Laurel lunged for air as her eyes suddenly opened wide. Her trembling hands clatched on her chest.
The feeling of cold metal going through her flesh and peirce through her beating heart was a sensation she couldn't shake.
Air seems to not want to enter her lungs as panic brew into her.
Beeping sounds echoed the room that snapped Laurel back from the present as she looked at her trembling hands and realized there was a string attached to it.
She traced her sight to the string and eventually realized it was connected to a machine.
Her head throbs as she finds the situation to be familiar. It was too familiar, to be exact, as if she were reliving her memories.
She roamed her eyes around the room she was in and realized it was all white.
She grimaced when she tried to move and felt excruciating pain that ran through her body.
Footsteps echoed through the room as people dressed in white rushed towards her, speaking in urgent tones about her condition.
The realization hit her like a ton of bricks: she was in a hospital, surrounded by medical professionals trying to save her life.
Did I survive the stab?
She wanted to ask, but the simple task of lifting her lips was too much to bear in her weakened state.
The beeping of machines and the sterile smell of disinfectant only confirmed her fears, as she struggled to stay conscious and understand the gravity of her situation.
When she woke up again, she was still in the same room, and strings were still attached to her body.
She subtly moved her head to the side and saw a figure sleeping in a sitting position. When the figure saw her awake state, she went to call the doctors to check on her.
When the checkup was done, Laurel talked to the figure, which is her mother, and asked what happened.
The statements that she heard from her mother were confusing for her. Her mother told her that monsters went out of the gates and wrecked havoc in their home, and she got injured because of it.
Laurel was confused about it since what her mother said was something that happened a few years ago when the gates just appeared in the world.
She thought she was in a dream or something, but the wound that she got on her shoulder from the monsters was too real.
She can feel the pain from it.
That means this was all real. She wasn't dreaming.
Then why is it happening? Did she go back to the past?
If she did, then did she really die on her honeymoon?
Laurel can't help but shudder as she remembers the sensation of getting stabbed.
She was baffled at first at her conclusion, but as the day passed, she accepted that she really went back to the past. From the news to everything that happened, it was just like what she experienced.
The hunters, powers, gates, monsters, the independence of the hunters, and more. It all happened, just like she remembered.
Laurel was scared at first, but experiencing the world changing once made her a little bit brave and bold. She looked at the situation from another perspective and found this another chance to change the past.
She remembered that one thing that made her situation back then complicated was the fact that she was weak.
She needed to be strong in order to stand beside Luka proudly without anyone criticizing their relationship.
Unlike in the past, Laurel was discharged three months earlier from the hospital and was sent to their family home with guards guarding her life.
She proposed to her parents that she wanted to be awakened. They were against it at first, but with her persuasion skills, she eventually made them agree on it, saying that it was for good since, with the world changing, they had to adapt to survive.
With the support of her parents, Laurel was given a private team of professionals that helped her to be an awaken. And through their efforts, she eventually succeeds, and she discovers her ice powers.
After she awakened, she registered as a hunter and continued her lessons to evolve her rank as a hunter.
She was so busy with growing her strengths and skills that she forgot to grab the opportunity to forge again the blurry connection they had that, without her knowing it, the tie completely disappeared.
One day, Laurel was included in a joint dungeon raid, and among the people, she caught sight of someone dear to her.
She was about to greet him when she saw someone grab his arm, and a woman of beauty stood by his side with so much confidence and wrapped her limbs around his arm.
Laurel felt insecure about what she saw.
It was the dream she was trying to achieve, but it seems someone had already taken that spot.
Feeling dejected, she abandoned her plan and focused on the raid.
However, no matter how much she tried to focus on the situation at hand, what she saw was bugging her so much that she almost lost her life multiple times, but with the help of her teammates, she was saved.
The hunters are now going deeper inside the dungeon, with some injured and others losing their lives.
They were fighting an army of giant ants. It would have been easier if it were an ordinary giant ant—not that giant ants are ordinary, but they were unlucky.
The army of giant ants is of the kind that has hard skin.
It made it more difficult for them to defeat the monsters. It took them far more effort to kill one ant that took a toll on their body.
Laurel was in the middle of fighting with one of the giant ants when she turned her head to the left. She caught sight of something that turned her world upside down.
Her body moves on its own, and before she knew it, she was now standing in front of Luka, blood streaming down her mouth as she gazed down at Luka's figure cradling an unconscious body on the ground.
She looked painfully at them as she felt her heart become stuffy. She can feel its beating slowed down literally.
Luka stared at her with a horrified expression.
She coughed, and blood spewed out of her mouth.
"Laurel!" he called.
Laurel could only muster up a small smile as she felt her body levitate from the ground.
She grimaced as she felt something hard pull out of her chest as her body was cast aside and her body fell helplessly on the rough, bloody ground of the dungeon.
Once again, Laurel died from being stabbed through her heart.