It was raining when Lyra stepped out of the car. The rain wasn't cold, but it seeped through her clothes as if the sky wanted to wash her clean of the past. Her small suitcase squeaked against the wet gravel, and ahead, the Ardent mansion seemed to silently judge her.
The massive door opened by itself — or maybe someone had opened it without her noticing. In the doorway stood a man she had never seen in person, but knew from a broken photograph tucked away in a drawer.
"Lyra," he said simply. "I hope you didn't have a rough flight."
Her biological father's voice sounded like a bank app notification. Nothing warm. Nothing fatherly.
She didn't answer. She had nothing to say to a stranger who never asked if she was okay.
The house was a mix of museum and ruin: marble stairs, walls covered with paintings that never smiled, and chandeliers that seemed to weep light. Inside, it smelled of old wood and forgotten promises.
Then she saw him.
Leaning on the railing, with a stubbed-out cigarette between his fingers, a sharp, almost lazy look in his eyes. He carried the air of a boy who fears nothing because he has already lost everything.
"So, that's you," he said. "The unexpected inheritance."
She lifted her chin.
"And you?"
He smiled, but his eyes remained cold.
"Your stepbrother. Zephyr."
Syllables that cut deeper than a slap.
He didn't look like their father — he looked like the night. And something Lyra shouldn't have felt.
"Welcome to the house. Watch your step. Not all the footsteps here are yours," he said, climbing the stairs without looking back.
Lyra understood. She wasn't welcome. But maybe she didn't want to be.
Because in that house, under the rain and old shadows, she hadn't come as a lost daughter.
She had come as an enigma no one asked for.
And maybe that was exactly why Zephyr would never be able to forget her.