Prologue 1: Endless Winter

Prologue 1: Endless Winter

Life begets death.

What was the meaning of life, if not to die?

What made me so sure of this, you ask? Because I had already lived nineteen times. I had gone by many names before, but you could address me by my first given name, Melanie.

My time on Earth was brief. I never saw my mother at birth, and I had to put up with a drunk father for sixteen years before being diagnosed with cancer. Then, one day, he suddenly disappeared and never came back. And so I lay on the bed, starving, and praying for a savior that never came.

I had been to many worlds before, and I had been hopeful. I prayed for things to be different, yet I was let down every time.

Love? What a cruel joke. I remembered in one of my lives, a boy had promised to protect me, but left me to die.

The cold was biting and unforgiving. My fingers, now purple and numb, could barely move. My body finally failed, collapsing into the snow as I stared at the endlessly expanding grey sky. Even now, a foolish part of me wondered if perhaps my next life, the twentieth life, would finally be different.

“Life is so dull. Pain is so familiar, and death is so relieving,” I muttered.

My heavy eyelids failed me, and darkness engulfed me.

The blizzard continued to howl, swallowing everything. My thoughts were drifting away, scattering like the snowflakes.

Then, suddenly, a voice cut through the blizzard, so sharp that it shattered the silence inside my head.

“Melanie!”

The voice seemed to come from very far away, or perhaps very close? I couldn’t tell anymore, but my heart jerked at the sudden mention of my name.

“Mela---”

The voice cut off, muffled by my failing ears. And yet… this voice. Why was it so comforting? A strange feeling of déjà vu washed over me, as if I had known this sound all my life, though my memory betrayed me.

“St-- w-th m-,” the cry came again, this time filled with desperation.

Hot tears began streaming down my face, burning my frozen skin. Why? Why was I crying? I wanted to open my eyes, but no matter how hard I fought, my body refused.

“-------?” My lips moved on their own, muttering something incomprehensible.

And then I felt it. A fleeting warmth brushed against my icy cheeks. Arms, gentle and protective, wrapped around my body in an embrace I’ve never experienced before, yet strangely familiar.

“5--” A tiny whisper, lost in the storm.

And then, a phrase that I could finally make out.

“See you later.”

The words lingered, like embers from a burnt fire, before silence snuffed them out completely.

There was no light nor sound anymore. Even time seemed to fade away, leaving me with utter emptiness. After what felt like an eternity, I began to feel it again. A very faint pull from a bright string pushed me to begin this cycle of pain again.

In the distance, I could see faint rays of light piercing through the darkness. Inadvertently, I felt my body drifting towards that light, as if it were making me a promise that I didn’t understand yet.

I wanted to resist, to drift away from that piercing glow, but something beyond my control dragged me forward. The peaceful darkness I finally found crumbled away, and despite every fiber of my being trying desperately to cling on, I felt myself returning to the cruel world of sensations.

Pain hit me first, followed by the cold, then the deafening crash of sound.

“WAAAAA!” A grating sound tore through my ears, jolting me from my endless slumber. Everything that happened next was a total blur. Gasping for air, I tried to focus my blurry eyes, only to see the world spinning around me.

When my vision finally steadied, the first thing that I noticed was how tiny my hands were. Five years old, perhaps?

The same as always. Four years of my life lost to infancy again; four years of suffering stolen by an infant’s underdeveloped brain. At least the pain of those early years would remain mercifully blank, a silver lining.

What little I could recall came in hazy flashes and fleeting images, but one thing was clear: the wish I had clung to in the darkness went unanswered as my mother died giving birth to me, and I was placed in an orphanage.

I slowly looked around my new… home. The walls were made out of cracked stone bricks, with moss growing in the spaces between them. Near the open window frame, where weak rays of light struggled to enter, a cracked mirror hung.

I stumbled toward the mirror, gently brushing away the condensation from its cold surface before examining myself: A frail young girl. Long, straight hair, chestnut with a tint of auburn, that fell over thin shoulders like a dark curtain. A pair of dim emerald eyes stared back listlessly.

How familiar. The same cursed eyes and the same fragile body that will eventually fail me.

Outside, the headmaster’s yells seeped through the cracks. Someone would be sold today. Unless they proved their worth, someone always was.

I turned away from the mirror.

Nineteen lives, and nineteen deaths. I wonder how my death would unfold this time? What kind of expression would I have?

~ End of chapter ~