PROLOGUE : THE GLASS CAGE
The scent of dried roots and bitter sage clung to the manor like a lingering curse.
Nine-year-old Astrid hid beneath the velvet shadows of Lord Randall’s grand study, her fingers trembling against her knees. Once, these walls breathed with the radiant warmth of her late mother, Lady Lyra—a woman whose skin hummed with the silver light of ancient, forgotten magic.
Now, Lady Lyra was only a phantom in the dust, and darkness had claimed the house.
"She is a hollow shell, Randall," a voice purred, smooth as dark honey spilled over cold stone.
Serene glided beside Lord Randall’s chair, her copper-red hair falling over her shoulders like dying embers. Her pale fingers stroked his neck, slipping a crystal vial silently back into her velvet robes.
"Look at her," Serene whispered, her eyes glowing with a strange, hypnotic charm. "She has no voice to utter her own name. Her wolf, slumbers in a grave beneath her skin. The high council will mock you for harbouring a broken child."
Lord Randall’s gaze was glazed, hollowed out by the slow, The noble Alpha spark in his eyes was dimming, drowning in an artificial fog.
"She... she is Lyra’s child..." Randall murmured faintly, his voice echoing as if from the bottom of a deep well. "Lyra’s blood was silver... her magic..."
"Lyra is dust," Serene hissed gently into his ear, her words weaving like silk threads around his mind. "And your little Astrid is a voiceless phantom. My Clara will bring glory to your name. Astrid is merely a thorn in your side—a useless outcast."
Randall bowed his head, submitting to the quiet dark. "Yes... an outcast..."
Behind the velvet curtain, little Astrid pressed her hands over her mouth, her chest heaving with unuttered screams. She wanted to wail, to shatter the glass walls of her throat, to drag her father back into the light!
She opened her lips, straining with every fiber of her small soul—
Nothing.
Only an icy numbness bloomed in her throat. The sweet, herbal brew Serene forced her to drink each morning had done its dark work, binding her vocal cords in iron chains and burying her silver power deep within her flesh.
Serene turned slowly, her lips curving into a cold, triumphant smile. She knew the girl was there.
'Scream into the void, little bird,' Serene’s thought echoed directly inside Astrid’s mind. 'Your ancient power belongs to my Clara now, your father will wither in his seat, and you shall remain a ghost in your own home.'
Nine years passed.
Her voice remained locked in frost. Her wolf, lay dormant in the dark. Not responsive.. To the world, Astrid grew into an ethereal, porcelain doll—too exquisite to ignore, yet too flawed to ever be desired.
They believed her silence was surrender.
They did not know that beneath her violet eyes, a quiet wildfire was waiting for a single spark to burn down their world.
