|Snow|
I woke up, consciousness slowly threading its way back to me like the whisper of a forgotten dream. My eyes were still closed, but my mind was already racing, clawing back through the fog for fragments of memory—what had happened before everything went dark?
David.
I had been speaking with David. The conversation had started out calmly enough, but then... something shifted. The air had grown thick, the weight of the moment pressing against my chest until I couldn’t breathe. Overwhelmed, I told him we’d continue the discussion another day, needing distance more than I could admit.
And Aunt Austrid hadn’t let me leave in peace. Her voice—sharp, relentless—had followed me like a storm, her words slicing through my resolve until everything blurred and faded into black.
A sharp inh
