The master bedroom had become a sepulcher of frost.
Not the petty chill of mortal discomfort—no hearth could banish this cold, no blanket could defy it. This was the breath of elder glaciers, the exhalation of voids between stars.
It gnawed marrow from bone, turned blood to sluggish syrup in the veins, and erased the very memory of summer as though the sun had never dared to rise. Outside the tall windows, the world burned gold and green under a merciless morning; inside, eternity had claimed a single room and declared it winter's throne.
Melissa, Maddie, and Sierra stood clustered at the threshold like pilgrims before a forbidden shrine—swathed in wool and cashmere that might as well have been gossamer.
Their breath bloomed in ghostly lilies, lingered too long in the air, then crumbled into nothingness.
