Prologue
Arabella
I was three years old the day everything was stolen from me, but the memory feels borrowed-like it belongs to someone else, someone older, someone who understood the danger i was too young to see. When i try to remember, the images that come back crooked and broken, like shards from a shattered mirror. Some peices are too foggy to trust. Others too sharp to forget.
Still the memory begins the same way everytime. With warmth.
The house was alive that morning, filled with the soft crackle of the fireplace and the sweet smell of vanilla frosting. My third birthday cake sat on the table, lopsided and colorful, something my sister proudly insisted she decorated all by herself. I remember tiny sugar stars pressed unevenly into the icing. I loved them because she made them.
Alayna hovered around me with her usual six-year-old seriousness, brushing my hair with with too much gentleness for a child her age.
“You have to sit still,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Your three now. That means you’re practically grown.”
I didn’t know how to be three. I didn’t know how how to be grown. But i did know how to smile at her. I always smiled at her.
Mother’s voice drifted through the kitchen, humming that secret lullaby she never sang outside our home. I would later learn the melody came from somewhere far older, far darker-but that day, it was just Mom’s voice, warm, soft, and safe.
Dad moved around the room with quiet purpose, setting plates, lighting the candles, ruffling my hair with hands that smelled like pine and sawdust. He had been working in his small workshop earlier. I always knew because he carried the forest and the earth with him.
It felt like a perfect day. A normal day. A day that should have ended with laughter and cake and sticky fingers.
But there was a tension in the air-subtle, like the breath the world holds before a storm. I wouldn’t learn to recognize that feeling untill much later. The way the light dimed to fast. The way the shadows didn’t fall where they were supposed to. The way Mother’s humming faltered for a single, trembling second.
No one else noticed. Not the child I was. Not the sister who loved me. Not the father who thought he could protect us.
Mother noticed, but she didn’t say anything. Not yet.
I remember the moment everything shifted. Not loudly, quietly-like an exhale slowly turning into a scream.
The candls on my cake flickered, just once. Then again, harder. Then all at once-they died. But no wind had touched them.
I remember frowning confused. I remember Alayna freezing mid-laugh, her eyes flickering toward the window. I remember mother going still, completely still. Like a deer scenting a predator.
And them it happened. A sound that didn’t belong in any house or any world.
A low rumbling growl-too deep to be human, to cold to be animal. It clawed along the walls, rattled the plates, slid under my skin like ice.
My father swore under his breath. My mother whispered my name “Arabella…”
Then louder, sharper, urgent. “Arabella-run!”
Alayna grabed my hand so hard it hurt. She pulled me from the chair, draging me across the wooden floor as the growl turned into a roar-violent and bone-shaking, the kind of sound that tears the air apart.
My cake fell, the table shook. The sugar stars scattered like tiny broken promises.
The front door slammed open, the wind screamed through the house. The shadows surged like living things.
I didn’t understand fear yet-not real fear, not the kind that lived in my parents eyes.
But I understood my sisters hand trembling around mine, I understood our mother’s voice cracking, I understood my father reaching for something-something he kept hidden high on a shelf. I understood danger.
Alayna yanked me down the hallway, trying to sheild my body with hers, though she was small, shaking, and terrified. I remember her whispering.
“Its ok, Bella. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.”
But I wasn’t crying, not yet.
A flash of light-sharp, blinding-burst behind us. The roar became louder, closer, wrong.
And then-the moment I never esscape, not even in dreams. Alayna’s hand sliped from mine-not gently, not accidentally. Ripped from me.
She screamed my name as something-something cold, something shadowed-draged her backward. I remember her fingers clawing at the floor. I remember terror in her voice. I remember the impossible darkness swallowing her whole.
Mother rushed toward her, but a second shadow caught her-faster, stronger. My mother’s scream cut of mid-breath.
And father-his voice bellowed behind me. “Bella, don’t look-!”
But I did, i saw the darkness take them, i saw my family devoured by a night that shouldn’t have existed.
And then i was lifted, scooped up into arms that shook with fear. Dad ran-out the back door, into the cold, away from the shadows. I buried my face in his shoulder. I remember his heartbeat- wild, uneven, terrified.
When we reached the woods, the house behind us went silent. Completely silent. Like the world had gone still.
I don’t remember what happend after. Not realy, not clearly. Just cold, just darkness, just emptiness. The kind that never leaves.
It was my third birthday. The day i will never fully remember- the day no one will fully let me forget.
