Page 8 of Chasing Eternity (Stealing Infinity #3)

My heart doesn’t just race, it hammers against my ribcage—a frantic drummer echoing the loss of every cherished memory. Each breath is a battle of frantically dragging air through my lungs, as I desperately try to tether myself to an increasingly distant reality.

“I—I can’t remember…” My voice breaks, a reflection of the chaos unraveling within me. “I can’t remember anything good. It’s only the darkness that’s left.”

“Focus on my voice,” the man says, his words a lifeline thrown across the chasm of my splintering mind. “Let it be your guide.”

His hand finds mine, but as I struggle to concentrate on the cadence of his speech and the assurance of his touch, it’s elusive, futile—like trying to catch a curl of smoke in your fist.

“You’re clinging to your trauma because you’ve woven it into the very fabric of your being,” he says. “You’ve built your whole persona around abandonment, hardship, and betrayal. You’ve repeated these stories so many times, the idea of letting go feels like you’re losing yourself. What you need to remember is that they’re no more than threads that bind you to the past. Your only job now is to sever them.”

It’s true. I know it’s true. And yet—

“I promise you this,” he goes on, “you are so much more than the negative things that happened to you.”

It’s a promise I desperately cling to, while simultaneously holding space for my worst, darkest moments to date.

The day my dad left doesn’t just replay in my head, it reopens that wound, providing details so vivid and sharp I can see the front door close, hear the soft thud of his footsteps receding down the drive, and smell the scent of his cologne lingering in the empty hall.

The day I was sent to jail for a crime I didn’t commit plays out exactly as it was back then—the harsh clang of the cell door, the cold iron grip of fear seizing my heart, the distant echo of voices crying out in anger and despair.

That rat-infested prison where I was assaulted by the duke doesn’t just resurface, it invades all my senses—the cold, slick feel of the shiv in my hand, the revolting clamminess of the duke’s fat, greasy fingers groping my flesh, the satisfying crunch as my foot jams into his knee, the bone snapping with a resounding crack.

Each memory, a specter from the past, tears at my consciousness, threatening to pull me back into the abyss.

Then suddenly, materializing out of the void, rises a terrible, faceless entity that towers above me. The top of its head nearly grazes the ceiling, its impossibly broad shoulders stretching the gap between walls.

At first glance, this strange, menacing figure is such a dead ringer for the duke, I instinctively recoil in fear. My muscles go rigid and tense, my heart pounding so quickly it thunders in my ears.

As this hideous being rears its ugly head, and those dark beady eyes fixate on mine, my jaw drops open and an involuntary, primal scream shreds through the silence.

“You must destroy it,” a voice shouts, and a second later, a sword materializes in my hand.

Instinctively, every lesson, everything I’ve ever been taught about swordcraft , surges through my veins, priming me for the confrontation ahead. With my weapon raised, I face my adversary with unwavering resolve. As he lunges forward with unprecedented ferocity, my first instinct is to cower, hide, and shrink away from the fight. Retreat to my usual place of seeking refuge in self-blame, chastising myself for allowing this to happen again—for purposely putting myself in such a terrible situation.

And yet, deep down, I know the time has come for that fearful side of me to die. The weight of my old identity, a mosaic of darkness and pain, is locked in a battle with the core of my being that yearns to shed the shackles that have so far defined me.

With determined precision, I guide my sword, executing a sweeping arc that cleanly severs the head from the looming spectral form.

I stand rooted in horror as the figure stumbles, falters, then collapses in a heap on the floor, the duke’s head rolling to a stop at my feet with a sickening thud.

But then, in the merest fraction of a second, it morphs into an entirely different entity. The hair on the severed head cascades in long, dark, softly flowing waves that are remarkably like my own. Those dead, piercing green eyes seem to latch onto mine, accusing me of this terrible crime.

A chill grips my heart. My God, what have I done?

My gaze drifts to the body, only to find its clothing—a cropped T-shirt and low-slung jeans, mirroring the outfit I arrived in. As I absorb this ghastly sight, a whispering realization dawns, echoing a truth in the deepest recesses of my mind: the real monster I’ve been battling all along is none other than myself.

Or rather my perception of myself and everything that’s ever happened to me.

The monster I killed isn’t the duke; it’s the fear and anxiety I’ve been carrying. And I know in my heart the real truth: the assault by the duke was never my fault, and feeling bad about that was never a weakness—it was part of my healing.

“Do you understand now?” a voice asks.

I can only nod. My throat is so parched it’s all I can manage.

“Good,” the voice says. “Now that you’ve annihilated the old you, you’ve made space for the new one to flourish.”

As I gaze upon the slain monster slowly disintegrating at my feet, a part of me is overcome by grief as I wonder: and now who will I be without my sad stories?

In the depths of my despair, amid the howling of old ghosts, I sense an unexplored path. It’s obscured, daunting, yet it whispers of the metamorphosis I long to attain—a rebirth that awaits just beyond the veil of my fears.

“Release them,” the man urges, as though reading my mind. “None of those events define you. Remember, an interesting experience on the path is not the path. The same goes for the terrible experiences. They’re simply fragments of a larger sequence that led you to this moment. What matters isn’t what happens, but what you make of what happens. The only way to become your best and brightest self is by transforming your experiences into opportunities, growth, and in your case, into seizing your destiny. Think of it as emotional alchemy. Your strength grows from your struggles. It’s how you’ll truly live amor fati.”

As I grapple with his words, desperate to absorb them, let the truth of them seep through the cracks of my fractured identity, a startling new vision begins to emerge.

It’s me, standing in this very space, encircled by a fiery blaze.

My breath catches in my throat as an overwhelming heat engulfs me. The sensation is so real, so visceral, it feels like actual flames are searing my skin, incinerating every trace of my former self. Yet it’s in this inferno that I am reborn—a luminous new version of me rising from the ashes of the old—untouched by any of the negativity that once defined me.

A formidable strength courses through my veins, filling me with an awe-inspiring energy I’ve never known, never imagined I could claim. It’s as though I’ve been resurrected into a dawn of possibilities beyond my wildest dreams.

“Describe what you see,” the man says, sensing the shift in my energy.

I’m on the verge of sharing the profound metamorphosis I didn’t just witness but vividly experienced when another vision disrupts my thoughts. It’s only a fragment, barely more than a sliver of memory, yet its impact leaves me awestruck.

It’s me.

Standing in this very room.

Doing the exact same thing I am now.

“It—it’s perplexing,” I say, finally finding my voice. “It doesn’t make sense, but it feels incredibly real.” I continue watching as the vision of me flickers as though threatened by an unseen wind. “It’s like I’m retracing my steps on a path I’ve already walked. And there’s this undeniable certainty in my heart that I’ve been here before, lived all of this. It’s a truth that resonates deep in my core.”

I cling to this fleeting scrap of memory, aware of how my breath steadies as all the panic and fear bottled up inside loosen their hold and recede into nothing. With the bonds of my past now broken, I am open, liberated, emancipated from the me who entered this room.

This brilliant white light now burning inside me has banished every shadow that once lurked in my psyche. In its wake stands a person with no attachment to her personal tragedies, reminding me of what Michelangelo said about creating the statue of David: I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

A pair of hands fumble at the back of my head, removing my blindfold and leaving me gazing into a pair of deep green eyes, the same shade as mine.

“I am Natasha Antoinette Clarke,” I hear myself say, my voice resonating with newfound conviction. “And you’re my dad,” I whisper, relief washing over me in waves as I gaze upon his encouraging face. “And I—” I shake my head, needing a moment to find the right way to explain. “I know who I am. Just as I know that I’ve lived this before. And yet…” I look to him, desperate for answers. “How is that even possible? Was it some sort of déjà vu?”

My dad studies me for a moment, his face a potent mix of relief and concern. “Sounds more like déjà vécu,” he says, carefully enunciating the unfamiliar term. “Rather than the feeling that you’ve seen something before, it’s the sense of having lived it already. As though your experiences are replaying with a familiarity that extends beyond mere visuals.”

“But…it was more than just a feeling,” I say, needing him to understand. “I actually saw myself experiencing this very thing—like a visual echo of something that’s already occurred.”

My dad’s gaze remains fixed on mine, hanging on every word.

“And it reminds me of something Jago, a friend of mine at Gray Wolf, once said,” I continue, my words hurried, voice rising in pitch. “That every moment has already been lived and continues to be lived.”

“Sounds like the metaphysical explanation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence,” my dad says. “ Life is a flat circle —a philosophical theory suggesting our lives are caught in a continuous loop of existence. Everything that happens has happened before and will happen again, without end.”

I squint, not sure that I follow. “I always thought it meant the past is a continuous echo, looping through time, which is what makes time travel possible.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” he says. “There’s also the idea of quantum jumping theory.”

“Which is?”

“It follows the many-worlds idea,” he says. “Suggesting that every possibility in our lives leads to the creation of a new universe where that possibility is realized. Or, if you’ve seen the movie Groundhog Day , you can also think of your vision like that. Only, in this case, instead of one day that plays on repeat, your entire life is lived again and again, caught in an endless cycle of cause and effect. Sort of like reincarnation, only instead of multiple lives, it’s just the one, lived on repeat.”

A continuous loop of existence. The idea is as comforting as it is daunting.

“So, if all this has happened before, doesn’t it mean I must’ve failed the last time around?”

My dad shrugs. “It’s possible. Not to mention, there are other, less metaphysical explanations for what Nietzsche was referring to. What I do know is that Einstein was right about the distinction between past, present, and future being a stubbornly persistent illusion. Though whether you’ve lived this before is of no real consequence. What matters is that you’ve freed yourself from the tyranny of the past. Freed yourself so successfully, it seems, you’ve forgotten to check your target.”

With a hand on each of my shoulders, he turns me toward the archery target, revealing a shot so wildly off the mark, the arrow landed on the far left side of the wall.

“Shooting to the left indicates a reluctance to let go of the past,” he explains, and I can’t help but wince. I knew it was true, but it’s kind of embarrassing to see the evidence presented so plainly before me.

“We’ll revisit this,” he assures me. “It’s a good marker for the progress I expect we’ll make. But for now, I think it’s time I show you not just how to control an Unraveling, but how to summon one so you can use it to your advantage.”