The red haze of incense and sweat clung to the low ceilings of the brothel like a secret no one dared confess. Lyria wasn't yet born, but her story began here, in a room no wider than a coffin, with a bed too tired to protest the weight of men's lust. The air was thick with forgotten dreams, perfumed sorrow, and the tired moans of women who had long since stopped pretending.
Her mother, Serina, had forgotten the shape of love. Once a girl who dreamed of gardens and songs, she now moved like shadow mechanical, practiced. Her hips knew the rhythm of currency, and her mouth had memorized lies that tasted like honey. But that night, something felt wrong before the door even opened.
He came cloaked in black. Dust clung to his boots like death. His face was hidden, but his voice slipped into the room like frost.
"I paid for the whore. No questions. No conditions."
The madam took his gold without blinking. Coin always outranked comfort in the house of Silk Petals. Serina hesitated at the door, but coin was consent. Always.
Inside the room, she tried to take control. A hand to his chest. A whispered name. A gentle touch. But the man wasn't interested in routine. He didn't speak again. He didn't kiss. He didn't even undress properly just enough to do what he came for.
When she reached for the drawer beside the bed, her fingers brushing the thin leather of a contraceptive sheath, he grabbed her wrist.
"What's the use?" he sneered. "You're a vessel. That's all."
His words cut colder than his grip. And then he entered her rough, bare, unforgiving. She cried out, but the walls of the brothel had heard worse and remained silent. No one came to help. They never did.
He left her bleeding, breathless, and hollow, the scent of iron thick in her nostrils. He didn't look back. Didn't say a word. Just disappeared into the night like a curse fulfilled.
Serina curled up on the soiled sheets, trembling. She didn't know then that the man wasn't human. That he carried the dying seed of a fallen god, bitter with vengeance. That night, as she wept, something divine and doomed stirred inside her womb.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
Serina vomited in the mornings and fainted during sessions. Her belly began to swell. The madam, impatient and cruel, finally snapped.
"How can a whore like you get pregnant?" she spat, storming into Serina's room.
"Do you think any man in his right senses would take in a slut as a wife?"
Serina had no words. Only tears.
"You can't work anymore. I can't let a baby cry in my house. I run a business, not a charity. Pack your tears and get out."
Serina begged on her knees, swollen with child and shame. But there was no mercy for ruined things.
She wrapped her belongings in a torn shawl and stepped into the cold, her feet blistered and unsure. She wandered for hours through the outskirts of the town, into the forested hills where the rich didn't go, and the forgotten survived.
There, she found a crooked wooden house with smoke curling from its chimney like a whisper. An old woman answered the door wrinkled as bark, eyes cloudy with age, but wise. Serina fell to her knees, crying her story into the dirt. The woman said nothing at first. Then she turned and opened the door.
"You may stay," she said. "But the child will not be ordinary."
For months, Serina lived in that house, helping the old woman gather herbs, fetch water, and sweep the floor. But she could not find work. No merchant wanted a pregnant whore. No innkeeper would hire a ruined girl with a swollen belly and tired eyes. She began to beg in the marketplace just to feed herself and her silent host.
Then one morning, the old woman was gone. A note lay on the hearth.
"Do not look for me. You need not understand. Just survive. For the child, I leave a gift."
Next to the note was a bracelet black stone with a golden charm etched with strange symbols. Serina clutched it to her chest and wept.
By five months, desperation returned. She had saved a few gold coins over the years, a stash meant for escape or medicine. Instead, she used it to renovate the little wooden house. She scrubbed the walls, sewed curtains, patched the roof, and painted the windowsills pink. She named the house Short & Sweet a cruel little joke, she thought. Then she began to recruit.
Not through coercion. She went into the poorest parts of town, the alleyways where broken girls slept in barrels and behind taverns. She offered them food, shelter, and fairness. No madams. No beatings. No shame.
Each girl would keep most of what she earned. Serina only took a small portion to keep the house running. Slowly, the place came alive. Perfumed girls sang by the fire. Laughter returned. Coins jingled. Serina became a madam not of shame, but of survival.
And nine months after that cursed night, in the dead of winter, she gave birth on the floor of her own brothel. No midwife. No family. Just the girls and a blanket of stars. The child came fast wailing, glowing, strange. Hair black as raven's wing. Skin pale as cream. Eyes… her eyes were violet.
"Lyria," Serina whispered.
A name not of this world. The baby did not cry long. She opened her eyes and stared calm, too calm. And the bracelet on her wrist pulsed once, as if recognizing its owner.
That night, every candle in Short & Sweet flickered. Outside, the wind moaned like a warning. And in the hills far beyond, something old and terrible stirred.
The child had been born.
The prophecy had begun.