If there is one truth that I hold to in my life, it is that when it rains, it pours.

Perhaps that is why I built myself not for the everyday storms most experience.

But for the hurricanes I have had to learn to withstand.

I know what it is like to feel your heart crack in half like a tree that snaps under too much pressure.

I know the bone-deep, all-consuming, numbness that sets in when the wind and the cold and the water become too much.

I know the desperation that claws under the surface as you try to wait through the night, and hope that come the dawn, the storm has passed.

But perhaps, most importantly, I know how to survive.

Or really, I am too spiteful to die.

Either way, my world is falling apart around me. Death and destruction are knocking on my door. And a storm is coming. One unlike anything we have ever encountered before.

This time it is not Anastasia I will face on the battlefield, but the one who calls to me. The one I cannot face.

This is one storm I don’t know if I will survive...or if the price of living is too high.