(Third-Person Limited — Lysera, age 4-5)
Lysera did not remember the storm that brought her into the world.
But the house did. The servants did. The priests—especially the priests—never let anyone forget it.
She grew up inside a memory she did not possess, a shadow that clung to her like damp thread. At four years old, she only sensed its shape.
The house breathed around her differently.
Not with cruelty. Nor fear. Something subtler: the hesitation one uses for a question whose answer might wound.
I. A Home That Had Already Chosen Caution
The house remembered the storm even if she did not.
House Asterion was a place of old stone and older expectations. Lysera's earliest memories were of polished floors that never reflected her face quite right. Of quiet hallways where whispers traveled faster than footsteps. Of doors that closed a little faster when she passed by.
No one told her why. They thought she was too young to understand words like omen, misalignment, or the phrase "child born under the silent flame."
But children do not need vocabulary to read a room. They feel it in the way adults inhale around them—the pause that precedes speech.
Even at four, Lysera noticed the pattern: Servants addressed Elphira, the eldest daughter, first. Then Dorian, the heir. Then even baby Kaen with his unsteady toddling steps. ...And only then remembered Lysera.
A heartbeat too late. A beat long enough for a child to learn that something was off.
II. Lady Maelinne - the Woman Who Tried Not to Fear Her
Lady Maelinne entered Lysera's life when Lysera was barely two. She was not unkind. If anything, she tried too hard to be gentle. But gentleness born of duty was different from gentleness born of love.
Thesalia demanded noble widowers remarry quickly. A house without a lady was "unstable," the priests claimed. It "invited misfortune." And House Asterion, already marked by Selene's strange death and Lysera's starless birth, had misfortune enough in the priests' eyes. So Maelinne married in.
She inherited three children: Elphira, obedient and soft-spoken. Dorian, precociously serious. And Lysera, the child no one knew how to categorize.
When Maelinne brushed Lysera's hair, her hand sometimes paused mid-stroke—as if some instinct she didn't admit aloud recoiled for a breath. "Be a good girl," Maelinne whispered often. Not a request. A prayer. Lysera didn't understand why the prayer was always directed at her.
III. Dorian - A Shield Too Young to Admit He Was One
Dorian was eleven when Lysera was four, but he already walked like someone trained to carry burdens he hadn't chosen. He noticed everything. The way the servants' gazes dipped when Lysera entered a room. The way priests lowered their voices in her presence. The way the household paused whenever she asked a question that was too sharp for her age.
He never explained it to her, because he thought the truth would frighten her. Instead, he kept her close.
They counted grain jars—part of Dorian's early training in Domestic Governance, part of Lysera's quiet joy. "Lysera," he said one morning. "Some people fear what they don't understand. That does not make you wrong." She blinked at him, serious as only a small child can be, and repeated: "I am not wrong." "No," he whispered, touching her hair. "But they won't admit that."
IV. Elphira - the Daughter Who Fit the Mold
If Lysera felt like a misplaced equation in the house's ledger, Elphira was the line that balanced it. Seven years old. Pretty in a soft, unchallenging way. Pious. Quiet.Everything a Thesalian daughter should be.
When priests visited, Elphira recited flame-prayers perfectly while Lysera stared at the ritual flame as if dissecting it. When both girls curtsied, Elphira's movements were graceful; Lysera's a fraction off-tempo, as if she were analyzing why people bowed instead of simply performing the act.
Priests adored Elphira. They tolerated Lysera. Sometimes they watched her too closely.
V. Kaen - the Only One Who Didn't Hesitate
Kaen was still learning to run. He wobbled through hallways like a tiny arrow shot with enthusiasm and no aim.
He clung to Lysera most of all—her dresses, her legs, her sleeves—as if she were the only stable thing in a house full of rules he didn't yet understand. "'Syera," he called her, unable to form the full name. "Syeee-raaa!"
He giggled at everything she did—even her silences. And when priests stared at her too long, Kaen would toddle over, plant himself in front of her, and glare with all the fury a two-year-old could conjure.
He understood nothing, but he knew enough: Lysera was his. He wouldn't let the house forget it.
VI. The Priests Who Came and Went
Callion did not visit often. When he did, the household straightened as if a military inspection marched through. He was High Priest of the Shrine of Lineage—too busy, too important, too far above petty household rituals.
But the junior priests came frequently. They said it was to bless the children. Yet their gazes lingered the longest on Lysera.
They made quiet notes: How flame-light flickered strangely when she entered the shrine room. How her name never quite resonated in the flame basin the way other children's did. How her eyes seemed to examine rituals rather than obey them.
One said softly—thinking she could not hear: "Children born on nights the flame faltered... always carry something unpredictable." Another responded: "The High Shrine has not forgotten the storm."
Lysera, who did not yet know the meaning of storm beyond rain and loud noises, still felt something cold crawl up her spine.
VII. A Child Shaped by Absences
Lysera had never seen her mother, Selene. There were portraits, yes—women of Valthus always looked a certain way in Thesalian art: straight hair smoothed with oil, calm expression, pale robes. They appeared like foreign statues imported for worship rather than women who bled.
No one spoke of her warmly. No stories of Selene braiding Elphira's hair. No recollections of songs she sang.No memories of laughter.
Only the constant reminder: "Lady Selene died in the storm." As if the storm had taken more than her life. As if it had taken the space where Lysera's identity should have been.
She tried once to ask what the storm had done wrong. A servant had gone pale and stammered: "Little lady... it is not your place to ask."
But Dorian, overhearing, answered quietly when the servant left: "It wasn't what the storm did. It was what happened during it." "Then why am I wrong?" she asked. "You are not wrong," he insisted. "But the night you were born made people forget that."
VIII. The First Hint of Her Isolation
It was spring when Lysera noticed the final pattern. Priests had gathered in the courtyard to bless the new season. Children were lined up to receive a small touch of flame-light—a harmless ritual of affirmation, more symbolic than divine.
Elphira glowed faintly when touched. Dorian, too. Even Kaen—squirming in the acolyte's arms—showed a shimmer of pale gold.
Lysera stepped forward, curious. The flame flickered. Dimmed. Then steadied away from her touch, shrinking as though refusing something.
Priests exchanged glances. Not unkind. Not fearful.Assessing.
One murmured: "Silent again." Another added, "The child carries the storm's mark still."
Lysera looked down at her own small hands—normal hands, clean hands, hands that helped count jars and comfort Kaen and hold Elphira's ribbon when she dropped it. But everyone was looking at her as though she was something else.Something uncertain.
When she tried to take Elphira's hand afterward, her sister smiled—sweetly, politely—and stepped a little to the side so Lysera's fingers closed on nothing but the air between sisters.
That was the moment she learned: Silence could be a verdict.
IX. A House That Did Not Know What to Do With Her
That night, Lady Maelinne tucked Lysera into bed with shaking fingers. "You must grow carefully," she whispered. "You must not frighten them."
Lysera frowned. "I didn't do anything." "I know," Maelinne said, almost pleading. "That is what frightens them."
Lysera lay awake long after the candles were snuffed. The house breathed its slow, uneasy breath. She stared at the ceiling beams—counting them, memorizing them, anchoring herself in the things that did not judge.
Eventually she whispered into the darkness: "I am here."
It was not a question. It was not a declaration. It was the beginning of a truth the house was not ready to accept.
The flame might have turned away from her. The priests might have watched her with sharpened eyes. But Lysera existed in a world that hesitated to claim her—
—and she had already begun to wonder why.