The Vigilant Reaper

Slashbacks

Let us begin at the beginning. The Phoenix Club, the cataclysm, my eleventh life, and the deaths that followed – all are part of a relentless cycle, retribution without cause, until you grasp where it all began.

My name is Shloka, but it's not the name I was born with. In my earlier lives, my identity changed with each rebirth, but let's start with my eleventh life. I only came to know the name Shloka in one of my subsequent lives, and the story of Shloka is merely a fragment of the greater narrative that has bound me through countless lifetimes.

My origins are shrouded in enigma. I've been reborn so many times that I've lost count. My first memory is of 1986, a time when the world was teetering on the edge of yet another cataclysm. In this eleventh life, I had witnessed the world's relentless demise, an inexplicable event that unfolded like clockwork.

My parentage is a muddled tale. I can't definitively say whether my father's actions could be termed r**e or not. The law might stumble over such a case, but the jury's verdict is inconsequential when the world itself is in peril. My mother, Kali, worked as a servant in the house of Rory Edmond Hulne. Their paths crossed on a fateful night, one that led to my conception.

My mother's submission was not one of free will. She didn't resist, didn't cry out, not even when he came into her in the kitchen on that ominous night. In a mere twenty-five minutes, fueled by anger and jealousy, he took his revenge on his unfaithful wife using my mother, who had no choice in the matter. As a young woman of about twenty, she was bound by circumstances—dependent on my father's family's goodwill and financial support.

By the time it became evident that my mother was carrying my unborn self, my father had returned to his military duties in France, leaving her in a precarious situation. It was my paternal grandmother, Constance Hulne, who banished my mother from their household without a reference in the autumn of 1918.

It fell upon a man who would become my adoptive father, Patrick king, to assist my mother. Despite the lack of a biological connection, he was more of a parent to me than any blood relation. He took my mother to a local market on his pony cart and left her there with a meager sum of shillings and a suggestion to seek help from other destitute women in the county.

My mother's cousin, Alistair, provided her with employment at an Edinburgh paper mill, but as her pregnancy advanced, she was discreetly reassigned by a junior official. Desperation led her to write to my biological father, but her plea never reached him. My grandmother intercepted the note and destroyed it.

With her pennies dwindling on New Year's Eve 1918, my mother boarded a slow train from Edinburgh Waverley to Newcastle. Ten miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, she went into labor.

The only witnesses to my birth were a trade unionist named Douglas Crannich and his wife, Prudence. My mother's death marked my arrival into this world. She had bled out, leaving me in Prudence's arms. Mrs. Crannich, when asked what should be engraved on my mother's gravestone, realized she didn't even know my mother's full name.

Debate ensued about my future, the newly orphaned child. Mrs. Crannich may have been tempted to keep me, but practicality and finances, as well as the law and propriety, dictated otherwise. I had a father, Douglas argued, and the father had a claim on the child. My mother carried my soon-to-be adoptive father's address with her, intending to seek his help in finding my biological father.

Enquiries were made about the possibility of Patrick King being my father, which caused a stir in the village. Patrick was long married to my adopted mother, Angela, and childlessness was a matter of debate in their barren marriage.

The shocking revelation reached Hulne Hall, the manor house where my grandmother Constance resided, along with my aunts, Victoria and Alexandra, my cousin Clement, and Lydia, my father's unhappy wife. My grandmother likely suspected my true parentage and circumstances but refused to claim responsibility for me. It was Alexandra, my younger aunt, who displayed compassion and presence of mind.

She approached Patrick and Angela with an offer: if they adopted the child and raised it as their own, with formal papers signed and witnessed by the Hulne family, along with a monthly allowance to support the child, she would ensure that my future was secure. Patrick and Angela debated and ultimately agreed. I was raised as their child, as Shloka, and it wasn't until my second life that I began to comprehend my origins and the peculiar nature of my existence.