Julian Croft had become a small point of light in the suffocating darkness. He and Lyra sat in a quiet corner of the studio commissary, a shared cup of tea between them. His easy friendship demanded nothing, a stark contrast to a world that seemed determined to take everything.
“You’re ready for this week?” he asked gently.
Lyra managed a small smile. “As I’ll ever be.” She was focused on the music. It was the only thing she could control. The only thing that felt real.
Her phone buzzed on the table, but she ignored it.
***
Miles away, Isolde reviewed the file her associate had just sent. He had used back channels, paid off a disgruntled court clerk, and unearthed a ghost.
A sealed juvenile record.
The raw facts were ugly, a brutal story of a young girl and a monster of a stepfather. A story of fear and survival.
Isolde felt no pity. She felt only the cold, thrilling certainty of a predator finding a fatal weakness. This wasn’t a tragedy. This was a weapon.
With meticulous precision, she began to twist the narrative. The frightened girl became a manipulative delinquent. The stepfather’s abuse became a troubled youth’s cry for attention. Lyra’s desperate attempts to be believed were reframed as a lifelong pattern of fabricating stories for sympathy and personal gain.
She crafted the lie with the care of a novelist, building a character so broken, so inherently untrustworthy, that the public would have no choice but to recoil in disgust. This, she thought with a surge of triumph, was the kill shot.
She attached the sealed documents and the freshly typed narrative to an email. The recipient was a notorious online tabloid, an outlet known for its predatory tactics and complete lack of ethics.
She pressed send.
***
The story broke like a fever. It spread through social media with vicious speed.
Zara saw it first. A news alert on her phone made her blood run cold. She tried to call Lyra, to warn her, to get there before the poison reached her.
But it was too late.
In the back of the car on her way home from the studio, Lyra finally glanced at her phone. A single headline, pushed to her screen from a news app, stared back at her.
STARLIGHT’S GHOST: A Secret History of Manipulation and Family Destruction.
The world went silent. The hum of the engine, the sound of the tires on the pavement—it all faded to a dull roar in her ears. Her breath caught in her throat. Her vision tunneled until only the words remained.
She didn’t make a sound. She simply folded in on herself, a quiet, complete collapse as the deepest, most guarded trauma of her life was laid bare for the world to see.
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