The next morning arrived cloaked in a slow, dull light. Rain tapped insistently against the windowpanes, like restless, probing fingers, each soft rap echoing the disquiet in Lyra’s soul.
Lyra sat at the wooden table, a steaming mug cradled in her palms, the warmth a stark contrast to the chill that seemed to emanate from within her. She hadn’t taken a single sip, her gaze fixed on the page before her—a sheet of parchment now covered in a chaotic scrawl of hurried, almost desperate notes.
She had meticulously transcribed it all: the disembodied voice from her unsettling dream, the pervasive, chilling sensation of being watched, the shadowy figure that materialized from the darkness, its eyes burning with an unnatural luminescence, and most haunting of all—the cryptic words it had whisp
