(LYRA'S POV)
They told me silence was safe.
Stay quiet, blend in, keep your voice hidden. That was the rule—the only rule that mattered in the mist-choked village where I was raised. A song, even a hum, was dangerous. Tempting. A thread that, once pulled, might unravel everything.
But I was born humming lullabies in my sleep.
I remember the first time I realized my voice was... different. I was nine. A hawk had snatched my sister's kitten from the field. I screamed—not a word, just a note. Sharp. Pure. The kind that slices through bone and storm alike.
The hawk fell from the sky.
People stopped speaking to me after that.
Now, ten years later, I stood barefoot at the edge of the Queen's grand stage, staring at a world I'd never imagined stepping into, dressed in silks I didn't own, summoned by a letter sealed with a sun-shaped crest I'd never seen before. The golden parchment still burned in my memory:
You are summoned to the capital by royal decree. Your voice is requested for the Spotlight Serenade. Refusal is not permitted.
It had arrived with no messenger, only a song. A haunting, three-note whistle that circled the cottage thrice before the scroll appeared on our doorstep. Grandmother turned pale. Her hands trembled when she handed it to me.
"You must not go," she whispered.
But something inside me already knew—I had no choice.
Now, beneath the opal-lit dome of Solaria Palace, flanked by armored guards and wide-eyed girls dressed like enchantresses, I knew exactly what the letter meant.
This was no invitation.
It was a sentence.
The Queen sat at the far end of the hall, her throne a carved crescent of crystal and flame. She didn't smile. Her eyes, dark and sharp as obsidian, scanned us like pages in a book she was writing—and already knew the ending to.
"Eight voices," she announced. Her voice was like frost over velvet. "One crown. One awakening. One ruin."
Whispers erupted. A few girls faltered in their steps.
I stood still.
"Welcome to the Spotlight Serenade," she continued. "If you are here, it means your voice is laced with something old… something dangerous. Your gift is either salvation, or doom. You will be tested—not just in song, but in truth, in fear, in loyalty. You are not here to sing pretty. You are here to survive."
Something cold curled inside my ribs.
The Queen rose, lifting a hand.
And just like that, the marble beneath our feet shimmered. Light swirled. A portal, soft and silver, bloomed like a flower from the ground, humming with energy that sang to the deepest parts of me.
"One by one, you will enter," she said. "The first trial awaits."
And before I could blink, the world tilted—and I was falling.
Into song. Into shadow. Into the start of everything.
---
I landed in a forest of light and shadow.
Not on earth—no. The ground here pulsed like a heartbeat beneath the color of moonstone. Trees arched overhead like cathedral spires, their leaves singing softly, brushing against one another in ancient harmonies. The air shimmered with sound, not quite music, not quite silent. It was in-between. A breath held. A note waiting to resolve.
I didn't know if I had fallen through magic or a dream, but the portal had vanished behind me.
I was alone.
And yet… not.
A flicker to my left—movement. I turned quickly, heart lurching. A figure stood at the edge of the glade, half-shadowed beneath a willow of silver fire. Tall, cloaked in blue-black fabric that rippled like water, his presence was at once quiet and impossible to ignore.
He was watching me.
Not with curiosity, but recognition.
"Who are you?" I asked before I could stop myself. My voice sounded strange here, like it belonged more to the air than to me.
The man stepped forward. A single shaft of light caught his face.
He was young. But not in the fragile, untested way most nobles wore youth—his was carved into him like poetry. His features were sharp, but there was something wounded in his eyes. A stillness, like someone who had stood too long in the middle of a storm and learned not to flinch.
"I wasn't expecting you," he said, his voice low, calm, unsettlingly familiar.
"I wasn't expecting any of this."
A pause stretched between us, taut and golden.
"You're Lyra."
It wasn't a question.
I should've asked how he knew my name. Should've demanded who he was, where we were, why I felt like the trees themselves were listening. But instead, my heart tripped over itself, not from fear—but recognition. As if my soul remembered him… even if my mind did not.
"And you?" I managed, clutching the edge of my skirt like it might anchor me. "You're part of this trial?"
"No," he said quietly. "I'm part of the curse."
Before I could ask what that meant, a gust of wind burst through the trees. The light trembled. The glade began to shift, folding in on itself like pages turning in a book too quickly.
He stepped back. The shadows rushed toward him.
"Wait—!" I reached for him instinctively.
"Be careful who you trust, Lyra," he said, already fading. "Not every song is meant to be sung."
And then he was gone.
The trial began.
---
The moment he vanished, the forest exhaled.
Trees twisted. Branches recoiled. The hush broke like glass beneath a wave of sound—low, rumbling, rising. And I realized: the trial hadn't begun when I entered the portal.
It had begun the moment I opened my mouth.
The glade transformed before my eyes. Moss shriveled to ash. Blossoms wilted. The air thickened, heavy with rot and sorrow, and yet—I could still hear the faint whisper of melody beneath it all, like a forgotten lullaby clawing its way back into the light.
Then came the voice.
It wasn't spoken. It sang directly into my bones.
"Face the silence you fear. Sing the truth you buried. Only then will the gate open."
I turned, and there it was—a looming archway of thorns and smoke, pulsing like a heartbeat. Beyond it, I sensed more than I saw a hall of mirrors, each one reflecting a different version of me. One was younger, eyes wide with fear. Another was older, hardened, dressed in a crown of ice. And one… wasn't me at all.
She looked like me. Sounded like me. But her smile didn't reach her eyes, and the note she sang was sour and sweet all at once.
The wrong voice.
I understood then.
This trial wasn't about magic. It wasn't about performance. It was about identity.
It was about the truth.
I stepped forward. The thorns trembled.
But the moment I crossed the arch, the air shifted again—and this time, the forest whispered not with wind, but memory.
I was ten again, kneeling in the reeds behind our cottage, listening to the echoes of a lullaby no one had ever taught me.
My voice had drawn them that night. The robed men. The burning sigil in the sky. Grandmother's scream.
I'd never known what they were looking for.
Now, I feared I was it.
My throat closed. I couldn't breathe, let alone sing.
And then—music.
A single, clear note, like a bell struck beneath the ocean.
His voice.
I whirled, but there was no one there. Only a breeze that curled around me like a promise.
The boy from the glade.
No—man. He was no boy. He belonged to the world in a way I didn't yet. And yet… the melody that remained in the air wasn't his alone.
It was mine, too.
Like we'd sung it together in another life.
My chest ached.
"Sing," the voice repeated, more insistent now. "Sing, or be forgotten."
So I did.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't planned. It was raw and broken and full of things I hadn't meant to feel. I sang of loss, of hiding, of the fear that my voice would never be mine. I sang of the stranger with storm-filled eyes and the way his voice knew my name before I did.
And the thorns bloomed.
A path opened.
I stepped through, not because I was ready—but because I couldn't go back.
And somewhere, far away and far ahead, I felt the truth waiting.
The game had begun.
And I was no longer a girl hiding a song.
I was a song searching for the girl I was meant to become.
---
(ROYAL COURT'S VIEW OF LYRA'S TRIAL)
High above the stage, behind a veil of charmed crystal and shadowed silk, the royal court watched.
The Queen of Solaria sat unmoving on her crescent throne, fingers steepled, her eyes locked on the vision pool hovering before her. The glassy sphere shimmered with silver light, reflecting the trial in real time—Lyra's trial.
Around her, courtiers murmured. Highborn lords in embroidered cloaks, ambassadors from ice-cloaked kingdoms and sun-drenched isles, enchantresses draped in seastone and feathers—all drawn to the spectacle, all hungry for the outcome. Some watched with fascination. Others with fear.
None spoke above a whisper.
Except one.
"She's not trained," said Lord Cassian, folding his arms. "No technique. No royal bearing. She's a wild card."
"She's a threat," replied Princess Seraphina, her gown woven with illusions of fire. Her voice was low, but edged with something darker. "Unscouted. Unclaimed. How did she even receive an invitation?"
The Queen didn't turn. "The letter chose her."
A shiver passed through the court.
That was impossible. The Summoning Letters only responded to bloodlines tied to ancient melody—royalty, or those marked by fate. They could not be forged, bargained for, or predicted.
And yet… Lyra had been chosen.
"Look," whispered one of the princesses-in-training from the House of Lyrien. "She's opening the path. The thorns are blooming."
"No one's ever passed the first trial that quickly," someone murmured. "Not even Princess Seraphina."
That name hung in the air like perfume and pressure. The former golden voice. The court's favorite.
The Queen's eyes narrowed. "She didn't just pass. She awakened the forest."
The vision pool pulsed, and for a heartbeat, the sound that echoed from it was not a song, but a resonance—an ancient harmony buried so deep in the earth that only those of true Aelorian blood could summon it.
A few of the court gasped.
"You think she's...?"
"Impossible. That bloodline is extinct."
But the Queen was silent.
Not because she didn't know.
But because she did.
Far behind her, in the shadows where no courtiers dared stand, a tall figure lingered—half-obscured by a hanging tapestry of the old prophecy. He had no sigil. No title. Only a wolf-gray cloak and a gaze like shattered storms.
He watched Lyra's trial in silence, one hand resting on the hilt of a blade that hummed when magic stirred.
When Lyra sang, the blade had vibrated in its sheath.
He said nothing.
But for the first time in a decade, he smiled.
---
(LYRA'S POV)
The moment I stepped through the blooming thorns, the world shifted again.
The silver forest vanished, folding inward like ink pulled into water. My feet touched solid marble, my breath caught—and I was back.
Back in the grand hall of Solaria Palace.
But the air was no longer hushed.
It rang.
Not with applause. Not with cheers. With silence—the kind that held its breath, tense and wide-eyed, waiting for something to break.
I stood alone in the center of the Spotlight Circle, beneath a dome of floating lanterns and starlight charms. My dress was torn, my voice still trembling in my chest. My hands ached from gripping fear too tightly.
And every pair of eyes was on me.
The Queen rose slowly, her expression unreadable.
"Well," she said, voice cool and echoing. "That was… unexpected."
The court broke into murmurs.
"She returned so quickly."
"The forest bloomed."
"That resonance—did you hear it?"
"What is she?"
I could barely breathe.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other contestants lined along the colonnade. Seven girls in jeweled silks, their faces painted like the goddesses of old ballads. But their expressions weren't of envy or awe.
They were of fear.
All except one.
A girl with hair like stormlight and a crown of opals tilted ever so slightly on her brow. She met my eyes and smiled—a slow, sharp thing that didn't reach her eyes.
Seraphina.
I knew her name though we hadn't spoken. The others called her the Flame-Born Heiress. She hadn't gone through her trial yet, but the court already whispered of her as a favorite. She looked at me not like a rival.
But like a threat.
I turned back toward the Queen. "Was that… was that the first test?"
"No," she said, her voice like frost. "That was the gatekeeper."
I swallowed. "Then what was the point?"
The Queen stepped down from her throne, robes sweeping behind her like wings of dusk. "To see if you would enter. Most hesitate. Some faint. One girl last year screamed so loudly she shattered her own voice."
She paused in front of me. "But you, Lyra of No Known House, walked into the heart of the forest and came out changed."
I flinched.
Had she seen him?
The boy—no, the man—whose voice had steadied me. Who'd said he was part of the curse.
Who knew my name before I spoke it aloud.
The Queen studied me, her gaze digging deeper than skin. "There's magic in you that shouldn't exist. And a melody I haven't heard in a hundred years."
She turned away, addressing the court.
"The Spotlight Serenade has begun."
A wave of enchantment burst from the dome. The lanterns flared. The banners on the walls shimmered with living images of each contestant's face, mine now among them. The sound of a thousand charms chimed in unison.
But all I could feel was the weight of the Queen's words.
There's magic in you that shouldn't exist.
And somewhere beyond the marble pillars, in a place no one else seemed to notice, I felt it again:
A whisper of a song.
A promise in the shadows.
And eyes that were still watching me.