Chapter 1

At 4:00 am, after suffering through a night of headaches, I had only just drifted into a light sleep when the sudden glare of the lights jolted me awake.

My temples throbbed painfully.

"Nicole Parson, stop lazing around in bed. Get up and pack your things. We're going to see the sunrise illuminating the snow-capped mountains!"

I forced myself to sit upright. "Mom, I think I really do have altitude sickness. Can I—"

My mother, Mona Holcomb, cut me off with a glare. "Keep your voice down. Ida is still asleep. Stop making excuses to be lazy. Once you've finished packing, go wake Ida up."

The fluorescent lights in the guesthouse were painfully bright.

Mom was so intent on letting my twin sister, Ida Parson, get a little more rest that she failed to notice how pale I looked.

The small room I had been assigned was crammed full of luggage.

My older brother, Jared Parson, was busy adjusting the camera, swapping lenses, and fine-tuning the focus.

My father, Brian Parson, was occupied with pulling out Ida's favorite snacks from the suitcase and stuffing them into her hiking backpack.

No one noticed that I was feeling unwell. Not one of them even said, "You don't look too well."

The way they looked at me made it seem as though I had committed some unforgivable sin simply by remaining in bed instead of getting up.

With great difficulty, I forced a few words through my swollen, sore throat. "I have altitude sickness, so I can't go any higher. Why don't you all go without me?"

Jared shot me a glance, his tone exceptionally icy. "There you go, pretending again. We're all eating the same food and staying in the same place, so why are you the only one with altitude sickness?"

My fingers tightened slightly around the bedsheet. "Jared, we agreed before the trip that I wouldn't go above 15 thousand feet."

While researching for this trip, I came across a post about someone with rhinitis who suffered such severe altitude sickness after going to a high-altitude area that they nearly died.

At the time, Jared told me not to let people online scare me. He said that as long as we planned the trip properly and avoided running or jumping around, we were unlikely to develop altitude sickness.

Mom and Dad also said, "You and Ida finally made it to graduation, and Ida's been looking forward to seeing the sunrise over the mountains for ages. If you really feel unwell when we get there, you can always stay at the foot of the mountain and wait for us."

It was the first time my family had taken me along on a trip.

Not wanting to spoil everyone's fun, I gritted my teeth and acquiesced.

To make it easier for us to get up early and catch the sunrise, Mom had booked a guesthouse located right on the mountainside.

The altitude here was nearly 13 thousand feet.

As soon as we finished checking in yesterday, my heart started racing.

Jared fiddled with the camera in his hands, not even bothering to look at me again.

"If you don't want to go, just say so. Ida wants to take a family photo before the sun rises over the mountains. Nicole, are you making up excuses to ruin her fun because you're still bitter that she wouldn't accommodate you and go to Florus?"

Tears welled in my eyes, and Jared's figure gradually blurred before me.

It wasn't that Ida had refused to accommodate me, but rather Jared and our parents had broken their promise to take me to see Lake Serene.

On the day our acceptance letters arrived, Mom and Dad had asked us where we wanted to go for a vacation.

Before we started high school, they had promised that if I could get into a top college, they would take me to Florus to see Lake Serene. It was a place I had been longing to visit for more than a decade.

Clutching the acceptance letter from one of the country's top colleges, I tentatively spoke up.

"I want to go to Flo—"

Before I could finish, Ida excitedly interrupted me, "I want to see the sun rise over the mountains!"

My gaze fell on the acceptance letter in Ida's hands. She had only gotten into a community college.

Noticing me looking at her, Ida grinned and stuck out her tongue playfully.

"Mom, Dad, you're not going to refuse to take me just because I didn't do well on my SATs, right?"

Mom gently patted Ida's head. "Of course not. I'll book the plane tickets right now."

Dad chimed in, his voice warm and reassuring, "Ida, no matter how well or poorly you do on your exams, we'll always love you."

Only then did I realize that their attention had been fixed on Ida the entire time. Neither of them had even spared me a glance.

"What about me?" I asked.