Lyra
There was a silence in my father's estate that never felt empty. It listened. Watched. Waited.
I could feel it that morning, thick as fog in the corridors. The servants barely looked me in the eye. The guards stood straighter than usual. Something had shifted.
But no one said a word.
I sat in the east solarium pretending to read, the sun painting soft golden lines across the floor. My fingers traced the pages of a history text I'd memorized years ago, but I couldn't absorb a single word. My attention snagged on shadows that didn't belong and whispers that fell silent when I turned my head.
Something's coming.
I didn't know what—but I knew the rhythm of political storms. I'd been born into one. Raised in its chaos.
The Consuls rarely moved without reason, and when they did, it meant blood.
My father had been restless lately—pacing more, locking himself in the study, receiving visitors with crests carved in obsidian and silver. Highborn families. Ancient bloodlines. Old money. Older magic.
I'd seen the courier leave that morning. A sealed letter in the colors of House Michelson.
My name had been written on it.
But when I'd asked my father about it, he only said, "Stay out of things that don't concern you."
That was his favorite lie. Everything he touched became my concern eventually.
So that night, I slipped into the forbidden archives. I knew which wards to avoid, which pressure points in the lockboxes didn't squeal. I knew because I'd made it my duty to know.
The texts I pulled were older than the palace. Older than the Consuls. They told stories of bloodline marriages, of magic hoarded and passed down like a birthright.
And hidden in one of the oldest journals—half-decayed, water-stained—I found it.
A sigil burned into the parchment, hard and jagged, like a scar:
A syndicate. Unnamed. Ruthless. Dealing in forbidden magic and dangerous knowledge.
And a chilling note beside the symbol:
The leader is a ghost. Unknown. Unseen. Untouched by law.
The words prickled against my skin like static.
I didn't know why it pulled at me. Why it felt familiar, though I'd never heard of it. But something in my gut twisted.
Something was moving beneath the surface of this quiet tension. I could feel it.
And somehow, I knew…
My name was already in someone else's hands.