Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The glare of the sun was a physical weight against her eyelids. Amelia groaned, shielding her face with an arm that felt leaden. When she finally forced her eyes open, the confusion didn’t come in a panic; it arrived as a series of cold, hard questions.“Okay,” she croaked, her voice dry. “That hurts.”

Amelia Gard was a survivalist vlogger, though the term ‘vlogger’ was a loose fit. It all started as a hobby. Who would have thought that someone would actually watch and even follow her? She was not the typical vlogger people saw, who was very aware and cautious of the camera. She was the type who would spend three weeks in a swamp, recording herself muttering about the caloric density of beetle larvae, often forgetting the camera was even running.

“Last thing I remember… Amazon. Filming the forest floor segment.” She sat up, rubbing her temples. The memory was a frayed wire. “Did I pass out? Did someone haul me out of the jungle?”

She stood up and did a slow 360-degree turn. Her eyebrows shot up. She was standing on a plateau of dry, cracked dirt—maybe a hundred square meters in total. She crept toward the edge, her boots kicking up small puffs of dust, and peered over.

There was no ground. No trees. Just a suffocating, endless sea of white mist.

“Well,” she muttered to the empty air, “falling would be certain death. Note to self: stay away from the edge. It’s a long way down to nowhere.”