- London, 2012
Fire never makes a sound, yet it devours everything with ravenous hunger.
Through the cracked car window, the outside world appeared only as a blinding blaze of red. The smell of burning rubber and hot metal filled her lungs. Amid the chaos, a seventeen-year-old girl huddled in terror, her wide eyes staring blankly at the pair of hands pulling her from death. The roar of scraping metal and the shower of glass across the asphalt became the most horrifying accompaniment to the night.
She wanted to scream, but her voice vanished beneath the explosion. She wanted to remember the names of the people left inside, but her mind went blank in an instant. The pain splitting her head left behind a cold, empty void. In the final seconds before her consciousness slipped away completely, her gaze locked onto the flames surging high into the air, devouring her entire past without a trace.
That night, everything burned to nothing. All that remained was ashes. And those ashes carried her away from London to a place where no memories remained in her mind except her older brother. A fragment of trauma locked away tight, leaving behind a new identity built on sweet lies.
- London, six years later
A man stood behind a floor-to-ceiling glass window in one of London's skyscrapers. In his hand, an old photograph with singed edges showed the face of a laughing girl. The same face his operatives had just reported seeing. The photograph was filled with traces of the past that should have been buried deep alongside the wreckage of the tragedy six years ago.
"Vivian Wood," the man hissed. His voice was low, as cold as ice scraping against glass.
He stared at the photograph in his hand with an intensity capable of intimidating anyone. The thick report lying on his desk confirmed every suspicion that had been troubling him all this time. The girl was out there, wandering around and living a new life without the shadow of the sin that should have weighed on her shoulders.
Fate had been far too generous to the wrong person. Asher Robinson didn't believe in miracles. To him, the fact that the girl was still breathing after what had happened six years ago wasn't luck—it was a mistake that needed to be corrected. To him, Vivian wasn't merely a woman. Vivian was the remnants of a great sin demanding reckoning. Every wound Asher had ever endured, every loss etched into his chest, always led back to the same name.
He took a sip of whiskey, letting the bitter liquid burn down his throat. His dark gray eyes watched the fog beginning to shroud the city, as though he were looking at the web he had begun to cast. London at night looked magnificent and manipulative all at once, exactly like the plan he had designed with such precision. This time, there could be no room for failure.
"Live in your lies a little longer, Vivian," he murmured into the darkness.
The man swirled the crystal glass in his hand, letting the ice cubes clink and shatter the silence of the empty room. A faint, calculating smile curved the corner of his lips—the smile of a hunter who knew his prey could no longer escape.
"Because when you remember who you really are, I'll be the first to make sure you wish you'd never woken up from that tragic accident."
In the distance, Big Ben chimed. Once. Marking the beginning of a new game.