Prologue
Berlin, Germany- 1942
The sky was a bleak shade of grey, a fine drizzle soaking every inch of the city and allowing a dismal sense of cold to be absorbed into the poorly insulated foundations of the few passersby that wandered about. It wasn't a late hour, perhaps five o'clock, but it was as if all remnants save for a precious few, of civilization had crawled into a dank gutter to take cover from the chill and watch as a storm brewed in the heavens, the clouds swirling above like some sort of freakish maelstrom.
One of the few passersby who had chosen not to flee was a young girl of perhaps some fifteen years. She wasn't anything unusual, but she wasn't quite ordinary either. She hurried along the sidewalk, a heavy, black leather coat drawn around her tightly, her head bent, as if hoping to avoid detection and her lanky legs pushing on with a purpose. Thunder roared somewhere off in the heavens; a spidery vein of lightning shot through the sky setting the grey alight for a moment before fading back into the fog.
The young girl disregarded the pandemonium occurring up above her; she had more pressing matters to allow herself to be concerned with, such as getting home before her very exact curfew of five fifteen in the evening. A minute after that set time, and she would be forced to endure several hours of Latin and Greek studies whilst engaging in rigorous swordplay.
The rain fell harder now, and she could feel the fat drops pelting at the heavy material of her jacket, the deep chill of the autumn weather seeping into her flesh. She felt a pang of remorse jar her heart as she painfully recollected the weather on the day that she was driven to the orphanage, tears streaking her ashen pallor, her hands white-knuckled as she gripped at the handle of her suitcase.
Brusquely she brushed away the thought; she was no longer guardian-less, no longer friendless. She had a home and people who loved her. What more could she want?
But the lack of answers and the abundance of mystery that seemed to shroud her childhood made her heart ache with the desire for knowledge. Her beginnings had been so tragic –she had once longed to erase all memory of that night. But now, all she wanted was to know why, why it had happened, why couldn't it have been prevented? Why –
A bolt of lightning arced through the sky, slicing through layers of cloud, the light whiter than an angel's wings, the heat searing….
It was dangerously low to the earth, low enough to strike….
Clouds of deep grey, swirling, whirling about.
The heavens opened up as a marvelous rose of light blossomed in the abyss.
She felt nothing, but her legs buckled from beneath her, the solid pavement hurtling up to meet her being with a hollow crack.
She didn't feel the searing heat, incinerating the front of her cloack.
Didn't feel the pain erupting within her muscles.
Didn't feel her brain being flung towards the back of her skull; the ringing in her ears.
It all happened so rapidly, like a dream sequence.
Did any of this truly occur, or was her mind simply wandering? As it was so prone?