Lyra Volantis stood alone at the edge of the observatory, high above the sleeping city of Astrenhal. Her breath rose in slow, silver curls, vanishing into the night. The dome above her—once a symbol of knowledge and control—now trembled, ever so slightly, beneath a sky that no longer obeyed the laws of men.
She opened her violet eyes.
A thin thread of light flickered across her irises—not a reflection, but something deeper, older.
The cosmos was watching.
Or maybe… it was bleeding.
She turned a page in the ancient tome resting on the stone pedestal. The ink shimmered faintly, resisting the light like it feared to be read. Her fingers paused above a symbol—a spiral collapsing inward, drawn in ink so black it seemed to swallow the stars.
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“The Eighth Wound. Manifestation imminent. Harmonic convergence unstable.”
She exhaled through her nose. Too soon.
Behind her, the mechanism of the Orrery creaked—a planetarium of brass and starlight, slowly rotating on its own. It hadn't moved in years. Now it ticked forward, as if pulled by some invisible tide.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t fear it either.
Instead, she whispered.
“Not yet.”
The stars didn’t answer.
But something beneath them did.
A sound, faint and wrong, echoed through the floor. Like stone grinding against bone. She stepped back from the pedestal as a pulse of pressure passed through the room—silent, but felt. The runes etched along the observatory walls flickered, then dimmed.
Then came the whisper.
"Lyra."
Her name. Spoken not aloud, but inside. As if the fabric of the universe had remembered it, and wanted it back.
She clenched her jaw. Her hand rose, and from her palm unfolded a ribbon of astral light—thin, sharp, alive. Threads of color braided themselves midair—violet, blue, gold, green—all orbiting the core of her will.
The tome snapped shut.
The spiral was waking.