(Third-Person Limited — Lysera, age 7)
Morning broke softly over House Asterion, but the softness did not reach Lysera. Not after yesterday.
She sat at the low breakfast table with her hands folded too neatly, staring at the bowl of warm millet porridge steaming faintly in front of her. The steam curled upward—slow, steady, obedient to the air around it. Obedient in a way the Flame never was around her.
Kaen climbed onto the bench beside her. His hair stuck out like sunlit straw; his cheeks were red from running down the hall.
"Look, Lysera!" He slapped a small slate on the table. It was covered in red chalk lines—zigzags, spirals, circles. "A fire!" he declared proudly. "Like the ones the priests make! Look—fwshhhhh!" He made an explosion noise with his mouth.
Lysera smiled—a real one, not a practiced one—but her fingers curled under the table so that Kaen would not see them shake. His messy red chalk flame looked more alive than any flame she had ever touched.
She smoothed her expression. "It's beautiful, Kaen."
He beamed, swung his legs, nearly spilled his porridge. Maelinne chided him gently, but her eyes kept drifting toward Lysera—searching for something she was afraid to name.
Elphira entered last, hair neatly braided, uniform immaculate. She smiled at Lysera, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. It was a sister's smile—warm, yet tired in the corners.
"You should eat," Elphira whispered. "It's a long day."
Lysera nodded and lifted her spoon. She barely tasted anything.
I. The Academy of Triads
Mistress Veyra's voice greeted the girls even before the gates finished opening. "Form your triads."
The girls moved instinctively, forming groups of three—an early lesson in hierarchy enforcement. Triads were always assigned, never chosen. Triads taught three things: Who stands where. Who leads. Who follows.
Lysera, as usual, was placed in a triad of two empty spots and one wary girl who stood as far from her as polite posture allowed.
Mistress Veyra walked past the rows, robes whispering over the marble. "Some daughters," she said lightly, "require longer observation before they receive their placements." Her tone was mild, almost gentle.
"It is not punishment," she continued. She turned her head just enough for her gaze to pass over Lysera without landing fully. "It is prudence."
The word slid into Lysera's chest like a cold string pulled tight. The other girls lowered their eyes.
Prudence had replaced anomaly. A new label. Sharper because it sounded so polite.
II. The Warmth Exercise
The morning lesson was called Grace in Heat—a deceptively peaceful name for a grueling posture exercise performed beside a heated brazier.
Rows of girls knelt upright, hands folded, backs straight, eyes lowered. The brazier radiated a soft heat meant to test composure.
Mistress Veyra walked between them, evaluating not posture, but temperature discipline. A girl who showed too much strain would be corrected. A girl who sweated too quickly would be reprimanded. A girl who endured too easily would be monitored.
Lysera held her position in silence. The heat wrapped around her like a question she couldn't answer.
Mistress Veyra paused behind her. "Raise your chin, Lady Lysera."
Lysera obeyed. Veyra studied her face for a long moment—so long that even the heat seemed to hesitate.
"Clarity without warmth," Veyra murmured at last, "is... unsettling."
The word echoed. Unsettling.
"We will practice until it softens."
Lysera did not know how to soften clarity. She only knew how to hold still.
III. The Small Incident
After the heat session, the girls moved through the corridor in neat lines.
Lysera walked quietly, counting tiles to steady her breath. Twenty-four across. Twenty-four again. Patterns soothed her. Patterns made sense.
But when she turned a corner, a girl about her age bumped into her—lightly, barely a touch.
The girl froze. She did not apologize. She only stared, wide-eyed, waiting for something terrible to happen. Waiting for the air to crackle. Waiting for a flame to recoil. Waiting for the world to shudder around Lysera the way adults whispered it should.
But nothing happened. Nothing at all.
And the girl's fear grew. Because the absence of reaction—the void where an expected reaction should be—was somehow worse.
Lysera stepped aside politely. The girl backed away as though she had brushed against a ghost.
IV. A Shrine Brother's Whisper
During Devotion Hour, an unfamiliar figure entered the hall— not an instructor, not a priest, but a Shrine Brother.
For most girls, this was their first time seeing one up close.
The Shrine hierarchy was rarely explained to students, but Lysera had overheard enough fragments at home to understand the basics: Priests handled doctrine and public ritual. High Priests governed regions and interpreted the Flame's will. But Shrine Brothers and Sisters—the grey-robed few—were something quieter, older, and more unsettling.
They were the Observers. Men and women who did not preach and did not bless, but instead watched, measured, recorded.
He moved between the incense stations with a stillness that felt trained. His robes were plain, but the narrow crimson thread circling his cuffs announced a mid-rank authority—beneath the High Priests, but above most ceremonial priests.
He inspected each brazier closely, nodding at the gentle, rising streams of smoke. Then he reached Lysera's. He froze.
Her incense did not rise straight like the others. It curled faintly backward, toward her—subtle enough that a careless observer might miss it, but unmistakable to someone trained in flame-behavior anomalies.
Mistress Veyra stepped beside him, lowering her voice. Lysera kept her gaze down, her expression obedient— but her hearing sharpened instinctively.
The Shrine Brother whispered, voice like dry paper sliding against stone: "The ledger already carries her name." A pause. "The question is only how long we can wait before we must act."
Mistress Veyra stiffened. Lysera's fingers tightened around her prayer cloth. Act? In what way?
And why did every grown adult speak of her as though she were an unfolding problem instead of a child standing right in front of them?
The Shrine Brother moved on, leaving behind the faint scent of cedar and a tension coiled so tightly in Veyra's posture that even the youngest students sensed something had shifted.
V. Elphira's Chorus
Midday brought a brief reprieve—the Academy Chorus assembled in the courtyard to practice hymns. Elphira stood among the nine-year-olds, shoulders straight, voice steady. Her soprano rose clean and bright in the chilled air.
As she sang, the small ritual flame at the center brazier fluttered—then grew. It lifted toward her, warm and tender, like a creature greeting its chosen. Light wrapped around Elphira's form, soft as a shawl.
Lysera watched from the outer ring—outside the geometry of the choir, outside the gentle glow. And for the first time, she understood: There were places in this world where she would never be allowed to stand.
Elphira opened her eyes at the end of the hymn—and for one brief second, she saw Lysera's expression. Her voice faltered. Just a fraction. But it was enough.
VI. The Afternoon Ledger
After lunch, the girls practiced household arithmetic—basic but exacting. Lysera finished her worksheet early, numbers aligning effortlessly in her mind. She straightened the page, hands steady, breathing even.
Mistress Veyra took the paper. She scanned it. Perfect. Perfect in form. Perfect in logic. Perfect in a way that exceeded the expectations of her age—or her gender.
Veyra wrote something on her slate. The writing was small, almost hidden. But Lysera saw. Cognitive anomaly—exceeds expected parameters for age and gender.
Anomaly again. But worse. Sharper. Now paired with intellect.
Patterns, Lysera thought numbly, are not always kind.
VII. End-of-Day Circle
Before dismissal, the girls gathered in the courtyard for Reflection Circle—a harmless ritual of shared lessons. Harmless for everyone except Lysera.
She sat alone on the stone bench. Not because she had been ordered to sit apart. But because every time a child looked as though she might approach, another child gently tugged her arm away.
Except one. A small seven-year-old girl—light-brown hair, soft eyes—glanced at Lysera with hesitant curiosity. She took a half-step forward, offering a tiny smile.
Lysera felt warmth in her chest for the first time that day.
But the girl's friend grabbed her wrist sharply. "Don't," the friend whispered. "Don't. It'll go cold on us too."
The shy girl's expression crumpled. She backed away.
Lysera didn't move. She simply watched the tiny flame of hope extinguish in the girl's eyes.
VIII. The Walk Home
The Ritual Carriage waited at the Academy gate—the same black, Shrine-marked carriage that had delivered her on her very first day.
Lysera stepped inside with her veil lowered, hiding the faint red line where the hairpins had dug into her scalp. The carriage rolled through the city in controlled silence.
At the Asterion gate, Kaen sprinted forward the moment he saw her. "You're home! Did you make fire yet?"
Lysera shook her head. "Oh," he said, blinking. "Maybe tomorrow."
Maelinne was already reaching for her, fingertips gentle and worried as she loosened the pins. "This is too tight," she murmured. "It shouldn't hurt you like this."
"I didn't choose the tightness," Lysera said softly. "They set the boundary."
Maelinne's hands froze in mid-motion.
Footsteps approached. Dorian stood in the corridor—ink still smudged on his sleeves from his own lessons. His voice was low, restrained.
"Did anyone interfere with your instruction?" It was the closest he could come to saying Are you safe?
Lysera shook her head. Dorian exhaled slowly. But his fists stayed clenched, as if he could already sense a threat he wasn't yet old enough to confront.
IX. Sisters at the Threshold
Later that evening, as the household dimmed its lanterns, Elphira found Lysera in the corridor.
"Lysera," she whispered, pulling her into a shadowed alcove. Her hands trembled.
"I wanted to go to you today," Elphira said. Her voice cracked. "But... I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?" Lysera asked.
"That if I stood beside you... they would move away from me too."
Lysera nodded slowly. "I know."
Elphira's breath hitched—a soft, painful sound. Then she cried. Not loudly, not dramatically. Just small, silent tears sliding down her cheeks.
Lysera—little Lysera—lifted her arms and held her sister. Held her the way she wished someone would hold her. And for the first time, the older sister wept in the younger's arms.
X. The Lantern and the Breath
In her room, Lysera lit a single lantern. The flame shivered at her presence, as always—bending slightly, uncertain, like something caught between fear and curiosity.
Lysera leaned forward. She whispered: "If the world demands silence from me..." Her breath touched the flame. It quivered.
"...then I will learn to read its whispers before it learns to read me."
The lantern flame stretched—two waves rising toward each other— then collapsed softly inward.
A breath interrupted. A sentence unfinished. A future sharpening.
Lysera closed her eyes. And the world's smallest flame flickered in the shadow of the girl it could not understand.