The Chronicle of Aurelia Aurelius

Chapter 50 A Retaliate?

A few days passed, and every night Cassius visited me with new information about what had happened around the house and something new to learn about transmutation, which was about emotion. As the sun roared above my head, I heard a knock on the door. Just as I tried to get up from my desk, the door was opened unexpectedly. It was Adel. Adel, who had never shown any expression, yet this time, somehow I could sense something was wrong; it was like a sorrowful feeling from her. However, her face didn't show it; she was just calm as usual. She just told me that my parents wanted to meet me, they were waiting for me in the living room.

I followed Adel to the living room. As I entered the room, I saw my mother sitting on the couch while my father walked back and forth. The room was filled with heavy tension, and I could tell something serious had happened. Was it about the orphanage?

"Aurelia, you need to sit down..." My mother said it to me.

Immediately, I obeyed her words and took a seat in front of her. As I sat down, my father stopped his back and forth. He stood in front of me, his expression grave. "Tell me, Aurelia!!! From who or where do you know about the orphanage?"

I couldn't tell him the truth, however, I still didn't understand what was going on. I asked, "What is going on? May my father tell me???"

My parents exchanged a look before my father finally spoke, "What you told us about the orphanage is true...The maid your mother had sent there, saw it and came back to tell us everything..." He stopped.

That was relieving, and with that, Bo's daughter should be safe. However, why was the room so tense? It should be a relief that the truth was finally out, and the children were safe.

Suddenly, my father continued, "However, by she saw it, it means... that she witnessed something..."

I asked, "What do you mean, my father?"

My father hesitated before responding, "She saw something heinous..."

"Heinous?" I was confused...

"I can't go into more detail about it, but I will try to say it to you as best I can. She found there are no children in there..." I could see my father hesitated, yet I couldn't wait for it.

So I asked him, "What do you mean by there are no children in there? It's the orphanage..."

My father showed a pained expression before finally saying, "There are no children because they become lifeless..."

The word lifeless immediately sent a chill down my spine. Unbelieve it, it was supposed not to happen because the book didn't say anything about that. "Lifeless? What do you mean by lifeless? Are they sick or something?"

"No..." as my father seemed so hesitant to answer it to me. I saw my mother show an expression of empathy towards him.

My mother began to say something to my father, "Let me say it to Aurelia, my dear! You may need some time in the courtyard or take some of your lone time, maybe it makes your head cool down a bit." With that, I saw my father leave the room with a troubled look on his face.

Once my father was out of my sight from the living room, my mother began to explain, "The reason your father couldn't say it to you, is because of his vision. You may know that the orphanage is based on your father's vision and idea of the city. Knowing, his vision is being stained, he couldn't be himself right now..."

I said, "So what is happening inside the orphanage?"

"As your father has said, there are no children because they are lifeless," My mother took a deep breath and her expression changed to one of deep concern, "The maid who I have sent to go there, found the orphanage was empty, there was no one in there; the children, even the people who worked there, were nowhere to be found. As she looked around the building, she stumbled upon a secret door that was camouflaged with the floor, leading to an underground chamber where she found..." she stopped and hesitated to continue, as she finally spoke, her voice trembled, "The camber was burnt to a crisp, with ashes scattered everywhere. It was as if a fire had ravaged the underground, leaving nothing but destruction. As she walked around the chamber, she found some charred b...odies, from the size of it, they were the c... harred bodies of children." my mother finally revealed it, her voice trembling with fear and anger.

With that revelation, my heart sank, and a chill ran down my spine. It couldn't, "No...no...no...no, that mustn't be true..." I immediately remembered Bo's words about the wait of two days for my parents to arrive; at that time, I should have heard him and acted immediately, "That wasn't supposed to happen..." Was it my fault? "I...I...I ki...lled them..." The guilt and self-blame consumed me as I struggled to come to terms with the devastating reality. Tears streamed down my face as I realised the weight of my inaction, "I thought they wouldn't do that, " I whispered to myself, "It was entirely my fault..." The guilt consumed me, and I kneeled to the floor.

As the feeling of guilt consumed me, somehow, I couldn't focus on everything around me. Even, I couldn't see my mother clearly, who was in front of me. The sound around me slowly faded away, changed into sounds of my own thoughts and regrets. You should act immediately, you were so naive that you believed the book too much, and now looked at what has happened, as a lot of these thoughts kept swirling in my mind.

As I lifted my head to look at my mother, suddenly everything around me was gone, and I found myself alone in emptiness. I kept looking around; there was nothing in there. Feeling the same experience in this emptiness, I decided to get up from my seat. Started to walk around. While I was exploring and walking around, I was preparing for the worst, as what would this emptiness show me? I noticed this wasn't dianoia from Gennaia, but rather a feeling of my guilt. When this emptiness showed me the despair and the pain of the people and the children in the orphanage, they were like being in the underworld of a full inferno, I could hear their screams echoing in my mind. Firstly, I tried to close my ears with two hands, however the screams only grew louder and more haunting. In an effort, I closed my eyes, as I kept saying that it wasn't my fault for countless time.

As time passed, I tried to open my eyes while I was preparing for the worst that was still in front of me right now. In a second, I opened my eyes and saw...a familiar ceiling. It was the ceiling of my room. I got up and looked around, and yeah, it was my room with a bright beam of light from the moon to my window. Was I unconscious? From the afternoon until now. I got up from my bed and started to walk to my desk, where the book was kept hidden in the desk drawer. I picked up the book from there and started flipping through the pages as I sat at the desk.

Out of the blue, I saw the ink smudging. It was my tear that made the ink smudging, immediately I tried to control my emotions. While I was controlling my emotion, I realised the first tear dropped onto the name of the perpetrator. Despite the ink of the name smudged because of my tears, I still could read it, it was the name of the perpetrator, which was my acquaintance's family. It was the Alliena family, however, this family was the one who did the trafficking, was this family the one who burnt it? Or was Lady Clara one of the paragons so she ordered to burn it so I couldn't alter the fate? Or someone in the Lady Clara circle or around her was the paragon.

Just then, It caught me off guard, the door of my room was open as I turned around. However, there was no one in there and no indication of someone coming inside. I was looking around, because of the mystery why the door was opened by itself. I went to the door and left the room. I looked around the hallway to check if someone had been in front of my room. When I looked down, I saw a piece of paper. Without hesitation, I picked the paper, and there was writing on the paper. It just said meet me at the courtyard. I wondered who was the one behind this paper and what their intentions were. Curiosity piqued, and I decided to head to the courtyard to see who wanted to meet me. Was it Bo? Or was it Cassius?

Once I took a step out of the house to the courtyard, I saw someone in front of tree which was the biggest tree in the courtyard. I couldn't see this person clearly as the shadow of the tree covered this person and the light from the moon couldn't reach this person. I cautiously approached, and step by step I walked towards it. As I got closer, I could make out the silhouette of a figure standing under the tree. The mysterious person turned around slowly, revealing a familiar face that I hadn't seen in years. Not a person exactly, however, I was relieved that she was here.

*Author note

I changed the title; the change is that I want the new title to feel like it's a story from the main character's perspective, like a diary or memoir. Every word in this story, I want to feel; it's Aurelia's words, written by Aurelia, not by me, so sometimes the reader will see her own personal thought without any quote or proper distinction between narrative and her personal thought. If it's like a memoir, does that mean Aurelia writes this after her story ends? So she decided to recall everything and write it?