"The Girl Who Sees Without Sight"
The morning came softly—not with sunlight, but with the familiar hush of mist curling through the windows. It was always this way. No warmth, no brightness, only the pale gray hush of another day beneath the curse.
Lyra awoke as she always did—with the weight of silence pressing against her skin and the echo of forgotten dreams lingering in her chest.
Her fingers brushed the wooden frame of her bed, the grooves she had memorized by heart, then the stone floor, cool and steady beneath her bare feet. She rose slowly, her long white hair slipping down her shoulders like river silk. Her sightless eyes, pale as winter moons, stared into nothing—but her mind painted pictures of everything.
She could hear the flowers stretching toward a sun that never came. She could feel the sadness etched into the village walls. She could taste the bitterness in the air—grief long settled and never released.
Lyra stepped outside, her fingers trailing across the cracked stone doorway. The mist kissed her skin like an old friend, familiar and faithful.
"Good morning," she whispered to no one and to everything.
A small child watched her from behind a broken fence, clutching a doll made of dried grass. Lyra tilted her head, sensing her.
"Dalia?" she called gently.
The child blinked. "How did you know it was me?"
"I heard your doll sigh," Lyra said with a small smile. "She's tired of hiding."
Dalia giggled—the first bright sound of the morning.
Lyra continued her path through the village, her senses reaching out like threads. She heard the groan of the blacksmith's wheel, the coughing of Old Myron near the well, the way the earth hummed beneath her with a rhythm she no longer questioned.
She passed the statue in the square—of a knight whose name had been forgotten—and paused.
Her hand touched the stone. Cold. Cracked. But today, it buzzed beneath her palm, as if something inside was waking.
And suddenly, her heart skipped.
She gasped, one hand clutched her chest. A sound—no, a feeling—swept through her. Like the beating of wings. Like a voice without words. Like something coming.
Lyra turned her blind eyes toward the edge of the forest.
Far, far away, beyond her sight, someone rode through the mist.
And in that moment, the wind whispered her name.
> Lyra...