Lyra woke to silence.
Not the comfortable kind, like early mornings before the Sect stirred, but the hollow kind that felt as though all the sound had been drained from the world.
Her eyes opened to shadow.
For a breathless moment, she thought she was still in the banquet hall, that the masked figures had won, that the Shadow Sovereign's hand was still pressed to her chest. But the shapes around her were unfamiliar: a low table with a chipped edge, a stack of folded blankets in the corner, a thin lattice window letting in only a muted, colorless light.
The servant dormitory.
She pushed herself upright, her palm stinging where the blade had cut her the night before. The wound should have been shallow, but when she peeled back the makeshift bandage, she found the skin unbroken. Only a faint mark remained, like the shadow of a scar that never had the chance to form.
Her stomach tightened.
The memory came in pieces. The black-robed man. His blood, darker than ink, soaking into her dress. The tide of cold surging into her bones. The shadows spilling from the walls, flooding her like water into a cracked vessel.
"You've taken it," he had said.
Taken what?
Lyra swung her legs over the side of the cot. Her body felt wrong. Lighter somehow, yet brimming with something restless, something that shifted beneath her skin as though it had a mind of its own. She stood, and the air around her seemed to dim.
No, not dim.
Change.
The pale morning light through the lattice window grew thinner, weaker, until it was no more than a smear of gray. The corners of the room deepened, thickened, as if the shadows there had weight. They moved when she moved.
Her breath caught. She stumbled backward, knocking over the low table. The sound was swallowed instantly, as if the room had grown too dense for noise to travel.
"Lyra?"
The voice came from the doorway, hesitant, confused. Zara stood there with a tray of steamed buns, her wide brown eyes darting from Lyra to the toppled table to the darkened air.
Lyra's mouth opened to explain, but before she could speak, the thing inside her stirred again. It was like an echo, except it wasn't sound, more like a reflection of movement that lagged behind her thoughts. The shadows at her feet pooled outward, curling toward Zara like black water spilling across stone.
Zara froze. "What… what is that?"
Panic shot through Lyra, sharp and blinding. She willed the darkness to stop, to retreat, to vanish. It recoiled, snapping back into her like breath into lungs, and the light in the room returned as though nothing had happened.
The tray clattered to the floor, buns rolling in all directions. Zara stumbled forward, grasping Lyra's wrists. "You're shaking."
"I'm fine," Lyra said quickly, pulling free. Her voice sounded too loud now, bouncing off the walls. "It's nothing. Just… dizziness from last night."
Zara searched her face, clearly unconvinced, but didn't press. "The banquet, everyone's talking about it. They say assassins attacked a guest of the Empress herself. That the Imperial Guard almost failed to protect him."
Lyra swallowed. "Almost?"
"They say he's dead." Zara's voice dropped. "And they say no one knows where the body went."
The words settled like frost in Lyra's chest.
She remembered his eyes in that final moment, the weight in them, the certainty that whatever he had done to her had been deliberate.
If he was truly gone, then whatever had been in him was now in her.
She didn't tell Zara about the shadows. Not yet. The other girl was her only friend, but even friends had limits, and Lyra didn't know how far Zara's loyalty would stretch if she thought Lyra was dangerous.
Dangerous. The thought almost made her laugh. She had spent her whole life being overlooked, dismissed, labeled talentless before she had ever touched a cultivation stone. And now…
Now she had something the Sect elders would kill for. Or kill her for.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur. She forced herself into routine, scrubbing floors, fetching water from the well, polishing the bronze incense burners in the meditation hall, but every so often, she would catch it. A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye that didn't belong to anyone. A deepening of shadow beneath her hands as she worked. Once, she almost dropped a basin when her reflection in the water blinked a fraction too late.
By midday, her head ached from the effort of pretending.
She was sweeping the courtyard steps when it happened again. The broom snagged on the stone, tearing a splinter from the handle. Her hand slipped, skin scraping against the rough wood, a sharp, stinging pain, and with it, a pulse.
The shadows from the overhanging eaves stretched unnaturally long, snaking across the courtyard to curl around her wrist.
A gasp made her turn. One of the younger servants, no more than twelve, was staring at her from the doorway.
"What are you doing?" the boy asked, voice trembling.
Lyra's throat went dry.
Before she could answer, the shadow at her wrist coiled tighter. Her pulse thundered in her ears, and she felt it, a pull, not on her body, but on something else. The boy's outline seemed sharper, his breath louder, and for one terrifying heartbeat, she could sense the way the darkness clung to him too, like a net ready to drag him under.
She let go. The broom clattered to the ground, and the shadow melted away.
The boy bolted.
Her knees felt weak. She sank onto the steps, head in her hands. This wasn't just some strange quirk of energy from last night, it was alive, and it was hungry.
Somewhere deep inside, under the fear, was another feeling. A dangerous one.
It felt good.
The memory of that strength, of the way the world had shifted around her, clung to her like a second skin. She had always been powerless in this place. Now, she wasn't.
But power never came without cost.
The sky had darkened by the time Zara found her again. "Kieran's here," she said, breathless. "The prince. He's questioning the servants one by one."
Lyra's head snapped up.
"He's looking for anyone who saw the assassins. Or who spoke to… to the man in black." Zara hesitated before adding, "Lyra, he's not leaving until he's done."
Lyra's hands clenched in her lap. The man in black was gone, and yet here was the one person who might recognize the change in her, the one who might see past the silence and the plain dress and the servant's bow.
The thing inside her stirred again, a ripple under her skin, as if sensing the hunt had begun.