15th of Cala, year 20XX

There were snowflakes falling onto Renee’s face. The iciness of them stung as they melted on her face.

Why is there snow falling in the middle of summer?

Renee sucked in a deep breath, the sound ringing out like a drowning gasp. She tried to open her eyes, her eyelids struggling as if the snowflakes on her lashes weighed a hundred pounds.

And when she finally managed to force her eyes open, the world was blurry and floating in and out of focus. Her head spun. She tried to raise her head to see her bearings, but her whole body was weak and sluggish. She became dimly aware of the pavement under her. Broken glass shards pressed into the exposed part of her skin, almost hard enough to cut her. Her long black hair fanned out from her head, over the ground.

Where am I? Why am I lying here on the road?

“Don’t move,” an unfamiliar voice cut through her train of spiraling thoughts. “You’ve been in a car accident. You probably have a concussion, so lie down until the ambulance comes.”

“A car accident?” Renee asked, her voice coming out soft and raspy.

The memory came to her then. She and her parents were on a road trip, to see as much of the world as she could before university starts. If she remembered correctly, they haven’t even made it out of Elysia, the place where she was born and lived her whole life. The last thing she seemed to remember was a dark shadowy creature leaping onto the road, and her mother exclaiming in alarm when she saw it, and her father swerving the car wildly to dodge that creature, and then her memories abruptly ended there.

The memories also drew her back to another topic.

“What about my parents?” Despite his words, Renee found herself straining to look back at the wreckage. 

The person speaking to her must have taken her out of the car, which explained why she was lying on the road instead of strapped into the back seat of the car, but it doesn’t explain anything about the snow falling in the middle of summer. It was indeed summer, as the trees around them were lush and fully green.

“They’ll be fine,” the mysterious person spoke again.

Renee tried to pinpoint the source of the voice. Her eyes struggled to make out the figure of a tall and slim boy with the hair the color of starlight. She only managed to make out the color of his silvery blue eyes before her eyes fluttered shut again, her mind sinking back into oblivion.