Lyra Vex had always felt like she was living in the margins.
Not quite invisible, but never fully seen. Her world was quiet — a small apartment above a laundromat, a mother who worked nights and slept through mornings, and a father who had vanished so cleanly it felt like he'd been erased.
She spent most of her time in her room, sketching faces she'd never met and writing letters she'd never send. Her walls were covered in paper — dreams, fragments, questions. She called it her "mind map," though it looked more like a storm.
School was a blur. She didn't fit into the neat boxes they offered — not the loud ones, not the pretty ones, not the ones who knew how to laugh on cue. Teachers called her "bright but distant." Students called her "weird." Lyra didn't mind. She preferred the company of her own thoughts.
But the dreams started when she turned sixteen.
They weren't nightmares. Not exactly. They were... layered. A hallway with no end. A classroom with no doors. A voice whispering her name from inside mirrors. She began waking up with ink on her fingers and words she didn't remember writing.
"You are not awake. You are not asleep. You are somewhere in between."
She found that phrase scribbled on her ceiling one morning. She hadn't put it there.
Her mother noticed the change. "You're pale," she said one evening, stirring soup. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Lyra didn't answer. She didn't know how to explain that the ghost was herself.
One night, she dreamed of a bus.
It was velvet-lined, with no driver and no windows. She stepped on instinctively, like she'd done it before. The seats whispered her name. The lights flickered in rhythm with her heartbeat.When she woke, her suitcase was packed.
She hadn't touched it.
The next day, she found a letter on her windowsill. No stamp. No envelope. Just a folded piece of paper with silver script:
> "You've been selected. Academy of Evershade. Class Obsidian."
Her hands shook as she read it. She didn't remember applying. She didn't remember wanting to go anywhere.
But something inside her whispered: You're already halfway there.
She tried to tell her mother, but the words wouldn't come. Her voice felt borrowed. Her thoughts felt staged. That night, she sat on her bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep.
She didn't remember closing her eyes.
Lyra Vex had always felt like she was living in the margins.
Now, she was part of someone else's story.
And she wasn't sure who was writing it.