The Shape of Her Silence (Lyra's POV)
The rain always came before dawn in Augustus.
Soft and silver, it brushed against the glass windows of the observatory like fingers searching for warmth.
Lyra watched it fall from the tower's edge, her pale reflection hovering against the stormlight.
She'd been awake for hours. Sleep rarely came easily — not because of nightmares, but because of memory.
And memory, in her case, was both a comfort and a curse.
A small mechanical bird — no bigger than her palm — perched on the railing beside her. Its wings ticked faintly, gears whirring like the heartbeat of a nervous child.
Lyra touched its head gently. "You're still broken," she murmured. "But then again… so am I."
The bird chirped once, a hollow sound that somehow made her smile.
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1. The Weight of Stillness
Lyra had lived in the city's inner districts for nearly six years.
To most, she was simply the quiet apothecary who fixed broken things — clocks, artifacts, even the occasional prosthetic limb for soldiers who couldn't afford the temple's blessings.
But those who lingered too long near her workshop noticed strange things.
Candles that burned blue.
Mirrors that whispered.
And sometimes, when the moon was high, the faint scent of ash — though her forge was always cold.
Children loved her, though. She told stories to them in the evenings — tales of stars and sea serpents, of gods who fell in love with mortals and paid for it dearly.
Her laughter, when it came, was warm and human.
Her eyes, when no one was looking, were not.
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2. The Girl and the Soldier
Once a week, she visited the veterans' quarter — a place where those broken by war went to disappear.
She brought herbs and salves, repairing old exosuits or reshaping missing blades.
There was one old soldier — a man named Hadrin — who had lost both arms to a beast he never described.
He always tried to pay her. She never let him.
"Money is a chain," she would say. "And I've worn enough chains to last two lives."
Hadrin would laugh at that, not knowing how literal she was being.
Sometimes, she'd stay late, sitting by the window while the soldier slept. The rain would tap against the glass, and she'd hum a tune she didn't remember learning.
It was the only song that ever made her cry — though she didn't know why.
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3. The Night of Red Glass
There was a night when the sky turned crimson — a storm of spirit energy blooming from the mountains beyond Augustus.
The whole city felt it.
The cultivators called it an omen.
Lyra felt it as pain.
She had been preparing tinctures when it hit — a shockwave that cracked the bottles on her shelves and made her drop to her knees.
Her pulse burned, light bleeding through the veins in her hands.
Somewhere, far beyond the horizon, she felt a voice — a familiar echo that made her throat tighten.
> He's awake.
She didn't know what the words meant, only that they filled her with something terrible and beautiful — like a wound that remembered how it was made.
When the tremor passed, she rose slowly, clutching the counter for balance. Her breathing was shallow, her reflection blurred in the broken glass.
For a moment, her eyes weren't her own — twin violet flames flickering in the reflection before fading away.
"Not yet," she whispered to herself, as if answering someone unseen. "Not yet."
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4. The Woman She Pretends To Be
By morning, she was back to her usual self —
the gentle apothecary with the soft voice and steady hands.
She swept the floor, brewed tea, mended a broken watch.
When the bell above her door chimed, she smiled automatically, as if the mask had never slipped.
To anyone who met her, she was kind.
Helpful.
Tragically alone, maybe — but harmless.
Yet when the rain came again that night, she returned to the window, watching the storm trace silver veins across the city rooftops.
And under her breath, she whispered a name —
one she didn't dare say aloud when the sun was up.
"Teik…"
Her voice trembled slightly — not out of longing, but recognition.
As if the name itself was a promise she couldn't keep.
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End of Interlude: The Shape of Her Sile