Daughter of the Lost Moon

A Rebirth LitRPG Romance Novel

Chapter 1 - The Thread Severed

By Gail Rose Landers

System Quest Series

Daughter of the Lost Moon Copyright © 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: The Thread Severed

The rain had finally stopped by the time Jamie pushed open the bar’s glass door, but the city still gleamed like it hadn’t decided whether to drown or shine.

Cold air hit her first, the lingering smell of fryer oil and spilled beer giving way to wet pavement and exhaust. Neon bled into puddles along the sidewalk—pink and electric blue rippling under her boots as she stepped out. Her reflection fractured there: a tall woman in a thrift‑store pea coat the color of storm clouds, cheap but carefully chosen; a knee‑length black skirt swaying around her legs; tights with a faint ladder near her left knee that she’d pretended not to notice in the restroom mirror.

The gold hoops in her ears—the ones Elaine had called “perfectly dramatic”—caught a streetlamp’s light. Jamie’s hand rose to touch one, fingertips lingering like she could still feel Elaine’s warm laughter across the table.

“Those are gorgeous, Jamie. They suit you.”

The memory sat on her shoulders like a borrowed shawl—light, fragile, shockingly warm.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the ends still damp from the drizzle. Six months on hormones had softened the edges of her face, blurred jaw into cheek. The bar’s bathroom mirror had been unkind under fluorescent light, but tonight, with the city smudged and glowing, she could almost believe the outline matched the girl she held inside.

Almost.

She adjusted her purse strap—fake leather, worn at the corners—and started down the block. The heels of her ankle boots made a small, determined sound on the wet concrete. Not quite a click, not quite a thud. Something in between.

The office tower she’d left behind rose like a dark monolith at her back, windows mostly dead except for a few rectangles of light on the upper floors. Someone was probably still arguing about quarterly projections up there. Tonight, she’d chosen elsewhere.

At the bar, they’d said her name without hesitation.

Jamie, over here!
Jamie, your turn at darts.
Jamie, you have to try these fries.

Her name. Not a stumble, not a correction, not a smirk disguised as a joke. Just… Jamie.

Her phone buzzed in her purse. She dug for it with cold fingers, pulling it free long enough to see the group chat’s latest messages.

Elaine: You get home safe, okay? Text me when you’re in.

Another coworker had added a string of rainbow hearts. She watched the messages blur slightly as her breath fogged in the chill, then typed with thumbs gone clumsy from the cold.

On my way. You’re all the best. :)

She hesitated over the emoji, then hit send anyway.

A bus roared past, spraying her calves with a fine mist. She flinched instinctively, then laughed under her breath at herself. City nights weren’t gentle; they never had been. But they were hers now in a way they hadn’t been before. The skirt against her thighs, the weight of her purse, the ghost of eyeliner smudged at the edges of her vision—small things, ridiculous things, but real.

At the corner, she passed the old stone church with its heavy wooden doors shut tight for the evening. A single stained‑glass window glowed faintly, an angel in cobalt and gold pouring out light onto the sidewalk. Water pooled below it, catching the colors and throwing them back in distorted ripples.

Jamie slowed without meaning to. The angel’s face was kind in that generic, beatific way sacred art tended to be. A plaque near the steps announced service times and a charity drive.

She’d once stood on these steps at sixteen, shoulders hunched in her father’s too‑big jacket, listening to a pastor talk about “order” and “design” and “living in truth.” Back then, she’d thought truth meant swallowing herself until she disappeared.

Now, she watched the window’s colors flicker in the water and thought, If there’s a god up there, she’s got terrible taste in allies.

A gust of wind cut down the street, tugging at her coat. She shivered, hugging it closer. Somewhere above the low clouds, the moon had to be watching. It always had.

If it cared, it didn’t say.

She crossed against a blinking red hand as traffic slept. A lone car idled at the light, bass thumping faintly. The driver didn’t look at her. That felt like a blessing.

By the time she turned onto her street—narrow, lined with brick row houses that wore their age like shrugging shoulders—her shoulders had loosened. The smell shifted to wet dirt and laundry venting from basement windows. Her building loomed three doors down, paint peeling, mailbox slots taped with names no one bothered to update.

Jamie’s boots slowed.

She wasn’t thinking about danger. Not yet. The worry in her chest was smaller, pettier: a landlord’s voicemail about rent due next week, an upcoming HR meeting about insurance coverage she’d spent days rehearsing replies for. Her hand slipped into her coat pocket, fingertips worrying the folded index card where she’d written questions about coverage, about name changes on forms that refused to update.

“Look it up in the benefits portal,” HR had said last time, eyes already sliding past her.

She’d looked. The portal didn’t know what to do with someone like her either.

Her breath steamed in the air as she reached her building’s stoop. Yellow light from the vestibule spilled through frosted glass, painting a blurry rectangle on the sidewalk.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

Three sets, out of rhythm with the city’s background noise. Heavy, unhurried.

Her spine went rigid before she turned. Months of walking with keys between her fingers, of mapping streetlights automatically, of checking reflections in windows—all of it coalesced into a single, primal tightening.

“Hey, pretty boy.”

The voice came from the mouth of the alley beside her building. Casual, amused. Wrong.

Jamie turned slowly. Three shapes detached from the shadow: hoodies, denim, the glint of a chain around one neck. Their faces were ordinary. That made it worse.

“Where d’you think you’re going dressed like that?” the speaker asked. His eyes skimmed down her body and back up, snagging on her earrings.

Her purse strap creaked under her tightening grip. “Home,” Jamie said. Her voice didn’t shake. She was absurdly proud of that. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you decided to pretend,” another one said. There was no smirk, no joke. Just a flat certainty, like reading off a weather report. “This is our block. We don’t have to look at that.”

That.

Her heart pounded against her ribs. Somewhere distant, near the church, a siren wailed and faded. The vestibule light hummed behind her, a barrier made of thin glass and a lock that stuck half the time.

Jamie shifted her weight, just enough to angle toward the door. “I’m not hurting anyone.”

“You’re hurting the whole world,” the first man said. His hand flexed open and closed at his side. A silver crucifix glinted at his throat, catching the spill of light from the vestibule. “You people poison everything.”

Her mouth tasted like metal already, though no blow had landed. She could have argued. Could have said something about statistics, about actual harm, about who poisoned what. Instead, words caught on the image of that crucifix, on the memory of sermons about sin, about “loving correction.”

Behind the men, the alley’s darkness seemed to pool. For a heartbeat, the shadows on the brick wall twisted, forming something that wasn’t quite a shape. A suggestion of eyes without light. A prickle of cold skittered down Jamie’s spine, deeper than the November air.

Her skin crawled. She blinked. The bricks were just bricks again.

“Please,” she said. “Just let me go inside.”

They moved without speaking, the practiced efficiency of people who had done this before. One blocked the sidewalk to her left, another stepped between her and the street, the third drifting closer to the vestibule door like a careless coincidence.

Her pulse roared in her ears. Her hand, still in her coat pocket, tightened around the index card until it crumpled. HR questions seemed like props from a different play.

The first blow landed in her stomach.

Air left her in a sound she didn’t recognize. The concrete met her knees hard enough to send sparks up her thighs. Her purse slipped from her shoulder, skidding across the sidewalk; a lipstick clattered free and rolled to the curb, leaving a diagonal trail of deep red on the wet concrete.

“Look at me,” someone ordered.

She didn’t. She couldn’t. The second hit caught her at the temple, bright white exploding behind her eyes. The world tilted.

In the vestibule window, her reflection blurred—coat twisted, skirt askew, hair falling out of its careful clip. The gold hoop in her left ear flashed as her head snapped sideways.

Boots and fists became the weather: relentless, unavoidable. Pain arrived in bursts, then in waves, then in something that wasn’t quite either. Her body curled in on itself instinctively, arms wrapping around her ribs.

At the edge of her vision, the crucifix swung on its chain, pendulum‑steady.

She tried to crawl toward the steps. A foot caught her ribs and rolled her onto her back.

“Don’t,” she rasped. “Please. I just want to go home.”

One of them—she couldn’t see which anymore—leaned over her. His breath smelled like cheap beer and mint gum. “You don’t have a home. Not like this.”

The words didn’t even need the blows attached to them. They were familiar on their own.

Another kick. Somewhere in the flurry, her glasses cracked, spiderwebbing the world. Streetlights smeared into halos. The men’s faces became featureless smudges, except for their eyes and that cross.

Above them, the sky was just a dark ceiling. No stars. No moon.

The pain blurred. Distance opened. The concrete against her back became not‑quite‑solid. Each hit landed further away.

Her thoughts slipped sideways.

Not to anger. Not at first.

Not fair, she thought vaguely, like a child refusing to accept bedtime. I was just… starting.

Images rose unbidden, clear and sharp in a way the men’s features were not:
A white dress bookmarked on her phone she’d never had a reason to buy.
A nameless child’s warm weight in her arms, head tucked into her shoulder.
Elaine’s hand brushing hers in the bar when she’d laughed too hard at a joke.

She saw herself older, hair threaded with gray, sitting at a kitchen table in soft light, someone’s thumb smoothing a wrinkle from her forehead. It was a dream she’d visited often, fragile as spun sugar. Now it cracked.

A fist slammed into her jaw. Her teeth clicked together hard enough to taste blood and enamel. Her head snapped sideways; the world rotated ninety degrees.

She caught a final, skewed glimpse of one attacker’s face. Ordinary nose, pale stubble, a line of worry between his brows like he was working overtime. His expression wasn’t drunken rage. It was certainty. He might have been taking out the trash.

Behind him, for just a flicker, the alley’s shadows rearranged into something vast and patient. A silhouette loomed where no body stood, and dozens of thin, dark threads ran from it into the backs of the men’s necks like marionette strings.

Her breath hitched. Her fading mind struggled to make sense of it. The shadows smelled wrong for an instant—like burned paper and old resentment.

Then a boot connected with the side of her head, and everything else dropped away.

As consciousness slipped, the pain narrowed into a single, piercing ache that had nothing to do with broken ribs or swelling flesh.

I just wanted to be loved for who I am.

The thought didn’t feel like a protest. It felt like a confession.

The world went dark.

At first, she thought she’d closed her eyes and forgotten how to open them.

Then she realized she didn’t have eyes.

Jamie—whatever “Jamie” meant in this new context—floated in weightless silver mist. It curled around her in slow, luminous eddies, cool as moonlight and warm as breath. There was no up or down, no air in her lungs, yet she felt no need to gasp.

The city’s sounds were gone. No sirens, no distant traffic. Only a soft, omnipresent chime, like crystal glasses singing on the edge of hearing.

She waited for pain to catch up. It didn’t.

Am I dead?

The thought arrived without panic. She turned it over, curious, as if examining a stone in her palm.

“Yes and no,” answered a voice.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It slid through the mist, through her, gentle as water over skin.

“The thread of your first life has been severed,” the voice continued. “But threads can be rewoven.”

The mist parted.

She became aware of having a shape again—arms, hands, the outline of a self—and of facing someone.

The woman before her stood on nothing and everything. Her skin held the color of moonlight on water, not white, not silver, but something in between that shifted with the mist. Her hair fell in a cascade of starlight, each strand carrying faint constellations that moved as she did.

Her gown flowed around her like liquid night, studded with points of light that weren’t sewn on but embedded, as if she’d wrapped herself in a sleeve of the sky. When she moved, the stars moved with her, rearranging into unfamiliar patterns.

Jamie felt small and transparent under that gaze, but not in the way she had in HR meetings or under strangers’ scrutiny. This felt like standing near the ocean. Immense. Indifferent in scale, but not unkind.

“Who are you?” Jamie asked. Her voice sounded like herself, but clearer, as if no fear stuck to it.

“I am known by many names,” the woman said, smiling with her eyes as much as her mouth. “On your world, once, as Aphrodite. In other tongues, Venus, Ishtar. In the realm where I would take you, I am called Daya, Goddess of Love.”

Goddess of Love.

Jamie might have laughed if the word “goddess” hadn’t landed with the weight of absolute reality. The mist itself seemed to nod along.

“How did I come to your attention?” she asked instead. The practical question felt safer to hold than awe.

Daya’s gaze softened further. “As Aphrodite, I hold a small domain on your Earth,” she said. “A sanctuary called Agape Duro. You would know one of its guardians—Penelope Megalos, who once walked as Alex.”

Penelope’s face rose in memory: a TED talk Jamie had watched in secret, a story about transition told with a steadiness Jamie had envied.

“She saw your danger,” Daya continued. “She begged me to help you. But the rules there bind my hands. I am forbidden to intervene in deaths the tapestry marks as mundane.”

Jamie’s chest tightened. “So you… didn’t.”

“Not there.” No defensiveness, no apology. Just fact. “By the time she cried out, your thread had already been cut on Earth’s loom. But here—” She opened her hand.

The mist around them shimmered and resolved into images: a crystalline city under an eternal night sky, towers like facets of a gemstone catching pale luminescence; gardens of silver flowers that glowed without heat; people walking along marble paths, their bodies trailing fine gossamer strands of light behind them like comet tails.

“In my own realm, my jurisdiction is broader,” Daya said. “I am permitted to intercept threads severed by divine malice. Your death was no accident, Jamie.”

The name held in her mouth, familiar and strange in this place.

Daya’s expression darkened, a shadow passing over her features like an eclipse. “Alus, the God of Hate, has taken an interest in your world. He seeded those men’s hearts with fear and righteous anger, then pulled their threads at just the right moment.”

The alley’s shadows, twisting into something with too many eyes, replayed at the edge of Jamie’s awareness. The cold that had skated along her spine. The marionette glimmer of dark lines in their necks.

“A god wanted me dead?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because you represent what he most fears.” Daya stepped closer. The stars in her hair shifted color, taking on a faint rose hue. “You chose yourself. You carved a path of identity and love through a world that insisted you were wrong to exist. That kind of thread strengthens the tapestry far beyond its apparent weight.”

Jamie’s hands—her spectral, mist‑shaped hands—itched to check her hair, her earrings, anything grounding. They passed through the silver fog instead.

“I didn’t… succeed,” she said. “I was just getting started.”

“You were succeeding,” Daya corrected gently. “Every step you took toward yourself was an act of creation. That is the power Alus despises, because he cannot unmake it without breaking laws older than either of us.”

Jamie glanced at the images hovering in the mist. People in Daya’s realm moved through them, their threads bright, tangling and untangling as they met, argued, embraced. Some threads glowed more dimly. Some had dark spots like bruises.

“Why me?” she whispered. “Surely there are stronger people. Braver ones.”

Daya’s eyes seemed to hold galaxies, distant but glittering. “Strength is not measured only in victories,” she said. “You continued to reach toward love even while being denied it. You held onto a vision of yourself in the face of ridicule, bureaucracy, and danger. That tenacity is rare.”

Jamie thought of the index card in her coat pocket, now probably soaked in blood. The HR questions. The earrings. The way her coworkers had simply said her name.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“The thread of your first life remains on Earth’s tapestry,” Daya said. “It cannot be rewoven there. I cannot resurrect you back into that world; the boundaries between domains are strict.” A brief, wry smile touched her lips. “Even for a Goddess of Love.”

“But… you said threads can be rewoven.”

“In my realm.” Daya lifted her hand again.

The mist condensed into a mirror, its surface brighter than any glass Jamie had ever seen. In it, a girl of sixteen looked back: copper hair falling in soft waves to her shoulders, eyes the color of twilight between day and night, cheeks still full with youth. The bones of the face were unfamiliar and yet so precisely right that Jamie’s breath caught.

“I have a daughter,” Daya said quietly. “Born of moonlight and my own essence. She waits in my realm, incomplete, her body prepared but her thread… empty. She needs a soul whose pattern matches the fate she must weave.”

“You’d put me in her?” Jamie stepped closer to the mirror. The girl’s eyes met hers, steady and curious. Not a copy. Not an idealization. A version.

“You would be Lyria,” Daya said. “My daughter in truth, not just in name. Your soul would inhabit her from the beginning, without the misalignment you faced on Earth. Your body would match your self from your first breath. There would be no transition. No dysphoria.”

The words struck with such clarity that Jamie almost couldn’t grasp them. Her mind ran ahead to details: waking up with the right curves, the right voice, the right pronouns woven into every introduction. Clothes chosen because she liked them, not because they hid.

“What’s the cost?” she asked, the question automatic.

Daya’s smile deepened. “You keep your capacity to love. Your memories of your first life would remain, though blurred with time, like a story once read. You lose the possibility of returning to Earth, of ever seeing those you left behind in that realm while they live. And you take on a burden.”

“Burden.” Jamie tasted the word. “What sort of burden?”

“In my realm, the tapestry is fraying,” Daya said. “Alus has found ways to inject his poison even here—threads twisted by fear, by hate of the other, by resentment. I need someone who understands both rejection and self‑creation. A Thread of Fate who can, in time, see where to mend bonds without violating will.”

Jamie nodded slowly. “You want me to fight him.”

“I want you to live,” Daya said first. “To love. To build a life as Lyria, as my daughter, as yourself. From that life, I will ask much. But I will not demand your hatred. Your power will not function if you direct it from vengeance. Only unconditional love can fuel the deeper weaving.”

Jamie stared at the mirror. The girl—Lyria—raised a hand in perfect sync with her, then hesitated just off by a fraction, as if waiting for Jamie to decide.

“What about… memory?” Jamie asked. “Would I remember… dying?”

“You will remember enough to know who you were,” Daya said. “The pain will soften with time, but it will never vanish entirely. It will inform your empathy. It will also be a weight you must learn to carry without letting it drag you into hatred. That will be your trial.”

A flicker of bitterness rose. “You’re asking a lot of someone who couldn’t even survive her own city block.”

“You survived twenty‑nine years in a hostile world,” Daya said. “You faced down family, institutions, and strangers to reach the point of that alley. Surviving longer is not always the same as being stronger.”

Jamie’s gaze dropped to her not‑quite hands. Silver light traced the outlines of fingers she couldn’t fully feel.

“What happens if I say no?” she asked.

“Then you drift beyond my reach,” Daya said simply. “To whatever awaits souls of your world when they pass beyond all domains. I do not rule that place. I would grieve, but I would not follow. Your choice must be free, or the weave will not hold.”

The mist around them pulsed gently, like a held breath.

Jamie imagined letting go. Drifting into something quiet, without echoes of slurs, without HR portals or bathroom mirrors or the ache when a stranger’s pronoun sliced sideways. No more reaching. No more wanting.

The thought sat in her chest like a stone.

Then another image rose to meet it: Amorphous, not yet tied to reality. A child’s laugh that hadn’t happened. A hand reaching back for hers—the small weight of a palm trusting her. A voice saying “Mom” like it was the most natural thing in the world.

On Earth, that had always been a hypothetical, blocked by legal forms, by hostile judges, by the fragility of her own safety. Here…

Her eyes lifted to the mirror. Lyria’s eyes. Her eyes.

“Would she—would I—be able to have a family?” Jamie asked. “Love, the kind that builds… home?”

Daya’s expression warmed in a way that made the mist brighten. “If you choose that path,” she said, “yes. My realm has its own dangers, its own politics, its own cruelties. But there will be space for that. For partners. For children. For chosen family. For the kind of love that was denied you.”

The ache in Jamie’s chest changed shape. It no longer pressed down; it pulled.

She thought of Penelope on that glowing stage, talking about building a life you deserved even when the world insisted you did not. Of Elaine’s fingers brushing her earrings. Of the bar’s noise, her name tossed back and forth so easily.

“I don’t know how to be what you need,” Jamie said, honesty stripping the words bare. “I don’t know how to be a goddess’s daughter, or a Thread of Fate, or… anything but trying.”

Daya stepped closer until they were almost touching. The mist around them settled into a hush.

“That is all I ask,” she said. “That you try. That you love. That you learn when to mend and when to leave a thread alone. You will fail sometimes. You will hurt. You will also heal. I can guide you. I cannot live it for you.”

Jamie reached for the mirror. Her hand met cool resistance at first, then sank through the surface like dipping into still water. On the other side, warm fingers—Lyria’s—curled around hers.

The contact jolted something deep in her soul. A sense of rightness she had never felt in her own skin. Not even on the best hormone days. Not even in the most flattering selfie.

Her throat—or whatever passed for it here—tightened.

“I accept,” she said, the words steady. “I choose to become Lyria.”

Daya’s smile unfurled like a sunrise. “Then the thread begins anew.”

The silver mist surged.

Warmth wrapped around Jamie, bright and encompassing. Her awareness stretched—not dissolving into nothing but expanding, threads radiating from her like spokes. Threads of memory (a cracked subway seat, a company lanyard, a rented room with thin walls). Threads of potential (moonlit towers, unfamiliar faces, a child’s hand in hers).

Somewhere beyond, she sensed other weavers: Daya, vast and steady, fingers already in motion; a distant darkness coiling, watching, its tendrils tangling with unsuspecting lives.

As her consciousness poured toward the waiting vessel that was Lyria, Daya’s voice followed, weaving words into the very fibers of her being.

“Know this, my daughter: only you and I can see the threads as they are. Only we can sense where they twist by choice and where they have been violated. Alus has begun to commit crimes against the tapestry even here. I cannot be everywhere. You will learn to read what others are blind to.”

Light intensified. The outline of a new body formed around her—a smaller frame, a different center of gravity, a heartbeat syncing to an unfamiliar rhythm.

“You will not be able to mend your own thread,” Daya’s voice continued, a steady loom‑beat beneath the brightness. “You will always risk yourself when you mend others. There will be those who resent you for what you can do and those who would use you for it. Remember: love freely given, not demanded, is your only true power.”

The warmth turned almost too much to bear, like stepping from winter into a blazing noon. Jamie—Lyria—felt a chest rise for the first time, lungs drawing breath into actual air.

The mist fell away.

Her last impression in that between‑space was of threads stretching out in all directions, some bright, some frayed, some blackened where Alus had sunk his teeth.

Somewhere along those strands, something waited. Not a quiet destiny, but a tangle of love, danger, and choice.

“The thread begins anew,” Daya whispered, her voice now echoing from somewhere above and within.

Darkness blinked.

Lyria’s eyelids fluttered.

And the new world rushed in.

Daughter of the Lost Moon

A Rebirth LitRPG Romance Novel

Chapter 2: Awakening

By Gail Rose Landers

System Quest Series

Daughter of the Lost Moon Copyright © 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 2: Awakening

Light touched her before sound did.

It seeped through the dark behind her eyes, not the harsh, buzzing white of office fluorescents, but a soft, shifting silver—like moonlight passing through water. Something cool and fragrant brushed her cheek, and fabric whispered when she moved.

She opened her eyes.

A canopy arched above her, not the plain plaster ceiling of her old apartment but a dome of pale stone ribbed with veins of light. Threads of silver and pearl chased one another across it in slow, spiraling patterns, like constellations caught mid‑dance. The canopy itself seemed to breathe, dimming and brightening in time with some distant, steady pulse.

Her first thought was that someone had left a projector on. Her second was that her chest rose and fell in a way that felt… right.

She lay in a bed big enough to lose herself in, sheets of something softer than cotton and smoother than silk pooling around her waist. The duvet was a deep dusk blue, embroidered with tiny, beaded moons that caught the shifting light. When she pushed herself up on her elbows, the beads slid and shimmered, sending scattered moons rolling over the walls.

Her hands—small, pale, with slender fingers that ended in neatly shaped nails—pressed into the mattress. Her arms trembled, not from weakness, but from the unfamiliar weight distribution of a body that was not the one she’d known for twenty‑nine years.

The scent that had brushed her cheek came from nearby: a cluster of flowers in a carved crystal vase on a nightstand. Their petals were long and narrow, glowing from within like captured starlight, each bloom cupping a tiny drop of liquid radiance in its center. Moonflowers, some part of her supplied. Of course.

She sat up, and the world rearranged itself around that movement.

Her hair slid over her shoulders in a copper curtain, the silky weight of it startling. It brushed the tops of her arms—bare, smooth. A nightgown shifted against her skin: soft white fabric with a faint silver sheen, sleeveless, the bodice smocked in small, delicate gathers that suggested curves she had never needed to pad. The hem brushed just below her knees, edged in lace so fine it might have been woven from spiderwebs and fog.

Jamie’s old T‑shirts and thrift‑store skirts felt like clothes someone else had worn in a school play.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet met a rug, but not the rough, shedding rectangle from her studio. This one was thick and plush, woven in overlapping circles of gray and white. Threads of light ran through it in spirals, tickling her skin through the nightgown’s thin fabric.

When she stood, she didn’t tower.

Her center of gravity had dropped, as if someone had gently pressed on her shoulders and hips until she compacted into a smaller, balanced frame. Her knees looked… right. Her hands vanished when she rested them on her hips, instead of hovering awkwardly above them. The nightgown fell from a chest that rose in a way that made every breath feel like stepping into warm water.

A sound like a held breath being released left her lips.

On the far wall, opposite the bed, hung a mirror framed in pearlescent stone. The frame curved like crescent moons entwined, their tips almost meeting at the top. Tiny flecks of light drifted inside the stone, like fireflies trapped in marble.

She walked toward it on bare feet, the rug’s threads glowing faintly around her toes with each step. The air was cool against her arms, but the room itself seemed to hold a gentle warmth, as if the stone remembered the heat of many suns.

The girl in the mirror stopped her halfway across the room.

Copper hair spilled over narrow shoulders, falling in a loose wave down to the middle of her back. It caught the silver light and threw it back with a rose‑gold glint. Her face, framed by that hair, had the soft lines of youth—cheeks that still held the last traces of childhood roundness, a jaw that tapered into a delicate chin, a nose that was neither too sharp nor too flat, simply there.

Eyes the color of twilight, not quite blue, not quite gray, watched her. They were too big for the face, in the way that made artists reach for their pencils, irises ringed with a darker halo. Her lashes cast fine shadows on her cheeks.

The nightgown’s bodice hugged a modest swell of breasts. Not the flat plane she’d known, not the strange in‑between months of hormone changes, but a natural curve that belonged there without argument. Her shoulders sloped gently into arms that looked like they had never carried more than a stack of books.

She lifted her hand. The girl did too. When she turned her wrist, the delicate bones shifted under smooth skin in perfect sync.

A laugh broke out of her—sharp and bright, like a cork popping from a bottle. It echoed in the vaulted chamber, bounced off the carved stone, and came back to her ears sounding like someone she had once tried to imagine through a filter.

Her hand flew to her mouth. Her reflection’s eyes shone.

The laugh faded, but the trembling in her shoulders didn’t. It was not the shake of fear. It was something she had never had the vocabulary for, because she had never experienced it fully: a release, a loosening, a sudden absence of an ache so constant she’d stopped noticing it.

Jamie’s memories flickered in front of this new image like film projected on glass.

Her old bathroom’s cracked mirror, the yellowed light showing a man’s jaw where she wanted curves, the way she’d tilted her head to find herself at the right angle and then quickly looked away.

The locker room at work, the too‑broad shoulders reflected twice in metal, the deliberate way she’d avoided eye contact with herself.

The first time she’d buttoned a blouse over the soft swell hormones had started to give her, the wild hope and sharp fear tangled in her chest like barbed wire.

Those moments felt now like scenes from someone else’s life.

“I look…” She didn’t finish.

There was no word that didn’t feel either too small or too sentimental. She let the unfinished thought sit in the air between her and the mirror, in the space where her old reflection used to mock her.

She reached up, fingers searching her ears. No cheap gold hoops here. Instead, small studs nestled against her lobes, each a tiny crescent moon carved out of opalescent stone. When she brushed them, they warmed slightly, as if responding to her touch.

“Welcome home, daughter.”

The voice came from behind her. Warm. Familiar, even though she had heard it only once in the mist.

Lyria—she realized the name fit here, as if thinking “Jamie” now caused a faint echo instead of a direct answer—turned.

Daya stood by the foot of the bed.

The goddess looked different in this room, more grounded. The starlight gown remained, constellations shifting slowly along its folds, but she had set aside the towering aura of incomprehensibility. Here, she seemed only slightly too bright for the space, as if the room itself worked to contain her.

She had no crown, no scepter. Her hair fell loose down her back. When she smiled, fine lines appeared at the corners of her eyes—the marks of someone who had laughed many times, and also watched many endings.

“How do you feel?” Daya asked.

Lyria’s answer caught in the fabric of her throat.

She turned back toward the mirror and lifted a handful of her hair, letting it slip between her fingers. The strands shone like copper wire in the silver light. She touched the curve of her own shoulder, then pressed a palm flat against her chest, feeling the heartbeat there. Steady. Not too fast. Not a rabbit’s panicked thrum.

She did not speak.

Instead, she walked the last step to the mirror and pressed her forehead against the cool glass, eyes closing. Her breath fogged it for a moment, leaving a small, imperfect circle. When it cleared, her reflection stared back, unchanged.

Her shoulders rose and fell. The sound that came from her this time was quieter than laughter, but just as sharp. A small exhale that sagged her whole frame, as if someone had untied a knot at the base of her skull.

Daya’s reflection came into view beside her own. Their eyes met in the glass.

Daya’s hand settled on Lyria’s shoulder. The weight was gentle, but it anchored more than just flesh.

“For the first time,” Lyria whispered, voice rough, “I don’t feel… like I’m wearing someone else’s life.”

Daya’s grip tightened, once. Her eyes in the mirror softened in that way they had in the mist when she’d spoken of Penelope and Agape Duro.

“This form was woven with you in mind,” Daya said. “Not as perfection, but as alignment.”

The word soothed some raw place.

Lyria pulled back from the mirror, turning to face Daya fully. “There’s no going back,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“No.” Daya’s expression did not flinch. “Earth’s tapestry continues without you. I cannot reinsert your thread there without shattering laws that hold the universes apart. Whatever happens in that realm now happens beyond our touch.”

Images flickered—Elaine’s laugh, the group chat blinking on a screen that would never light up for her again, HR memos sitting in an inbox no one would have reason to open.

Lyria’s fingers curled around the nightgown’s fabric at her sides.

“Do they know?” she asked. “Anyone? Penelope?”

“Penelope knows your thread was cut under Alus’s influence,” Daya said. “She knows I intervened. She does not know what form that intervention took. She does not know you as Lyria. It would be cruel to bind her to grief and hope both when she cannot reach you.”

Lyria looked down at her hands. The nails were glossy and unchipped, as if someone had taken care with them. Someone had. The thought that she had slept while a goddess prepared her new body’s details made her ears warm.

“So everything I had there is gone,” she said.

“Gone from your reach,” Daya corrected. “Not erased. Earth’s tapestry remembers you as Jamie. Your courage is woven into its fabric. It may inspire others. You, however, have been moved to another loom.”

A second chance. Not a continuation.

Lyria nodded once. The motion felt decisive.

“What constraints?” she asked, surprising herself. “You said there would be rules. Limits. I’d rather know now than be… blindsided later.”

Daya’s smile flickered, approving. She moved toward the room’s far wall, where a section of stone was carved into an archway without a door. With a flick of her fingers, the arch filled with light, then cleared into a view of the world outside.

Lyria stepped up beside her.

Beyond the arch lay a balcony and, beyond that, the realm itself: the crystalline city she’d glimpsed in the mist, now vivid and sharp. Towers of pale stone and glass rose in elegant curves, their surfaces shot through with veins of light that pulsed like the rug’s threads. Bridges arched between them, lined with lanterns that burned with steady, silvery flames. The sky above was an endless indigo, strewn with more stars than she’d ever seen from any Earth city, the moon hanging low and large, casting everything in gentle radiance.

People walked along the streets far below. Some wore robes that trailed threads of light behind them, others simpler tunics. No cars, no buses. The air even from this distance seemed… quieter.

“In this realm,” Daya said, “I can intervene more freely. But not without cost. And not without boundary. I have shaped its laws around love and consent. You will share that burden.”

Lyria watched a trio of children—she thought they were children; their silhouettes were small, their laughter carried faintly—run along a balcony farther down, their threads trailing like comets.

“You will, in time, see threads as I do,” Daya continued. “Where they fray, where they are stained by fear, where they are knotted by trauma or twisted by another’s direct violation. You will be able to mend some of them. Not all.”

“Not my own,” Lyria said, recalling the warning from the mist.

“Not your own,” Daya confirmed. “You may never use your power to alter your own fate. You may not override another’s will where it is truly present. You may not erase history. You may only offer new paths, gently redirect, or strengthen bonds that were already there.”

“And if I try to… force things?” Lyria asked. “To act out of resentment?”

“The magic will fail.” Daya’s tone turned firmer. “Thread‑weaving here runs on lifeforce magnified by unconditional love. If hatred, revenge, or petty jealousy dominate your heart, you will not be able to weave. If you attempt to push past that, you risk fraying your own thread. And there is no power in this realm—not mine, not yours—that can mend your own soul once damaged.”

The city’s beauty took on a faint edge at that. All this grace balanced on rules.

Lyria swallowed, feeling the shape of that boundary. “So I can’t use this to hurt people. Even if they… deserve it.”

“You can shield,” Daya said. “You can protect, redirect, heal. You can expose truth. But you cannot turn their will into your puppet’s strings. Not even for ‘good’ ends.”

Her hand moved through the air.

A small crescent‑moon charm appeared above Lyria’s open palm, as if dropping into it from nowhere. It was the size of a coin, carved from the same opalescent stone as her earrings, attached to a fine chain that shimmered like spun frost.

The charm warmed immediately upon contact.

“Take this,” Daya said. “It will help you learn.”

Before Lyria could respond, the charm pulsed.

A tiny projection burst from it, hovering in front of Lyria’s face—a floating crescent moon made of light, with a cartoonishly smug expression etched onto its surface.

“Divine Thread System initializing!” a voice chimed.

If laughter could be made into sound, into a person, into a chime bouncing off crystal, this was it. The tone was bright, a little too loud for the quiet room.

“Hiya, bestie!” the moon chirped. “I’m Selene—your guide, quest‑log, and future partner in palace gossip!”

Lyria blinked.

Selene wiggled, her projected form bobbing up and down. “Ooh, your vitals look good! New body, who this?”

A small bar appeared at the edge of Lyria’s vision, hovering like a HUD: a thin silver line, full, with a tiny heart icon pulsing at the end. Underneath it, faint text read: Lifeforce Reserve: Stable.

Daya’s mouth quirked. “Selene will assist you in navigating the palace and my realm,” she said. “She has access to information, not to threads. She sees what I allow her to see. She cannot compel you, nor can she perform magic herself.”

Selene threw her tiny arms wide. “Think of me as your cosmic BFF who knows where the bathroom is and which fork to use, but absolutely cannot, like, fix your love life for you. Much as I might want to.”

“You want a lot of things,” Daya murmured dryly.

Selene huffed. “I want what’s best for our girl here. Also, I want more wardrobe options. We’ll get to that.”

Lyria stared at the little moon. “You’re… an AI?” she asked, the Earth term slipping out.

“A‑ish,” Selene said. “Semi‑autonomous interface. Magical user experience overlay. U.I., if we’re being fancy. But you can call me Selene. And you, my dear, are overdue for a tutorial.”

A glowing text box popped into existence beside the floating moon:

Tutorial Quest: Moonlit Beginnings
Objective: Explore the Lunar Palace and meet key residents.
Reward: Unlock Thread Sight (basic perception only).

Lyria’s lips parted. “You sound like a game,” she said.

“Gamification improves user adherence,” Selene said primly. Then she ruined the effect by doing a little spin. “Also, it’s more fun this way.”

Daya stepped back from the arch, letting the view of the city narrow. “This palace is full of threads tangled by prejudice and fear,” she said. “Some will welcome you. Some will see you as an experiment. Learn who is who before you begin to mend anything. Observe. Listen. Remember: no weaving until your heart is steady.”

Lyria’s fingers closed around the pendant’s cool edge. The chain slid against her skin like water when she lifted it to fasten around her neck. It settled against her collarbone with a small, satisfying weight, as if it had always been meant to sit there.

She looked at Daya. “I’ll try,” she said.

“I know.” Daya’s hand brushed her cheek. “I cannot walk these halls with you every moment. But I will watch. And I will be there when you need me to be a goddess, and when you only need me to be your mother.”

The word landed different here.

Mother.

Heat pricked behind Lyria’s eyes. She dropped her gaze, not ready to let Daya see that much, not yet. But her shoulders drew back slightly, as if something invisible had slotted into place behind her spine.

“Shall we begin the tour?” Selene squealed, already zipping toward the chamber door, leaving a faint trail of pixel‑like sparks. “Fashion, politics, people who will definitely side‑eye you—we’ve got it all!”

Daya laughed softly. “Go,” she said to Lyria. “Learn what this world is, before you start changing it.”

The corridor outside Lyria’s room curved gently, following the shape of the tower. The walls were made of the same pale stone as the canopy, veined with slow‑moving light. Alcoves held carved niches where silver flames burned without smoke, casting a cool, even glow.

Large windows punctuated the corridor, their panes not glass but thin, translucent crystal etched with lunar motifs. Beyond them, the city stretched in crystalline terraces, bridges weaving between towers, waterfalls of light spilling from some unseen source down into a central plaza.

Lyria’s nightgown felt suddenly too intimate for hallway exploration.

As if sensing the thought, Selene spun around mid‑air, tiny hands on her nonexistent hips. “Okay, wardrobe first. Daya’s sense of drama is great, but you can’t meet the nobility in your sleepwear, babe.”

Lyria glanced down at herself, cheeks warming. “Is there… something else I’m supposed to wear?”

“Already queued up! Check the armoire to your left.”

A tall wardrobe stood recessed into the wall beside her door, its double doors carved with a relief of intertwined vines and crescent moons. When she touched the cool metal of the handle, it sprang open noiselessly.

Inside, gowns hung in a neat row, each on a carved hanger: shades of midnight blue, lavender, soft gray, and one daring crimson. Fabrics ranged from heavy brocades embroidered with constellations to light, gauzy layers that looked like fog caught in fabric form.

Her hand drifted toward the crimson, then paused. It was beautiful—fitted bodice, off‑the‑shoulder sleeves that would leave her collarbones bare, skirt cascading in dramatic folds. It also screamed, Look at me.

She wasn’t ready for that yet.

Selene’s moon face appeared above her shoulder. “Bold choice,” she whispered. “But maybe save the red for when we’re ready to make the court collectively choke.”

Lyria’s fingers moved to a gown three hangers over: soft dove gray, with long, fitted sleeves and a skirt that flared in gentle panels rather than dramatic swoops. Tiny silver threads had been embroidered along the hem in a pattern of overlapping arcs, like ripples on a pond under starlight.

She lifted it down.

The fabric was cool and smooth in her hands, heavier than it looked. When she slipped it over her head, it slid into place like water pouring into a vessel designed for it. The bodice hugged her torso without pinching, the waistline settling at a point that made her feel—together. Balanced. The skirt fell to just above her ankles, enough to move easily but still drape.

A full‑length mirror on the inside of the armoire door showed her the effect: a sixteen‑year‑old girl staring back, hair falling loose over the pale gray, the crescent pendant glinting at her throat.

Her hands smoothed the bodice reflexively. The gesture was unfamiliar and deeply, deeply satisfying.

Selene made a soft noise. “Yep,” she said. “That’s it. Soft power. Understated fatalism. We love to see it.”

“You cannot love,” Lyria said automatically, then felt ridiculous.

“Functionally accurate,” Selene conceded. “But I can appreciate aesthetics.”

Lyria turned slowly, watching how the skirt moved. It swayed around her calves, whispering against her skin. No shifting waistband digging into the wrong place. No pockets gaping weirdly. No hateful, too‑masculine line.

She stepped into the corridor, bare feet silent on the smooth stone.

Selene floated ahead, projecting a small, semi‑transparent map into the upper corner of Lyria’s vision: a simplified layout of the palace tower, with a tiny silver dot labeled You Are Here.

“First stop: staff corridor,” Selene narrated. “Because nobility is all well and good, but the people who know what’s actually happening around here are the ones hauling linens at ungodly hours.”

“Is that… allowed?” Lyria asked. “Just wandering?”

“They’ve been warned,” Selene said. “Daya likes her children curious. And you’re not the only one living here, you know.”

They rounded a curve.

A woman came toward them, arms loaded with folded linens that glowed faintly along their edges—moon‑infused, Lyria guessed. She wore a practical dress of deep blue, apron tied snugly around her waist, hair pinned back in a bun streaked with silver. Fine lines bracketed her mouth, the kind carved by years of tight‑smiled patience.

When she saw Lyria, she stopped so abruptly one of the folded sheets slid sideways.

“Princess,” she said, bowing quickly. Her voice was low and hoarse, as if she’d been awake since before dawn. “Forgive me—I did not hear you leave your chambers.”

Lyria’s stomach clenched. The word “Princess” landed like a borrowed coat—still too big in the shoulders. Her first instinct was to wave it away, to apologize for existing in the hallway.

She opened her mouth.

Selene’s tiny form zipped into her peripheral vision, flashing a red exclamation mark.

“Palace Tip #1,” the AI whispered. “Royals don’t apologize for existing. Try: ‘Your dedication honors the court.’”

Lyria closed her mouth, swallowed the “sorry.”

“Your dedication honors the court,” she said instead, the phrase feeling strange and formal on her tongue.

The servant’s shoulders loosened, ever so slightly. The corners of her mouth tipped up. “You are kind, Highness,” she said. “Shall I escort you to the Sunless Garden? The night‑blooms are still open.”

Lyria glanced at Selene, who waggled her eyebrows encouragingly from her place above the woman’s shoulder.

“I’d like that,” Lyria said.

They walked together down the corridor. Lyria matched her pace to the woman’s, resisting the urge to pepper her with questions about her life, her family, how long she’d worked here. The servant’s eyes flicked sideways a few times, curiosity quick under the professionalism.

“Forgive my forwardness, Highness,” she said at last. “But it is good to see you awake. Some at court…” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “Some wondered if you would… take to this realm.”

Lyria’s hand tightened around her pendant.

“Some at court think she’s a project, not a person,” Selene muttered in her ear. “Just so we’re clear.”

Lyria didn’t answer the AI. She didn’t have to. The way her jaw set, the small flare in her nostrils, said enough.

The corridor opened into a broad archway. Beyond it, the Sunless Garden stretched in a wide, circular courtyard open to the sky. The name felt wrong at first glance; the place glowed.

Plants unlike any on Earth filled tiered beds and climbing trellises: vines with translucent leaves that glowed faintly from their veins outward; shrubs bearing flowers whose petals shaded from deep indigo at their base to pale silver at the tips; tall stalks topped with spherical blooms that pulsed gently, like breathing.

No sunlight reached here—only the constant, gentle radiance of the looming moon and the stars above. The air smelled of damp stone, sweet blossoms, and something sharp and clean, like the air after lightning.

A path of pale tiles wound through the beds. As Lyria stepped onto it, the tiles lit beneath her feet, marking her trail with a slow ripple of light.

Her chest loosened. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, unplanned.

The servant dipped a brief curtsey. “I’ll leave you to your walk, Highness.”

Lyria looked at her, the impulse to ask her name strong on her tongue.

“Not yet,” Selene said softly. “We’ll see her again. Save the deep dives for when you’ve got more context.”

Lyria nodded once, both to the servant and, slightly, to the disembodied voice. The woman retreated, her own dress swaying simply, the hem brushing the lit tiles into darkness again.

Lyria walked deeper into the garden.

The plants weren’t uniform. Some beds were meticulously pruned; others were more wild, tendrils spilling over stone edges as if testing boundaries. Tiny lights—fireflies? No. Little motes of magic—drifted between blossoms, drawn more strongly to some than others.

She brushed the petals of a low flower near the path. Its surface was cool and slightly waxy, but warmth pulsed from its center, like a heartbeat.

“I feel like I’m in a video game,” she murmured.

“Welcome to Star Realm Online,” Selene said cheerfully. “Except there’s no respawn and your choices actually matter. Fun, right?”

Lyria snorted softly. The sound surprised her again. She hadn’t known she could snort and still feel… pretty.

Movement beyond the nearest trellis caught her eye.

Two figures stood in a side path: a young footman in simple tunic and trousers, his hands twisting the edge of his cap, and a woman in a gown of dark green velvet, her sleeves slashed to show pale chemise beneath, her hair coiled in an intricate style that probably took a maid an hour. Strings of tiny starstones decorated her braids, winking with every tilt of her head.

Their voices carried faintly.

“…not a true heir,” the woman said. The words were sugar‑coated, but the sneer beneath them carried. “Plucked from a dying world to play at princess. Daya’s… project.”

The footman glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide, thread of anxiety written in every tight movement. “My lady, if someone hears—”

“Let them,” she said, flicking a hand. Bracelets chimed. “A goddess may weave what she pleases, but bloodlines are not so easily rewritten.”

Lyria went very still.

Her first instinct was to duck behind a vine, to fold herself smaller, to be unseen. Years of doing exactly that made her muscles start the motion before she thought.

Her second impulse, newer and more fragile, was to step forward and announce herself, to let the woman choke slightly on her own words.

She did neither.

Instead, she turned slowly and walked away, back along the path. The tiles lit under her feet again, steady and certain.

Selene hovered at her shoulder, little moon‑face watching her.

“You could’ve called her out,” Selene said. No judgement. Just observation.

“I could have,” Lyria agreed.

Her fingers relaxed one by one from the fist they’d curled into.

“She’s wrong,” Selene added. “About bloodlines.”

“I know,” Lyria said. “But I also know what it’s like to have your existence be someone else’s debate topic. I’m not giving her that stage.”

The AI emitted a small sound, like a hum of approval. “Noted. Plus ten to emotional intelligence.”

Lyria huffed a laugh through her nose. The tension in her shoulders eased a fraction.

They spent the next stretch of time—she couldn’t have said how long; the sky didn’t change—moving through different sections of the palace.

Selene steered her to the servants’ dining hall at off‑hours, where a cook in a flour‑dusted apron paused mid‑stir when Lyria entered, then offered her a bowl of something steaming without fawning. Lyria tried it, eyes widening at the taste: not quite any spice she knew, but warm, grounding. She listened to the murmur of conversations at the far tables, catching scraps of words like “patrol rotation” and “thread‑sick cousin,” storing them away.

They passed through a gallery where portraits lined the walls: past champions, past daughters, past consorts. Lyria stood before one painting longer than the others—someone with a jaw like hers, wearing armor inlaid with tiny moons and a dress whose skirts had been slashed to reveal leggings beneath. The plaque bore a name she didn’t recognize. She traced the air beneath it, feeling an odd kinship with a stranger painted centuries ago.

Later, Selene coaxed her into a rehearsal room where dancers practiced a formal pattern, skirts swishing in unison. The dance mistress, severe in a candle‑flame orange gown, eyed Lyria critically, then nodded once and beckoned her into the line. Lyria’s steps were unsure, but her body knew how to follow rhythm. By the third sequence, she was turning at the right beat, her gray skirt flaring among the others like part of a pattern instead of a disruption.

Through it all, threads floated at the edge of Lyria’s perception. Not lines, not yet. Hints. A faint halo around some people—brighter near the cook who’d offered her food, dim near the green‑gowned noble. She reached for them instinctively and found nothing to grasp.

By the time she returned to her chamber, her bare feet were chilled and her head buzzed with new names, half‑remembered directions, and the way her dress had moved when she’d bowed to the dancers at the end of their practice.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, letting the quiet of the room settle around her like a cloak.

Selene dimmed a bit, as if respecting the stillness. “Tutorial complete,” she said softly. “You survived your first day without tripping over your hem or punching a noble. Gold star.”

A notification bloomed in Lyria’s vision:

Quest Complete: Moonlit Beginnings
Reward: Thread Sight – Tier 1 (Perception only).

The world shifted.

For a heartbeat, everything in the room pulsed—the bed, the rug, the mirror frame—as if a web of fine, luminous lines had been overlaid on reality.

Then it snapped into clarity.

Lines—threads—stretched from Lyria’s chest out into space, faint and silver. One ran toward the archway, out into the city, thinning as it went: Daya. Another, softer, newly woven, curled toward a point somewhere below and to the left: the servant with the linens. A cluster of very faint threads drifted off toward more distant points—faces she had passed, eyes that had met hers for half a heartbeat.

She gasped.

Her own thread, when she looked down, arched from her sternum upward through the ceiling and beyond, into the sky. It glowed brighter than the others, shot through with many colors: silver, indigo, a line of deep ruby that pulsed faintly as if in anticipation.

Her fingers twitched, wanting to touch it.

She raised her hand.

The thread shimmered prettily and remained out of reach.

She tried again, focusing on the faint line leading toward the kitchens, thinking of the cook’s flour‑dusted hands, the way she’d slid the bowl of steaming stew across the counter with no comment on titles.

Nothing.

The threads moved when she moved, floating gently, but no matter how she reached, they stayed intangible, like reflections on water.

“Careful,” Selene said quietly. Her usual lilt was muted. “You’re seeing, not weaving. There’s a difference.”

Lyria dropped her hand, heart thudding. “I just wanted to… smooth something,” she said. “Just a little. Isolde. That noble woman. Or that footman. Or—”

“Or yourself,” Selene supplied.

Lyria’s mouth closed.

“I see you want to fix everything,” Selene continued, drifting closer until her projection hovered near Lyria’s shoulder. “Understandable. But your magic has… rules. You can’t force anything. Not a noble’s heart, not a servant’s fear, not your own scars. And you definitely can’t tweak your thread, even if it’s just to, like, increase your Charisma by five percent.”

“That’s not what I—” Lyria started, then stopped. The protest felt too much like old defensiveness.

Selene let her hover in that silence for a beat.

“To weave,” the AI said finally, “you’ll need three things. Training. Lifeforce to spend. And a heart that’s… clear. Not empty. Not numb. Just not tangled in wanting to punish.”

Lyria moved to the mirror.

The girl in gray looked back, pendant resting against her collarbone, threads curling around her like filaments in a lamp. Her own face still made her breath catch. But now, behind that face, she saw the line of her thread stretching up and up, too bright, too fragile.

“What happens if I ignore that?” Lyria asked, eyes still on her reflection. “If I try anyway. Out of anger.”

“The weave won’t hold,” Selene said. “Your magic will sputter. And if you keep pushing, you risk your own thread fraying. You can’t patch that. Not even Daya can. You tear yourself too much, and you’ll start slipping.” A pause. “In and out.”

“In and out of… where?” Lyria asked, though she knew.

“The place between tapestries.” Selene didn’t dress it up. “The place you came from when you left Earth. Not fun. Ten out of ten do not recommend.”

Lyria’s fingers tightened on the edge of the vanity.

In the mirror, her eyes were wide, pupils dilated. Her shoulders had gone stiff again, the way they had in HR meetings, in alleys, at family dinners where her father had refused to say her name.

She forced her grip to loosen. One finger at a time.

“I don’t want to disappear again,” she said. Her voice was very soft.

“Then don’t,” Selene said. “You don’t have to fix everything tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever, honestly. You’re allowed to—wild idea incoming—live. Eat starfruit tarts. Teach nobles how wrong they are by existing. Form crushes. Adopt stray kids.” The last part came out too quickly, like a glitch, but she barreled on. “Weave when your heart’s ready, not when your guilt is screaming.”

Lyria’s mouth twitched despite herself.

The threads around her pulsed gently, as if in agreement.

She lifted a hand again, slower this time. Not to grab, but to trace the air along the line of her own thread, following it upward with her eyes.

It led somewhere she couldn’t see yet.

She let her hand fall.

“Okay,” she said. “Seeing is enough for today.”

Selene dimmed further, her projection shrinking. “Good call,” she said. “We’ll practice with things like, ‘Is this noble secretly aligned with Alus?’ and ‘Does this servant actually hate you or are they just sleep‑deprived?’ before we attempt ‘Rewrite the consequences of generational trauma.’ Baby steps.”

Lyria laughed once, a small, half‑exhale. It eased the tightness in her chest.

She unfastened the crescent pendant and set it carefully on the nightstand, next to the vase of moonflowers. The blossoms glowed softly in the dimming light, their petals curling inward as if settling to sleep.

Thread Sight faded from full intensity to a faint overlay, like afterimages behind her eyelids. She let it.

As she slipped the nightgown back over her head and slid under the dusky duvet, the bed’s warmth enveloped her. The beads of tiny moons pressed against her ribs in reassuring lines.

She lay on her side, facing the window slit where a slice of the indigo sky showed between curtains. The moon hung huge and close, cratered face serene.

Her hand found the spot at her chest where her thread emerged. There was no physical mark, but she pressed her palm there anyway, as if she could feel the line anchor.

Somewhere far away, threads twisted by Alus writhed. Somewhere closer, threads around servants and nobles and a certain young astrologer she had barely met shimmered faintly.

Tonight, she could only see.

Tomorrow, she would begin to learn what to do with that sight.

In the quiet, with the palace’s stone breathing slow and deep around her, the words Daya had spoken in the mist echoed softly:

The thread begins anew.

Lyria’s eyes closed.

Sleep came, not like falling, but like being gently woven into a pattern that had waited a long time for her shape.