JULIA: Prologue

Prologue

Human life is one of the most complex aspects of our existence. There are people who master it perfectly, despite its fragility and transience. They achieve balance and inner peace, gaining strength like the sails of a boat—the wind that allows the boat to sail peacefully for years.

Sometimes, however, fate, fickle and filled with irony, sends a storm and a gale that no one can overcome. And then the element fights life in an unequal battle. A battle that is almost certain to be lost.

Such a battle was she now fighting. A battle that inevitably led to her death. She had no strength left, and for several minutes she had stopped resisting. There was no place on her body that wasn't seared by a vivid, ominous pain, and the blows were incessant.

She wasn't fighting a natural element. Fire wasn't burning her, water wasn't consuming her, hurricane wasn't tearing her apart. She was losing her life at the hands of another human being. The man who had once promised her a wonderful life at his side, filled with love and devotion. He had promised her a future together until their deaths.

Or perhaps it was her death? She was no longer certain. The past now blended with the present into a single, tangled mass, without rhyme or reason.

She lacked the strength to call for help. She couldn't even draw a breath.

When his foot struck her exhausted body with fierce fury once more, she realized that the heart he had stolen from her was no longer enough. He yearned for something more.

But would the life he was tearing from her chest be able to satisfy him? What if even that wasn't enough?

She awaited the end with every second the clock ticked. She heard it clearly, between the furious insults that fell from his lips.

And suddenly everything in her body stopped. She stopped feeling them. The clock ticked, louder and louder, like a church bell.

She didn't know how, but she opened her eyes to gaze one last time at her executioner. He had stopped striking and was now staring, somewhere beyond her field of vision. She saw her hand rising toward him. Funny, she hadn't felt it.

She wished he had looked at her then. What she saw in his icy eyes terrified her.

She closed her eyes as his leg rose above her again.

She didn't feel another blow, but she was sure she heard the sound of splintering wood.

Her hand fell limp to the floor at his feet.

The wind had stopped propelling her battered boat, and the sun had ceased to illuminate her path, plunging her into impenetrable darkness. She was left alone, abandoned on a vast, ominous ocean, with no land in sight.