Built From The Ashes

My last memory of my first life was Ethan, standing over my grave.

He wasn't crying; he was smiling, that cruel twist of his lips I knew all too well.

"I forgive you, Chloe," he' d whispered, putting his arm around Jessica as they walked away with the son I' d raised, leaving me to rot.

They stripped me of everything: my apprenticeship, my dignity, decades of my life wasted raising their abandoned baby, "Lucky."

When I got sick, they threw me away like trash, only to reveal their truth: Lucky was their child, conceived in a twisted plan to steal my future.

I gasped, my eyes flying open, not in a coffin, but back in my 1995 body, young and alive, standing on a desolate back road.

Just feet away, a baby carrier, and the wailing infant inside.

In my past life, pity had washed over me, and I' d rushed to save him, unknowingly signing my own death warrant.

This time, as I looked at the carrier, I felt nothing but a cold, hard fury.

I turned my back and walked away, choosing a path of ice instead of kindness.