Paper Skin, Iron Hearts

Seventeen-year-old Lyra doesn't speak much-not since the night everything shattered. Haunted by a past too painful to name, she spends her days in silence, her nights in shadows, and her heart locked behind walls no one dares to climb. Therapy is just another room she sits in, counting ceiling cracks and waiting for the hour to end.

Until Zev walks in.

Late. Defiant. Broken in ways he doesn't bother to hide.

Zev has scars too-the kind you can't see unless you've lived through the same fire. When their paths cross in a circle of silence and trauma, something shifts. Slowly, quietly, they begin to see through each other's darkness. He doesn't ask her to speak. She doesn't ask him to explain. But together, they begin to breathe again.

In a world that's taught them both to hide, Lyra and Zev might just learn how to heal-one whispered truth, one broken piece at a time.