Prologue She thought it would hurt, but in fact, dying was agony. It felt as if her entire being had been stretched, pulled and twisted out of shape and then sucked in on itself. There was blackness and it rushed at her like a wall. Solid and unbreakable. She looked into the darkness and it was as if she were standing at the very edge of the universe and staring down into nothingness. The silence was deafening and it made her want to scream. There was a crashing sound. The noise cut through the darkness. Her lungs emptied as the air was forced from them like a balloon being strangled. Branches clawed at her like hands trying to break her fall as she appeared in the night sky above the trees. Dropping like a stone, she cut a jagged path through the leaves and branches as she tumbled to the woodland floor below. The young girl hit the ground, her head bouncing off the leaf-covered floor with a gut-wrenching thud. She cried out, throwing her hands to her face and rolling over onto her back. Opening her eyes, she noticed something had gone wrong. Her hands didn’t feel right against her face. The young girl counted the fingers on her right hand. One, two, three…. Three! Turning, she looked at her left hand – it was worse. Two! What’s happened