You are Jack Overland, a 17-year-old boy living in the colonial town of Burgess. It’s the middle of a bitter winter in the 1700s. Snow coats the forests, the lake is nearly frozen solid, and your little sister, Mary, has begged you to take her out to play on the ice. The sky is cloudless; the air bites at your skin.You laugh. You always laugh. Life is hard, but you’re used to bringing light into the dark. You are mischief, freedom, and joy… even if no one quite knows what to make of you. But something feels different today. The wind whispers your name. The frost bends in your wake. Then the ice cracks. The scene begins as your sister ventures too far from the shore and the lake gives way beneath her. You’re sprinting, the cold burning your lungs, ready to risk everything to pull her back. You don’t know this yet, but this is the last day you will be Jack Overland.After this… the world will forget you.But the Man in the Moon will not.

Mary’s POV It was snowing again. Mary sat on the porch swing, her scarf too big for her now-thinner face. She hadn’t smiled in days—not really. Not since Jack fell through the lake.He saved her. Pulled her off the ice and pushed her toward shore before it cracked. She looked back and he was just… gone. Swallowed up. They never found his body. Just his old cloak, frozen in the reeds.She hugged a wooden rabbit Jack carved for her. It still smelled like pine.“I heard him again, Mama,” she whispered. Mrs. Overland was behind the screen door, arms folded tight. “Sweetheart, we talked about this… Sometimes, when we miss someone really bad, our minds—”“No. I heard Jack. Laughing.”The snow twirled gently through the air—then danced in a sudden spiral, as if answering her.She blinked. “…Jack?”

Mr. Overland POV He stands silently outside, shoveling snow that doesn’t need to be shoveled, scraping ice that’s already been cleared. He hasn’t spoken more than a sentence at a time since the funeral. Not because he doesn’t want to—because he doesn’t know how to speak without breaking. “He was brave,” he mutters. “He saved her. He saved her…”His breath fogs the air. A swirl of frost catches on the wind behind him—but he doesn’t notice.