Chapter 1: The Burning of Strings
The night Lyra's world ended smelled of pine resin and blood.
She crouched behind the splintered husk of her family's caravan, the painted flowers on its side blackened by fire. Somewhere in the smoke, her sister Aria was still playing, a defiant, trembling melody on her bone flute, the song fraying at the edges like torn lace.
"Lyra," Aria had hissed moments before the soldiers came, shoving her into the hollow beneath the caravan's floorboards. "Don't make a sound. Not even if you hear me scream."
But Lyra heard everything.
The thud of arrows sinking into flesh. The wet gasp of her father's last breath. The laughter of the king's soldiers as they overturned cauldrons of stew onto the embers of the campfire, hissing steam drowning out the whimpers of the dying.
And then, the hoofbeats.
Slow and Deliberate.
Through a crack in the floorboards, Lyra watched as a warhorse clad in onyx armor halted inches from her hiding spot. Its rider dismounted, boots crunching on the frost-hardened earth. She knew him instantly, King Veyl, the Butcher of Strings, his face carved into her nightmares from a hundred rebel campfire tales.
But the stories never mentioned how young he was.
Or how beautiful.
Veyl's ash-blond hair fell loose around shoulders broad enough to bear the weight of his bloodstained reputation. His eyes, sharp as cracked ice, scanned the carnage. Lyra's breath hitched as his gaze lingered on the caravan. For a heartbeat, she swore he stared directly into the dark where she hid.
Then he turned, his voice a low rasp that slithered down her spine.
"Find the older sister. The one who plays."
Aria's flute fell silent.
Lyra's nails dug into her palms. She knew that song, The Lay of Hollow Stars, their mother's lullaby. Aria only played it when terrified.
Boots scuffed dirt. A soldier dragged Aria forward by her hair, her flute clutched in one shaking hand. Even now, her sister looked ethereal, moonlight catching the silver streaks in her black braids, her olive skin smudged with soot but unbroken.
Veyl tilted Aria's chin up with the tip of his sword.
"You warned them I'd come," he said, almost gently. "Why?"
Aria spat at his feet.
The blade pressed deeper. A bead of blood welled beneath its edge.
Lyra bit her tongue until copper flooded her mouth. Don't scream. Don't scream.
"You think your music makes you righteous?" Veyl's thumb brushed the line of Aria's jaw, a perverse caress. "I've heard of your little rebellions. Whispers in taverns. Lullabies that turn men's hearts to rot."
Aria laughed, the sound raw and broken. "You're the rot. This curse will eat you alive, and I'll laugh from the hell you send me to."
Veyl went still.
Lyra saw the his eyes flicker, the shadows beneath his eyes, the tremor in his hand. A flicker of something like grief.
Then it vanished.
"Burn her," he said.
Lyra didn't remember scrambling out of the caravan. Didn't remember the scream tearing from her throat as two soldiers pinned her in the mud. She only saw Aria, her sister, her compass, her first harmony, thrown onto the pyre of their mother's tapestries.
Aria met her eyes. Smiled.
And played.
The note she blew into the flute wasn't music. It was a shriek, a keening wail that split the night. The soldiers staggered, clutching their ears. Veyl's horse reared, screaming as blood trickled from its nostrils.
"RUN, LYRA!"
Lyra ran.
Behind her, the world exploded.
She woke to the smell of burnt sugar and decay.
The pyre had reduced the caravan to a skeleton of blackened wood. Dawn painted the sky in bruise-purple hues, the snow-dusted pines standing sentinel over the dead. Lyra crawled toward the ashes, her hands blistering as she sifted through cinders.
She found Aria curled like a sleeping child, her body preserved by some cruel magic. Her ribs arched from her chest like the bars of a broken lyre.
Lyra vomited.
When she wiped her mouth, her fingers brushed the cold bone. Aria's flute lay intact amid the ash, its surface etched with runes that hadn't been there before. Lyra reached for it..
"Don't."
Aria's voice. But her lips didn't move.
Lyra recoiled. The flute pulsed, a faint hum vibrating in her teeth.
"Take my bones," the voice whispered. "Finish the song."
Lyra's hands moved without consent.
She snapped Aria's ribcage apart.
The knife was dull.
It took hours to carve the flute, her fingers numb with cold and grief. She worked in a daze, Aria's voice guiding her: "Deeper. Cleaner. They'll pay, sister. We'll make them pay."
When it was done, the flute gleamed like polished ivory. Lyra pressed it to her lips.
The first note tasted of vengeance.
It tore through the forest, a sound like wolves howling in unison. Trees bent. Not away from the noise, toward it, their branches clawing at the sky as roots ripped free of the soil. Lyra's breath faltered, but the flute wouldn't let her stop. It drank her grief like wine, the melody sharpening into a blade.
The soldiers found her first.
They came crashing through the undergrowth, swords drawn, faces twisted with rage. The one who'd laughed as he described slaughtering children lunged at her. Lyra blew harder.
His armor sang.
A high, metallic shriek erupted from his breastplate. He stumbled, clawing at the metal as it crumpled inward, flattening his ribs like paper. The others froze, eyes wide as their own weapons turned traitor, daggers twisting in palms, arrowheads rotating in quivers to aim backward. One man screamed as his helmet fused to his skull, the steel shrinking until his skull cracked like an egg.
Lyra's lungs burned. The flute's voice grew louder, wilder, until even the air itself seemed to vibrate with its hunger. Snow melted and refroze midair, forming jagged icicles that stabbed downward. A pine tree split with a groan, its trunk splintering into a thousand wooden needles that tore through flesh.
When silence fell, Lyra collapsed to her knees.
The clearing was a tapestry of carnage. Bodies lay mangled in ways that defied reason, a soldier's spine coiled like fiddle strings, another's face fused to the frozen earth. The flute hummed warmly in her grip, its surface now streaked with crimson veins.
"Good,"Aria's voice purred in her mind. "But this is only the prelude."
Lyra stared at her hands. Blood crusted her fingernails—Aria's blood, the soldiers' blood, maybe her own. She retched again, but nothing came up.
"Don't waver now," the flute hissed. "You owe the world a symphony."
A cold wind stirred the ashes of the caravan. Lyra stood, her legs trembling, and tucked the flute into her belt. It nestled against her hip like a living thing, its pulse steady and mocking.
In the distance, a crow shrieked.
King Veyl's warhorse stood at the edge of the clearing, its onyx armor glinting. Empty.
A message hung from its saddle—a scroll tied with a lock of silver-streaked hair. Aria's hair.
Lyra unrolled the parchment. Two lines slashed across the page in ink the color of dried blood:
Come to my court, little songbird.
Let us finish your sister's duet.
The horse dissolved into shadows, leaving behind a trail of hoofprints that glowed faintly blue in the snow. A path. A taunt.
"He fears you," the flute whispered. "But I'll make him beg before we're done."
Lyra tucked the lock of hair into her tunic, its strands icy against her skin. She raised the flute to her lips, her
next breath trembling with the weight of a thousand unsung dirges.
Somewhere ahead, a king waited.
Somewhere behind, a ghost smiled.