May Peace Grace Us

Chapter 17: Reveal

Bella was keen on the changes to Aila’s micro expressions. She saw how the others seemed to perk up at the word ‘apocalypse’ ; it was some sort of trigger. Something that she found weird as far as they knew of Aila. She was never the type to believe in doomsday conspiracy theories and all.

She wanted to call her out on it, but ultimately did not do so. She was fine if Jerome got ridiculed and beaten, but if she was replaced by Aila, she would get her muscles stretched by fighting those who dared. Don't speak of her beating Aila out of their training and sparing sessions, she cannot bear laying a hand on Aila. So her not voicing out was her way of maintaining the status quo.

But unaware of Bella’s careful thoughts, Aila did not mind being temporarily doubted in terms of sanity. As far as she is concerned, in the face of facts, her friends cannot make fun of her when she lay them out one by one. She has gathered enough facts to make them hear her out without sending her to the doctors.

“Well, Jerome’s concerns were quite legit, you know.” Aila said nonchalantly as she opened the news to look for a specific news channel that she remembered to have broadcast a major event before the start of the apocalypse. Lamenting that humans have been too blind to not take great notice of such early signs.

Tonight there will be a meteor shower from a certain constellation in the night sky. Given that this was not really an important thing to most people in the materialistic and selfish society, it was only marked by enthusiasts. But from what happened to her past life, this event was the beginning of the abnormality of the weather and the crisis of humanity.

The showers of that night were not the normal showers that have been observed for years. The astronomical phenomenon was accompanied by a brilliant show of auroras. Lights fill the whole earth, even the daily part of the world can see the show of lights. Other than that, some places on earth experienced tremors and unfortunate things all at once. It was simply too weird that everyone was joking about doomsday without knowing that the world was indeed heading in that direction.

The scientific community was in riot trying to find a reasonable explanation of the weird happenings. Bunch of nonsense were floating all over the net about them, but there was indeed one that predicted the adverse effect of the phenomena on the ecology and on humanity as a whole.

After the showers were the emergence of many weird diseases that will weaken most people for the next three months. As the world was rapidly changing in the last decade, the emergence of these diseases was not too strange at that moment. At most, the experts are clamoring for everyone to be more conscious of their lifestyles and being. Entering a short period of every person being so health conscious.

No one has yet to make a connection between these diseases to the rapid mutation of humanity that was going on extreme paths. One turns those who are weak to succumb to a path where they lose all their humanity and become a monster no longer living in all senses. The other, branching out to be those deemed unscientific, illogical and, not to mention supernatural, to the eyes of pragmatic humans. Not to mention those who failed to get on either path and continued to be unremarkable humans of that time period, things were a chaos in the truest sense after these things became so obvious to the society built at that time.

Just as she was thinking hard about those details, Aila finally found the channel she was looking for. It was a coincidence that the broadcaster was talking about the said meteor shower. Placing her remote back to where it should be, Aila turned to her dumbfounded friends and family, who were puzzled by her actions.

“Tonight there will be a sign of an apocalypse Jerome is concerned about.” Aila was dead serious as she said this. Her friends wanted to make fun of her like they did to Jerome, but her face was preventing them from saying anything or even doing anything. Instead, they turn to Jerome to voice out on their behalf.

“Are you serious?” Jerome, who was put on the spot due to Aila’s mention of his name.

“A hundred percent serious.” Aila said as she let the silence sink in as the broadcaster continued to introduce the significance of this astronomical phenomenon in the eyes of the scientific community. “Tonight, other than that meteor shower, there will be an unprecedented light show in the sky. It will be visible to the whole world, even those who are living in the day zone of the planet. Hours later, some major catastrophe will hit other parts of the world. All these things are happening on the offset of the time of great changes that is coming.”

“Where would you have gotten this info if it was true?” Harry asked, as he was the most skeptical of them. But he cannot dismiss Aila’s words simply because he does not believe them. It has been proven many times that a girl has the uncanny ability to make her words come true, no matter how absurd it sounds.

Aila had long decided not to conceal her rebirth from her closest people. It will be inevitable that they will be sad about her death and what she had experienced at that period of time, but she was never good at keeping secrets. Hiding everything in the guise of good intentions often does not result in good things, therefore coming clean of her approach to her people. Though she is not telling her first life to them as of yet, someday she will tell them about the fact she has been the root cause why this peaceful world turned into hell in just a short period of time.

“I died and lived again.” Aila did not meet anyone’s eyes as she said this. “I was twenty-eight when I died. The world became a strange place in that time period. We were nomads who did not stay in one place for our safety. Monsters that were thought to only exist in fantasy ended up being true and they overrun the world. Humans have lost their place in the food chain and are struggling in the midst of their own infighting. Exactly six months ago, I woke up again before the end of the peaceful era of this world. My changes were from those experiences and I had been preparing my best to at least let us have a home in the chaotic time ahead.”

Alexa reacted quite strongly to her words like she had been struck by lightning. Although rationally she should reject the claims of Aila, she just can’t. Because in the past few months Aila was strangely too concerned about them. Periodically reminding them to do something unexplainable, yet it has saved them from some troubles. Like how she was almost pitted by her family to a blind date that was set to arrange her marriage. It was so coincidental that Aila was asking them favors and let her get away from that trap.

“Was this the reason why you seem to be so keen on making sure we are not entangled with some family arrangement these days?” Alexa asked as she thought further as to why they had to become a nomad-like existence in the life Aila was telling.

It seemed to be too arrogant for her to say this, but she was pretty sure, no matter the circumstances, they cannot be so sorry for not having a permanent place to stay. At least, Felix and Eugene can find places to settle down for them to settle down. Those two were high on making sure they would have a safe place for them to rest if things got too bad.

“Yes. One of the many reasons why” Aila remembered the hardship and heartbreak brought by the families of her friends.

In the beginning, Felix did find them a place to stay and develop themselves, but his family did something that let them choose to become nomads for the best of both worlds. It was a stupid thing that had her raging, but sighs that it was a great thing the things done behind their backs were not yet so deep to allow them to escape with little harm to themselves back then.

“I wanted to believe your words, but my mind was not really following,” Eugene said. “Although I know you are not the type to joke around like this, it is really hard to believe it , you know.”

“Thus, one of the many factors why I asked to be given a timeframe before I broke this information.” Aila said as she took out a USB from her pocket and inserted it into the TV. “I collected enough evidence to back up my apocalypse claim. The new life thing and the back in time part I said were not included in the evidence I have, but I think it will be enough to get my words across.”

On the screen were a bunch of pictures, clips and some text of weird happenings for the past months. Maybe if it was browsing on a normal day it might not be so alarming, but after hearing Aila's bizarre experiences encountering them, now it is a hair-raising thing to them. It did not occur to them that the world had been too strange for so long and they did not see how terrifying things would be when everything erupts.

“These things are only the small indicators I have collected that are directly related to the apocalypse.” Aila has some coldness as she said these. “The world is changing in ways that will usher in a new period of great extinction and great evolution. The animals have been showing signs of evolution in a direction humanity has yet to start. Roughly after the outbreak, these evolutionary pathways the animals and plants have been under will let them have an advantage that will make humanity live at a disadvantage for the hell the earth will became.”