Prologue

Cold.

So very cold...

She was using the last of the strength she had to keep her eyes open. All she could see was the sky and it was a gray sky. It was a gray day. She remembered thinking, is that it? Is that what death is supposed to feel like? Cold and lonely and full of regrets? The wind was biting her skin, she had a wolf fur around her shoulders but it wasn't enough. Her lips were blue and her skin was getting close to the same color...

Alone, laying in that boat all she could do was think and the Gods knew how thinking made things worse. She knew for a fact that she was going to die, her wound was opening again and the infection was not completely gone. It was painful and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. And then the cold was numbing her, it was numbing her face, numbing her brain but it was sure as hell not numbing her heart. There was no hope, not anymore. Her parents were dead and she'd gotten exiled.

How did her life become a god damn tragedy so fast?

She was angry, she was so mad! How did it even happen? It did happen so fast! One day she was in the kitchen, helping Astrid to roast some meat for supper and the next she has nothing left and she's sent away on a boat in the middle of the Baltic sea. She knew she wasn't gonna make it but even though a part of her wished she would have, the other part was happy the way it was. What if she did make it? How could she live a life where she is completely alone... how could she live a life where the man she wanted to learn how to love, left her behind to go chase demons? At that point her self esteem was at the lowest low.

But that was also because the fever was getting higher and she was sweating. She was hot and cold, mostly cold. She didn't know what was real and what wasn't anymore. She had been in the boat for hours at this point. She didn't know if he was real or not but for a moment in her mind, he was there. He was yelling, he was telling her how all of this was her fault and how all of this could've been avoided if only she never went to his home in the first place. And then she saw him leave, all over again.

Then wolves.

So many wolves around her, licking her wound, her face. They were howling and then they were biting and she could've sworn she felt their teeth in her flesh and she wanted to scream, heavens did she want to scream. But she was too weak and every time she tried, she would choke and nothing except a painful cough would come out of her mouth. It was a nightmare. A never ending nightmare.

She didn't know how long it had actually been but it felt like days were going by and the pain was increasing every second. She also wanted to scream as she saw rot taking over the wooden slates of the boat too fast to be anything but unnatural. Then it would dissappear, the sky would turn dark, almost black as the clouds gathered and it started to rain. Big drops of red blood splashed around her. She was scared, she was cold and she was alone. Death was there and there was no escaping it.

Thats when she saw her for the first time. A child, not much older than eight maybe ten years old. She was pretty, the prettiest child she'd ever seen. She had a grave look on her face, a look that a child that age shouldn't be allowed to have. Her eyes were much older than her body. Then she smiled. The little girl smiled, and approached her, lifting a hand to her face and placing it softly over her eyes. It was the last thing she saw. Then black. The last moments of her human life were painful and terrifying and then after that... well after that it was a completely different story.

A very long story. A thousand year old story.