Chapter 1
Run. Don’t stop. Never look back.
Those were my mother’s last words, whispered with her dying breath. I held her hand as life drained from her eyes, her porcelain skin turning pale and cold, like the first snow blanketing the forest floor and swallowing the last of the green.
And so I’ve been running ever since.
It’s been two years since that night, but her words echo in my mind like they were spoken yesterday. In that forest, with her body cradled in my arms, I made a promise: I wouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t let them win. I would survive, and one day, I would take revenge.
The last five years of my life have been a blur of shadows and silence. I’ve never stayed in one place longer than a day. No friends, no real conversations, no slip-ups. Just survival. If they find me, I won’t get another chance. People talk too much. All it takes is one careless mention: “Have you heard about the new girl in town?” And just like that, I’m exposed.
That’s why I try to be invisible.
Small towns are the hardest. Everyone knows everyone, and strangers stick out like a flame in the dark. One glance, one question, and the whole place knows your story, or at least the version they imagine.
Today is my 19th birthday.
And today also marks five years of running, hiding, and surviving. Right now, I’m on the outskirts of a village called Vysha. My plan is to head north, somewhere colder, more remote. I’m hoping the snow will cover my tracks, hide my scent, mask my presence.
My name is Caroline.
I was only fourteen when I began this fight for my life. My father was killed the night they came for us. He sacrificed himself so my mother and I could escape. We stayed hidden for three years, living like ghosts, until the day our photos appeared on the news.
They had found us.
We ran again, but our enemies were far too powerful.
Witches.
I used to believe that stories about witches, werewolves, vampires, nymphs, and other supernatural creatures were nothing more than fairy tales. But they’re real, more real than anything I ever learned in school.
The night my father died, they stormed our home. They were looking for me. They came to kill me, but I still don’t know why.
On our last day together, my mother and I overheard two witches speaking. They talked about a prophecy, about how they had to find me beforehedid. I don’t know who he is, or why any of this matters. But I’ve been running ever since.
After our faces were broadcast, I had no choice but to change everything about myself. I cut my long, waist-length light brown hair to my shoulders and dyed it black. Now, staring at my reflection in the bus window, I miss it. Everyone used to say I had my mother’s hair.
Even my blue eyes are gone, hidden behind brown contact lenses.
Outside the window, a snowstorm rages. The bus is approaching the second-to-last stop of the route. I hope, maybe foolishly, that I’ll be able to rest for a while when I get there. Just for a moment, I want to feel like I have a home again.
I reach up and gently squeeze the necklace hanging around my neck—the last piece of my parents I have left. I close my eyes and let the rhythm of the bus, the swirling snow, and the hum of the engine lull me to sleep.
For now, I am safe.
