Prologue
Before everything burned, something inside her had already flickered out.
Summer arrived with a silence that was far too clean.
The kind of silence that deceives. One that invites you to close the curtains, to brew linden and chamomile tea, and to believe—if only for a few minutes—that the world outside remains the same.
But Emma already knew it wasn’t.
She felt it in her marrow ever since Frank stopped smiling. Since Mika began to sleep without anyone singing. Since the photo album became a ritual… and not a memory.
That day—the first one—didn’t start with screams.
It began with an empty house, with the steam from the infusion floating over the table, with the soft creak of the sofa as she sat down. And it ended with blood. With broken flesh. With an old woman who was no longer an old woman. With Mika stopping her screams. And with Emma at the wheel, her soul numb and her voice broken, saying: “Don’t cry, baby… please, do it for Mommy.”
No one warns you when the end of the world begins.
But for Emma, seeing those eyes was enough.
The old woman’s.
Mika’s.
Her own, reflected in the rearview mirror.
Eyes so wide they no longer knew if what they were looking at was still alive.
That’s how it began.
That’s how it ended.
The same day.
In the same woman.
