The morning broke with a bruised sky, streaked in shades of steel and lavender, as though the heavens themselves were reluctant to let the sun rise. The manor's windows were cold to the touch, fog clinging to the glass in soft breaths. It was the kind of dawn that seemed to hold its silence too intentionally, the kind that made the world feel as if it were standing at the edge of something dangerous—an unraveling, a reckoning, a truth clawing its way upward.
Eira woke long before the rest of the house. She hadn't slept; the night had been one long, trembling thread of half-thoughts and restless pacing. Shadows—her shadows—had stretched along the walls, whispering to her like restless children tugging at her sleeves. They were anxious. They felt the coming shift before she could name it.
