Chapter 1: Amelia

The winter wind blew snow onto the young girl's face as she ran through the forest as quickly as she could manage. She could feel the cold iron shackles on her wrists and neck rubbing against her chilled and blistered skin. Her silver hair and snow-white skin shone under the full moon's light as she ran through the forest, surrounded by leafless trees. The trees were covered in snow and swayed with the chilling wind. The girl continued to run through the pain in her freezing bare feet. Her ankles still had red bruise marks from her ankle shackles she had freed herself from before escaping. The young girl only had what seemed like rags for clothes, a single long shirt that went down barely over her knees. Her rags only kept the snow from clinging to her body entirely. Her legs and arms were beginning to feel the cold more intensely as the snowfall hit her bare skin with each second that passed.

The girl became slightly disoriented from the cold and tripped over a hidden root of a tree, covered by snow. She fell forward and tumbled over herself into the frigid ground, bruising herself and feeling her body be encased in a freezing blanket of white. She slowly pushed herself up and onto her feet, wiping away the snow that clung to her body. Her hands felt ice cold and it was beginning to become hard to make a fist or move her body. The girl began to doubt herself as she was getting ready to move forward again. Maybe I shouldn't have left, she thought to herself, I might die out here, I might really die. She bit her bottom lip in determination, a small amount of blood dripped down her face from her broken and chapped lips. She knew that she couldn't go back now, it was too late for that, she was too far away at this point and wouldn't make it back either way. She looked one last time at her red hands and feet, cracking slightly from the frigid temperatures, she could barely feel her feet. With that realization, she forced herself to push forward and continued traversing this moonlit forest.

She reached a frozen lake and stopped at the edge of the lake, panting slightly from her exertion from the last hour of trekking through the forest. She knew she was almost to the village, she just had to cross this lake and the village would be only a bit further along through the rest of the forest on the other side. She placed one foot out onto the lake to test if it was fully frozen and she slowly placed her full weight and her other foot on the ice. It felt solid enough to her so she began to walk slowly forward, eventually moving to a run. She continued across the lake and was 20 feet away from the other side when she heard cracking beneath her feet. She immediately stopped running and looked down. She saw cracks beneath her feet that branched out and continued in a circle around her. She began to slowly walk forward more, being careful not to place all of her weight onto any part of the lake too quickly. Each step she took, the ice beneath her cracked slowly, but regularly. She was getting closer to the edge of the lake when she placed her foot on a more slippery spot of the ice and without warning, her feet were swept out from under her as she slipped and fell onto her back.

As she fell, she gasped out a chilled breath, and to her, it felt like slow motion as she knew what was about to happen. She finally landed painfully on her back, the air being knocked out of her and the entire lake around her fall cracked and broke all around her. She started to pull herself to her feet, trying to stand before the ice broke around her, but it was too late. As she was standing, the frozen sheet shattered beneath her and the girl fell into the chilling and numbing water below. The girl immediately felt her muscles tense up and the pain from the sudden drop in her body's temperature was almost unbearable. She was able to stand up in the lake but the water still reached up to her waist. The girl slowly began to walk forward through the pain and cold in order to get to the other side of this lake.

She was able to make it to the other side and she pulled herself onto the dry and frozen ground. She crawled into the forest, trying her best to stand. She used a small tree to pull her shaking body to its feet. She looked up through the leafless branches of the trees and could see the moon shining down onto her while she held herself up with the tree. The full moon gleamed in the night sky and the falling snow shimmered in the moonlight as the snow reflected the light back onto the young girl's pained face. She had never felt more alone, cold, and afraid. Surrounded by only dead trees she began to hobble forward through the snow slowly, using the trees to stop her from falling.

She could feel her body beginning to fail her as she looked up into the night sky and watched the snow fall onto her face, she crumpled into the snow. She could barely move, not here, not like this, please… someone… help me.... the girl thought to herself somberly. She reached her cracked and red hands out and began trying to crawl her way out of this pocket of snow. She was too weak to move though, and as she tried to crawl, the snowfall incased her more and more while she lay there. Her eyes began to fill with water and she cried icy tears that froze cold on her cheeks. "Help, please, I - I don't want to die alone like this," she strained and cried out softly. She began to feel warm as her crawling halted and she simply laid there, alone and in her white tomb. Her vision began to become blurry and she thought she could see a shadowy figure approaching her. Her eyes closed as she drifted off into a warm sleep, awaiting her fate with death.

The crackling of fire woke the girl up and she felt warm and comfortable. She weakly opened her eyes and looked around with blurry vision. She could see that she was in a small wooden cabin and was lying on a soft and comfortable fur pelt on the floor next to the fire. Her feet and legs were covered in a warm towel which she realized helped with her pained and frostbitten legs. She strained to lift her head to look around more but was unable to from the pain. She smelled something delicious being cooked in another room. It smelt like potatoes, carrots, deer, and spices. She saw a black curtain separating the room she was in with the area the smell was coming from.

She saw the curtain be pushed to the side by slender and boney fingers. The fingers had long white nails at each end and the skin of the hand was a dark grey color with red tints. The girl gasped slightly from the hand and she saw a tall man with two black horns coming out from the sides of the head and large fangs coming out of his closed mouth as the curtain was pulled to the side. The girl froze in fear and she tried to move but was unable due to her shock, her pain, or both. The slender, scale-like, and long tail of the man whipped in the air behind him as he walked towards the girl. He looked down at the frightened young girl and crouched down over her. The girl yelped slightly and began to cough in pain from the sudden fright and pain she still had. The strange demon smiled softly, his sharp and pointed teeth being flashed to the girl as well as his forked tongue. "Don't worry little one, I'm not here to hurt you, I'm trying to help you, just trust me," the man calmly reached his boney hand out towards the girl. She was still overcome with fear but did not have the strength to stop whatever was to come.

She shut her eyes tightly and braced herself for anything that was to come from this demon. Strangely, she felt a sense of comfort and her sore throat and the pain in her body seemed to go away. She opened her eyes slowly to see what the strange man was doing and could see him touching her chest with one of his hands. From his hand, a black, inky, and thick shadowy cloud covered her body. The man's eyes were closed, she could only think he was focusing on whatever he was doing to her. She wanted to stop him, whatever he was doing to her, she felt it couldn't be good. But she felt so good, so warm, so calm and in peace from this feeling and couldn't bring herself to even try and stop this man from whatever it was he was doing to her. The girl slowly closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, "Don't worry Amelia, everything is going to be fine," the strange man whispered.