the bitch had chosen something "useful" to chase some man.
Of course she had.
So Ana, dressed in oversized gloom and rage, slipped on a pair of black sunglasses—darker than night, but not darker than that woman's heart—and lifted her chin.
She caught the eye of a plump man about to "accidentally" graze her ass with his palm.
She stared. Dead-eyed. Unflinching.
The man flinched. Scuttled away like a rat doused in cold water.
Ana adjusted her grip on her luggage, waved down a taxi on the edge of the terminal, and muttered, "Vinensola," as she climbed into the backseat.
Her hometown.
Her real world.
As the yellow cab pulled away from the airport, Ana leaned her head against the window. She closed her eyes—not because she was tired, but because she didn't trust herself not to break the moment she saw the skyline again.
Not to scream.
Not to cry.
Not to throw herself out of the cab and crawl through the dirt until she could find the pieces of herself that were buried in that soil.
.
.
.
Anastasia flinched as she felt the weight of a dozen heavy, unforgiving stares following her body.
Murmurs and whispers trailed behind her like smoke: "Ungrateful girl,"
"Why is she back?"
"Didn't even bury her parents."
Each word sliced through the thick, humid air like a blade, leaving behind a trail of wind and guilt as she walked through her childhood neighborhood—each step echoing like a ghost's return.
When she reached the front of her parents' house, she stopped in her tracks. Her breath caught.
The chipped white paint of the porch walls, flaking like shedding skin.
The old wooden swing still dangling from the wisteria branch, where she used to spend long summers curled up with a physics journal, chasing stars through scribbled equations.
It all looked so familiar.
And yet—so irrevocably wrong.
The fence was now painted a jarring bright blue.
Her father's old lay-down chair—the one he would drag out every Sunday morning to read the paper—was gone.
And outside the door stood a large, unfamiliar dog kennel. Stark. Plastic. Unwelcome.
These were signs.
Signs that another family now lived in the humble abode of the Summers.
Signs that the past was no longer hers to return to.
And in that moment, Ana realized with a bone-deep chill that her parents were really dead.
Not lost.
Not missing.
Not hidden away by some cruel trick of the bitch who had worn her face.
Dead.
Gone.
Never coming back to hug her, love her, or tell her they were proud of her ever again.
Some foolish part of her—some defiant sliver of denial—had clung to the hope that their murder had been a lie. A nightmare the body-snatcher had conjured to trap her in silence.
But no.
They were dead. And it was all her fault.
Her fault for giving up her body.
Her fault for not fighting harder.
Her fault for surrendering when she should have raged.
Her fault for existing in their lives at all.
If she had never been born, wouldn't her parents have lived long, peaceful, blissful lives?
Ana got her parents killed.
Ana was a murderer.
Her thoughts spiraled in thick, suffocating silence—until a voice pulled her out, rough and edged with years.
"…tasia… Ana… Anastasia?"
She jerked back to reality as a wrinkled hand landed gently on her shoulder.
"My God… Anastasia, is that you? What are you doing here?"
The voice belonged to Mr. Whitlock—her old neighbor—his tone colored with more shock than warmth, and no small amount of disdain.
It must have taken him a moment to recognize her. She still had her natural features, but they looked distorted—filtered, altered. Like her real face had been passed through some godforsaken beauty filter and rendered almost plastic. Uncanny. Recognizable, and yet… not.
The venom in Mr. Whitlock's words made Ana want to turn and walk away.
He had every right to hate her.
She—who had abandoned her parents.
She—who hadn't even buried them.
But if anyone in this town knew where their graves were, it was him.
So she swallowed her pride and shame, turned to him, and spoke—voice trembling, eyes hollow, desperation clinging to every syllable like frostbite.
"Where is the grave of my mum and dad, Mr. Whitlock?" she whispered.
"Please… please tell me. I beg you."
Mr. Whitlock stared at her for a long, long moment.
His wrinkled hand remained on her shoulder, but the warmth in his touch curdled into something cold. Not hatred exactly—something worse. Pity. Disgust. Grief that had nowhere to go, so it clung to her like smoke on an unwashed coat.
"You have some nerve, coming back here," he muttered finally, voice hoarse like old wood, "after what you did. After what you didn't do."
Ana didn't flinch. She had already heard those words in her head a thousand times. A thousand different ways. Coming from every face she remembered. And now from his.
But instead of lashing back, she only nodded. The acknowledgment sat bitter on her tongue, but it was true. She had abandoned them. She had failed.
And she was here now—not to ask for forgiveness, but for the one thing she could still do.
"I need to see them," she said quietly. "Please."
Mr. Whitlock narrowed his eyes, taking in her too-pretty face, her haunted eyes, the way her frame hunched under something heavier than time.
He hesitated. Then, with a grunt like the air was fighting him for breath, he turned.
"Come," he said, not unkindly, but not gently either.
They walked in silence.
The town had changed. New faces in old houses. Bright paint covering old memories. But some things remained—unchanged and unmoved. The cracks in the sidewalk where Ana had once tripped chasing her father's kite. The broken mailbox at the corner with initials long faded. And the same old path leading to the graveyard, weaving like a scar through the hillside.
The cemetery sat behind the church, as if God himself was ashamed to look directly at death.
It was quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence that didn't feel like peace but exile. As if the earth itself held its breath, waiting.
Mr. Whitlock led her past rows of graves, each one a story carved in stone, a name fading into moss. They passed weathered angels with chipped wings, broken fences, and headstones draped in ivy like mourning veils.
And then he stopped.
"Here."
The plot was modest. No grand mausoleum, no marble obelisk. Just two simple stones—side by side. Her mother's first, then her father's.
The earth around them looked freshly turned even after all this time, as though it had never settled properly. As though the ground still rejected the injustice buried beneath.
Ana stood frozen.
The names on the headstones stared back at her with quiet judgment.
Her mother's script was soft and flowing.
Her father's—etched bold and square.
Below their names, someone had carved a phrase.
"Loved by all. Forgotten by one."
Ana sank to her knees.
Her palms pressed into the cold soil—wet and alive, like it had a heartbeat of its own—and for the first time, she wept without resistance.
Her tears weren't loud. They came quietly, steadily, like a rain that knew how to destroy in silence.
She reached out and touched the edge of her mother's stone, fingertips grazing the carved name like it might vanish if she blinked.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I should've been here. I should've—"
Her voice cracked.
The wind picked up.
It was strange—how even the sky seemed unwilling to forgive her. The clouds moved like closing eyes, and the trees swayed like they were turning their backs.
She felt the dirt beneath her fingernails, soaking into her skin. The same dirt that covered her parents now. The same earth that had failed to hold her family safe.
She lowered her forehead to the ground. Not out of reverence, but guilt. Utter, soul-ripping guilt.
And as her breath hit the soil, it steamed against the cold. She wondered if her parents could feel it. If they could still sense her, even now—broken, late, pathetic.
She spoke again, this time quieter than a breath.
"I didn't mean to leave you. I didn't mean to let her win."
Mr. Whitlock stood back, watching, his face unreadable.
"I used to think grief was loud," he said suddenly. His voice startled her—it was gentle this time, distant, like he wasn't really speaking to her. "Crying. Screaming. Breaking things. But it's not."
He looked down at the grave.
"Grief is quiet. It lingers. It sits in your throat when you try to speak and weighs down your hands when you try to pray. It lives in the spaces between words. And it never leaves."
Ana nodded, unable to speak.
In the dying light of day, she stayed kneeling by the grave—her shadow stretched long and thin, like it was trying to reach across time and undo everything.
But shadows don't fix things.
They just follow you.
Like consequences.