Prologue

The act of dying wasn't pleasant. It was messy and... well... painful, no matter how fast the soul leaves the body.

Nivin leaned her head against the car window and lazily watched the trees fly by. The sun shone high above them, obstructed by a few clouds that seemed to multiply the longer they drove on. The heart of the forest was cast in deep shadows, the foliage too thick to let the sun through, and in that shadow, something was watching them. Nivin didn't even notice as her eyelids grew heavy as she was lured into a deep sleep by the gentle roaring of the car engine.

The landscape she woke up in was more than just blurry. She couldn't make out any details about what was around her, yet for some reason, it still felt familiar. Not just that, the figure right in front of her seemed blurry and distorted as well, no matter how much she focused on it, her brain wouldn't put the information she got into a coherent image. Despite her inability to see the figure clearly, she knew who it was, a whisper in the back of her mind that grew louder and louder the longer she looked at it.

Splotches of blue red and black, out of focus still, but she knew it was her short curly mop of hair. The white of her long trench coat was overwhelming, almost burying the black from the rest of her attire. It was a familiar, albeit blurry sight.

Still, something was wrong. The whispers in the back of her mind grew louder, almost like a physical presence just a step behind her, leaning over her shoulder to tell her, but she couldn't understand. She tried to think about it, tried to pull herself together, but her thoughts were drowning, every thought she picked up ran through her fingers and dissolved.

The world around her started screaming, the floor under her feet crumbled and she was weightless.

There was no more up and down, no more left and right, only her, looking at her mirror image through a sheet of water.

But something was off.

She tried to focus more on it, but all she could make out was a huge shadow behind her blurry doppelganger, carrying the weight of an entire world on its shoulders. It was only for a split second, but somehow, the mirror image seemed to flicker. And only for a split second, it appeared both perfectly clear and inhumanly wrong, with the thing behind her leaning a little closer, yet growing much larger.

Nim̷̧̢̪̙̦͓̤̤̮̿̆͛̔̿̒͘͟u̶̧̢͔̥̻̰̰̓͒́̈́̊ͅȇ̢̛̘͇͈̻̩͉̟͕̂̿̌

Unconsciously, she took a step forward, drawn to this creature, as someone called out behind her.

"Nivin?! Wake up."

And she was falling.

Nimue startled awake. She turned around in her seat and stared into familiar discolored green eyes looking at her through the rear-view mirror. "You okay?" Mary asked, strands of brown and dyed hair that escaped her bun flapping in the wind of the open car window. With a huff she took her singular blue and yellow hair strand and tucked it back behind her ear, probably in the hopes they would stay put but Nivin could see that it wouldn't stay there without a hair clip or something along the line. Mary was now tuning around to face her as best as she could from the front seat as Nivin failed to answer for a few seconds, the worry evident in her face.

Nivin shook her head. "It's nothing." Just a strange dream, nothing to worry her two friends over.

Immediately, another voice from the driver's seat took her attention. "Yeah, sure... 'Nothing'?" Daniel huffed. His pale eyes glanced at her for a few seconds though the mirror, until he focused on the road again and shook his head. Mary gave her a raised eyebrow. "You never sleep in a car, not since we were kids." She murmured, almost inaudible due to the rushing of the wind through the car.

"I know, I guess I was just too tired to really think about that you know?' Nivin paused for a second, before adding: "I will be fine, it was just a dream, alright?" Her friend slowly lowered her eyebrow again, but still eyed Nivin suspiciously. "I'm watching you." Myra pointed to her eyes with two fingers and then proceeded to almost stab Nivin's eyes out. "Shove your fingers where the sun doesn't shine," she replied with a smirk. Mary smirked and opened her mouth, but before she got anything out Daniel chimed in again.

"Kids, behave, or I will turn this fucking car around and make sure your sorry asses land right in the middle of that crowd we saw earlier," he said scarred lips pulled into a grin as Nivin and Mary exchanged a quick, almost panicked, look. They both quickly apologized, having no desire to test if he was serious or not. (There were times where he made good on these kinda threats, so the duo decided to take them at face value. Just to be on the safe side.) For a few minutes, the car went quiet, with only the soft sound of music to be heard. The silence went on long enough for the anxiety to creep back in as Nivin thought about their destination. "Soooo.." Nivin started, leaning forwards so she was closer to the two in the front seat, slightly fiddling with her hands. "I know you guys never answered the first few times I asked, but where exactly are we going? I have lost any and all sense of direction I had at this point. Please don't tell me we are going to a fast-food place in the middle of literal nowhere. While that would be cool, not gonna lie, it would be a tad creepy for there to be a McDonalds here."

Daniel snorted, giving her a mirthful grin through the rear-view mirror while Mary snickered.

"Oh god, honestly, all horror stories aside, I'd love the vibe of a fast-food place in the middle of a deep forest." His hand ran through his loosely tied hair, the vitiligo pattern of his skin in stark contrast to black and purple mane. "But no, sadly there isn't such a place nearby."

"But,-" Mary injected, a wide smile on her face and an almost excited tension holding her body,- "we have something much better!"

"That we won't tell you."

"For the surprise you know?"

Nivin couldn't help it, their excitement was contagious and soon she found herself mirroring her two best friends.

Nim̷̧̢̪̙̦͓̤̤̮̿̆͛̔̿̒͘͟u̶̧̢͔̥̻̰̰̓͒́̈́̊ͅȇ̢̛̘͇͈̻̩͉̟͕̂̿̌

The whisper was back, and Nivin startled violently, not even noticing how Mary got spooked, as she turned around in her seat, trying to locate whoever spoke. There was no car behind them, the street seemingly empty.

Until it wasn't.

From one moment to the next her vision shifted and it was almost like she could make out something standing there, she blinked and it was gone.

"....what?" Her mouth was dry and she swallowed, turning back around when she heard Daniel curse as he yanked the steering wheel to the left, dodging a falling tree by a hair and breaking straight through the railing. Everything turned black as her head collided with something hard before she even had the chance to feel afraid.

----------------------------------------

"NIVIN!"

The first thing she registered was that the ground was soft. The second thing was that she wasn't in pain. Hands on her shoulder started shaking her slightly, and Nivin realized she had yet to open her eyes. It was a harder task than she expected. Why was she here again? It took her a few seconds to realize what had happened when she remembered again. They had crashed their car. She immediately jolted up, almost hitting Mary's head as she looked around in panic. She was dry, there was no water. She was okay. She was fine. There was no wat-

"Nivin! Please!" Something entered her field of view, panicked mismatched eyes burning into hers and with a jolt, all her senses sharpened again, breaking free of the numbness.

"Are you okay?" Mary asked. Her eyes were wide, her pale skin almost white and Nivin looked down on herself. "I think so. Bruised maybe, but nothing major. I think. You?"

"My leg hurts, but nothings broken." Mary reassured her quickly. "Where is Daniel?!" She started to get up, swaying a bit before she found her balance and she spotted him a few meters away from them, leaning against a tree, his left wrist cradled against his chest. He was so pale his vitiligo pattern seemed to almost disappear as his usual skin color lost all color. She reckoned her own vitiligo was almost invisible as well.

"I am fine, thank you for asking," he said, clearly in pain as she went over to him as fast as she could. Behind him, on top of a few broken trees laid the wreckage of the car. She swallowed at the sight, almost violently shoving aside memories as she knelt down next to her friend. Ow, okay, she wasn't unscathed either, and she quickly pulled out a tiny glass shard from her upper thigh as she noticed it.

"Can I see?" She held out a hand, waiting for him to make a move. He was in severe pain, that much she could tell, but she wouldn't rush him. His chest was heaving but he didn't move otherwise, his head bowed down, his face hidden under his long hair. She absentmindedly noted that his hair-tie is gone.

"...I am fine." He whispered softly, but slowly uncurled enough to hand her the damaged limb. He looked up and tried to give her a reassuring smile, but the edges of it were brittle and distorted by pain. "Looks like we survived another one, ey?" His attempt at humor reassured her a bit as Nivin concentrated on his wrist and replied. "We have an immunity against car accidents."

"Nah, feels more like resistance than outright immunity" came the shout from behind her, as Mary began to hobble over and then past them towards the car wreck.

"Eh, that sounds about right I'd say." Nivin gave Daniel a small smile which he mirrored.

A bit of poking and prodding by Nivin, as well as hissing and sarcasm on Daniel's part revealed that his wrist is either badly sprained or broken.

Mary returned with a banged up first aid-kit and they went on to take care of each other as best as they could.

"Well… What do we do now?" Mary asked and with another look to the wreckage she continued, "Something tells me that that isn't driveable anymore. And I don't think either of us want to go back in, even if it was."

"No shit Sherlock!" Daniel snapped at her, before immediately flinching with pain and adding a quiet apology.

For a second the mood was heavy until Nivin went over to the car and slapped its damaged roof with one hand. "This bad boy can fit so much damage in it!" she said with just a slight smirk and Daniel couldn't help but let out a little smile. "Whelp," he said, "Who's got the tally? We gotta add another crash to the list. Come on, don't tell me we went unprepared?" All three of them let out a little laugh before facing the situation again.

"Alright, let's go through the checklist," Danie said, "All our limbs?" - "Yeah." both girls replied in synch. "Phones? 'Cause mine's absolutely smashed, and I don't give alcohol to underage devices." - "Busted," Mary said, and after a second Nivin added her very own "Broken" to the list, with a crack in her voice.

"Well, who needs emergency services anyways?" Daniel said with a tiny cynical note before continuing to assess the situation. "So," he said, "Basically we're far off from any civilization with no modern means of contacting anyone, no source of food and no fucking clue where we are and it's a goddamn miracle we're still alive." As soon as he had finished, a roar of thunder rolled over the trio. "... And now it's fucking raining. Great," he added as the first drops hit their heads, soon turning into more and more of a storm. He looked at the clueless, panicking faces of the two girls as they frantically started looking around. "I see, you two are very calm about this. I think we should probably search for a place to escape the rain for now. Anyone got a problem with that? No? Great. Go look for caves or some shit. Mary, you sit your ass back down, you won't get far with that limp you have, it's better if you stay here under the tree for a bit."

He went to get up, but Nivin wasn't having it. "Nope, you will plant your behind right next to her, you are even more hurt. I will take a look around and then come back for you." He ignored her but she didn't hesitate and gently grabbed his shoulders, careful to watch for any sign if he was hurt there as well, and gently pushed down until he gave up.

"Fine!" She quietly thanked him before heading past the wreck into the forest.

They were on the base of a mountain, so maybe there were some caves around, enough for them to find shelter from the storm and to spend the night. Maybe somebody from the street would see the trail of the accident and come to help. But, honestly, she doubted it. The entire time they were driving they saw no other car. So maybe there won't be any help today. She can still do something. Find a cave, get her friends to safety, make sure they are alright. She can do this. She won't let them down.

She won't.