Prologue
—Her—
I ran.
My bare footsteps echoed against the dark marble floor as I stumbled through the endless corridor, my breath coming out unevenly while the sound of my own heartbeat seemed impossibly loud inside the silence surrounding me.
I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how I had gotten here.
All I knew was that I had to keep running.
Above me, a massive crystal chandelier hung from a ceiling so high I could barely see its edges, throwing faint golden light across the polished marble.
Floor-to-ceiling glass walls stretched along one side, revealing nothing but darkness beyond them, while everything around me—every expensive detail, every impossibly perfect surface—looked like it belonged to a world I had never stepped into.
But none of it felt beautiful.
It felt terrifyingly wrong.
I kept running, turning through one corridor after another, desperately searching for a door, an exit, anything that could lead me outside. My mind raced faster than my feet.
Where am I?
I pushed through the first door I found and stumbled onto a sky courtyard, the cold night air striking my face so suddenly that I nearly lost my balance.
I slowly lifted my eyes toward the mansion standing before me.
And froze.
It was enormous.
Dark walls rose beneath the faint glow of warm lights, while massive glass windows covered parts of its façade, reflecting the darkness around them like black mirrors. Grand pillars framed the entrance, intricate architecture stretched across the exterior, and countless illuminated rooms stared back at me through the glass, making the entire mansion feel strangely alive despite the complete silence surrounding it.
It should have looked beautiful. Instead, it terrified me.
I stumbled toward the edge of the courtyard, my legs trembling beneath me, and looked down.
Everything inside me seemed to stop.
The mansion wasn't standing on the ground.
It was a monstrous tower of glass, marble, and steel, rising so high above the city that the darkness seemed to swallow its upper floors, while the ground beneath it looked impossibly small from where I stood.
A cold wave of terror rushed through me. The city was so far below that the sight made my stomach twist, the roads reduced to faint glowing lines and the buildings looking like scattered pieces beneath the enormous height.
"No... How could a place like this even exist?"
My mind went completely blank. My hands trembled. My knees shook. I couldn't breathe properly.
Nobody knew I was here.
Nobody was coming to save me.
I stumbled backward onto the cemented ground, my palms scraping against it as I stared ahead, frozen in disbelief.
Then—
Thud.
My breath caught. I didn't look back. I knew who it was.
Him.
Thud.
My hands pressed against the ground as I desperately dragged myself backward, my body trembling as I tried to put distance between us.
His footsteps kept coming closer.
Thud.
I kept pulling myself away until my back hit something solid.
There was nowhere left to run.
And he was still coming.
───
