The smell of burning rubber is a scent you never truly forget. It lingers in the back of your throat, a bitter reminder of the moment your life loses its brakes.
I remember the rain that night,the kind of freezing, needle-like Flensburg drizzle that turns the asphalt into a mirror. I remember the white-hot rage in my chest, a fire fueled by the image of Alice's hand in Damien's. My "good friend."Concepts that felt like glass shards in my lungs.
I didn't see the truck. I only saw the glare of headlights reflected in the tears I refused to shed.
Then, there was the silence.
The kind of silence that only exists in the split second between the impact and the scream. My car lay skewed against a guardrail. The Northern German cold began to seep into the cabin, mingling with the copper tang of my own blood.
That was the night the cold moved in. Not just the weather, but a permanent winter in my marrow. The doctors called it a Cystic Agnosia, a neurological glitch triggered by the trauma. To me, it felt like my soul had simply frozen over to protect itself from ever feeling that heat again.
I survived. But the boy who loved Alice died in that wreckage.
When I finally stepped out of the hospital months later, I wasn't a grandson, a brother, or a friend. I was a weapon forged in the dark. I looked at the Elliott Empire, the vultures like Uncle Spencer and the fake smiles of Aunt Emily and I felt nothing. No fear. No love. Just a calculation.
I would take the throne. I would crush anyone who stood in my way. And I would never, ever let another human being get close enough to see the cracks in the ice.
Or so I told myself, until the night the ice finally started to melt.