Prologue
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die.
Lies.
All I see is snow.
Not the flames eating through steel, not the stench of gasoline and blood. I see snow, thick and endless, swallowing footprints that led nowhere. My body aches. Shoulder burns, but my mind is frozen in that winter storm, hands trembling around a phone that never rang. A girl too naive to ask for answers, too stubborn to leave, waiting for someone who had already disappeared.
A ragged, wet cough rips from my throat. Heat licks at my skin, my fingers curling into claws against the concrete. Somewhere behind me, glass shatters. Shadows twist, dancing with the fire. I should move. Crawl. Fight. But the weight of his fists still lingers in the memory, and whispered threats scraping against my ribs.
They wanted to break me. Make me beg.
They should've killed me instead.
In the blur, a knife glints, inches from my grasp. I can't remember whose blood stains the bladeāmine or theirs. Doesn't matter. My lungs sear with every breath, but the smoke is not choking me. It's his face surfacing. The way he looked at me that day was unreadable and untouchable, as if he had already made peace with losing me.
A bitter, wet laugh scrapes up my throat.
Flames crackle, inching closer. A ceiling tile creaks. No one is coming. No sirens, no salvation. No... him.
Just the snow, the fire, and the truth I've buried since that winter:
I never stopped waiting.
A ceiling tile collapses, and the world dissolves into heat and darkness.
