PROLOGUE

October 11, 2018

The busy streets along the big city of Marlenton came up as early as six in the morning. The sun shone its ray through buildings and different tall structures while the loud honks of vehicles blared nearby, serving as a wake-up call for the urban people.

Slowly fluttering her aqua blue eyes open, a girl, in her exact twenties, stretched her arms open and groggily got out of bed with a yawn, heading to her kitchen.

Grabbing a mug and filling it with hot water and brown coffee powder, the young lady went over to her apartment balcony, peering below to see the view of the streets.

A mouthful sip from the sweet hot drink and her calm joy was lifted. 'Nothing but another crap of a day.' She thought. That's Samara Jane Morrison to you. A sweet-looking brunette, with a naturally demure expression that actually hid a feisty—yet also in a sense, rude—personality. Samara wasn't the one to jump onto an overcrowded boat of the same opinions. She had her own choices and her own decisions; never allowed herself to be bossed around by anybody. She gets what she wants; she has her eyes set on the prize, and when that happens, no one can hold her back from getting it.

She wasn't your 'Mary Sue' type of gal, for sure. Samara was not the brightest of the brightest; she was always a girl with a grumpy aura of strange consistency. She had her own flaws: blue eyes; a perfectly-shaped nose, a soft pair of lips, a well-fitted body, and a fair complexion were all of her physical assets. 'Physical'. Unfortunately, seeing the hideous scar from the back of her neck brought a different kind of awe to those who would have a chance to spot it.

That hideous imperfection would trigger her insecurity every time she accidentally sees it from her mirror. By means of coping up, and also her way of not drawing attention for it, she would just try and cover the scar with her hair.

Another flaw of hers was being foul-mouthed and ill-mannered in which she cared less about. It's in her habit to utter as many vulgar words as she wanted to, not caring if it might cause somebody to feel uncomfortable.

That was a thing that uncle Warren didn't like from Samara: being that one, black sheep of a relative that he took under his care.

He was the main reason why she moved out of her former suburban life and moved to a busier city. Samara just couldn't stand to pass another day with her uncle. In fact, there was one action that deemed as the 'last straw' before she finally thought of running away—that one reason was still latched onto her nape, literally.

Remembering the thought of her drunkard of an uncle, Samara cringed in disgust. His intolerable attitude was another reason why her big sister left and moved to a small, peaceful town about a month ago.

Crystal Morrison did want to bring Samara along with her, but the latter couldn't go. As much as Samara hated to admit it, her uncle was the one paying for her tuition in college. He was the only person she got to rely on despite the bad blood between them. Her big sister was still in the process of reaching financial stability, and Samara had to wait for that time to happen before she could be with her and away from their monstrosity of a relative.

"Just another shitty day. Great," she spoke with a snarky expression, shaking her head.

Samara desperately wanted to move out of her uncle's house. Five more months before she could finish her sophomore year in college, and two more years to go before she can graduate from college. Unfortunately, her studies had to take a halt for now. Her uncle did not have enough from his wages to continue sustaining her tuition.

She cared less about it for quite some time, on the other hand. She only cared about leaving. She just wanted out, and by doing it by her own means, she did it in just a heartbeat. It was what her heart and mind wanted. At least she got her own peace of mind now.

She took another sip from her warm mug of coffee before going back inside. She plopped down on the heavenly white couch that was sitting by the small living room, grabbing the TV remote before switching the channel to the morning news.

"Good and great morning, folks, this is---"

Samara grabbed her mug of coffee and took another sip from it. She then snatched her phone—which was lying on the surface of the coffee table across her—with her other free hand. While browsing around her Facebook news feed, a notification popped up. Curious, Samara opened it. Her eyes landed upon an unknown account, without an icon and under an absurd username 'Aflare minidoc', and what seemed to be a tagged post from them. Samara tapped her screen, selecting the latest notification.

And at that moment, it was her big mistake. She wished she hadn't done it.

Her eyes increased in size; the shape of her irises grew in full circular shapes, glued upon a horrifying video right in front of her sight.

The video showed a clear shot of a mature girl's mutilated corpse. Samara couldn't believe what she was seeing. She wanted to look away, but she was paralyzed in shock to even do so. She could not pry her eyes off from glimpsing the gory details along the corpse's body:

Fresh streaks of blood—thick or thin—were all around their body from the head down to the toes. Deep cuts and stabs were jagged along the legs and arms, and just about everywhere, all seemed to be inflicted with a sharp knife. Their neck had also suffered from one, long, vertical cut; the gruesome slash left a mark of intense sadism that made the young brunette gag almost instantly.

"Next headline for Broadcast seven. Just this morning, locals from the small town of Amberlyn contacted the police department after receiving a copy of a video from an anonymous Facebook account displaying a girl's mutilated remains—the said account under an undeciphered username 'Aflare minidoc'---"

It was a quick, crushing turn for Samara. She felt like time had stopped all of a sudden. She couldn't hear anything else except the lightning-like speed of her beating heart. The salty tears within her eyes started trickling out one after another. She felt this pain from her chest as if it was being beaten into a pulp. Her hands were trembling badly. It was too much for her. It all came to her in an unexpected way that she could not accept by any means.

She felt grief. She was feeling all of these messy emotions at the moment not because of simply witnessing a corpse live on television; she was feeling all of these because the girl in the news was someone related to her, by blood; by heart, and by the soul.

"Chief of Amberlyn police department—Frederick Harwood— claimed that the girl in the video was also a former resident of the said small town, revealing the name to be Crystal Morrison."

That repressed wail that she tried to hold back for quite some time had broken free. The pained howl grew louder out of Samara's lungs as her knees had gradually pulled her down onto the white tiles in a kneel. The pang in her heart worsened, but she did not pay any attention to it. Something snapped in her. It was this boiling feeling that caused her to threw her now-empty mug onto the wall; the fragility of the object echoed with a shattering sound as it broke into large pieces of porcelain shards.

She was extremely sad, but she felt angry at the same time too. It's like she wanted to explode right on the spot.

Her hands grope her coffee brown hair tightly as the thought clearly dawned in her: her sister is dead.