Celestial Bonds

Chapter 1: The Loner Girl

The sound of the school bell echoed in Lyra’s ears as she walked down the crowded hallway of Ridgeway High. She kept her head low, avoiding eye contact with the students who moved past her like a river flowing around a rock. Her dark hair fell over her face, a curtain to hide behind. Being invisible was a skill she had mastered over the years—no friends, no conversations, no trouble.

She found solace in being alone. It was easier to control the storm inside her that way.

Ridgeway High was like any other small-town high school. The cliques were clearly defined, and if you didn’t fit into one of them, you were automatically branded as an outsider. Lyra had never cared for the social games the other students played. She wasn’t interested in being popular or noticed. In fact, she worked hard to avoid attention.

Her secret wasn’t something that could be explained. Not to the kids at Ridgeway High, not to her teachers, and certainly not to the world at large. There was something different about her—something she had been forced to hide for as long as she could remember.

Lyra slipped into her usual seat at the back of the classroom, pulling out her worn notebook. The pages were filled with doodles and half-written poems, but nothing significant. She was distracted, her thoughts always a million miles away from the mundane routines of high school life.

Her gaze drifted to the crescent-shaped mark on her wrist, a birthmark that had appeared suddenly when she was eight years old. It wasn’t a normal birthmark—sometimes it would glow faintly, especially when she was upset or scared. But no one else had ever noticed. Not even her guardian, Althea, had explained what it meant.

Althea wasn’t like most guardians either. She was eccentric, to say the least. She claimed to know things that others didn’t, and though she loved Lyra fiercely, she had always been vague about Lyra’s origins. Any questions Lyra had asked about her past were met with cryptic responses, always ending with, “You’ll understand when the time is right.”

Lyra didn’t push for answers anymore. She had learned to live with the unknowns, with the strange energy that sometimes surged through her body when she was overwhelmed, and the odd dreams that left her feeling like she was from another world entirely.

Today was supposed to be like any other day—blending into the background, keeping to herself, and surviving high school one day at a time. That was until he walked in.

The door creaked open, and the hum of conversation in the classroom faded to a whisper. Lyra glanced up from her notebook and froze.

A boy stood at the front of the room, tall and striking, with dark, tousled hair that fell just over his eyes. His face was angular, with sharp cheekbones and piercing eyes so dark they were almost black. He had an aura about him, something magnetic, something… otherworldly.

“Everyone, this is Calix. He’ll be joining us for the rest of the semester,” Mrs. Grant, their homeroom teacher, announced.

Calix didn’t smile. He didn’t introduce himself. He simply nodded once and scanned the room with an intensity that sent a chill down Lyra’s spine.

Her heart skipped a beat when his gaze landed on her. Their eyes locked for a split second, but it felt like an eternity. A strange warmth spread through her body, and for a moment, she thought the crescent mark on her wrist might be glowing. She quickly covered it with her sleeve, hoping no one had noticed.

Calix’s eyes lingered on her a moment longer before he turned and walked to the back of the room, taking a seat a few rows in front of her. The air felt heavier with him nearby, as if the room had shifted.

Lyra couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Or maybe it was right, in a way she didn’t understand. But one thing was certain—Calix was different, and for the first time in a long while, she felt something stir inside her.