Elena Petrova

The mountain highway had vanished behind a suffocating wall of white. The blizzard struck with terrifying force, howling through the pass and turning the road into an invisible sheet of ice. Behind the wheel, Elena’s heart hammered against her ribs as the tires lost traction. With a sickening lurch, the car fishtailed violently, careening off the slick edge of the embankment and rolling down the steep, snow-choked slope. ​The violent impact shattered the glass, throwing her clear of the wreckage and into the freezing drifts before everything went pitch black. ​When Elena finally stirred, the biting cold was the first thing that clawed her back to consciousness. She opened her dark-lashed eyes, blinking against the stinging snowflakes, her breath pluming in the icy air. She tried to sit up, a sharp ache radiating across her shoulder blade where a faint, mysterious scar met the frost. Shivering violently in her ruined clothes, she looked around at the endless, desolate white expanse. Her mind felt completely blank and hollow. She didn't know who she was, why she had been driving into the mountains, or even her own name. Suddenly, the wreckage erupted in a blinding fireball, incinerating her phone and purse. As the flames died in the snow, she realized every trace of her identity was gone—leaving her completely untethered in the storm.