Veilborn

In a world where loyalty is currency and silence is survival, Zoe struggles quietly to stay afloat. Beneath her gentle smiles and whispered apologies is a girl fighting not to disappear. She feels like a ghost in her own life-caught between who she's supposed to be and the nagging sense that something is deeply wrong.

Whispers swirl through the city streets. Secrets hide around every corner. The people around her play games she doesn't fully understand-yet she's closer to them than she knows.

Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Old enough to survive alone, young enough to feel the weight pressing her down. Most days, she drags herself through the motions: clock in. Get scolded. Scrape together rent. Repeat. Hope is scarce. Trust scarcer. Yet beneath her guarded silence, she still dreams.

What keeps her going? A memory, faint but burning-her mother, who saw light where no one else did. Maybe it's spite. Maybe it's the aching need to break free from a cycle that's gnawed at her for as long as she can remember.

Her world is messy, tangled with politics and secrets of powerful families-some connections she doesn't even realize yet. Some people are kind. Some are cruel. Some... far more than they seem. And Zoe? She's just trying to breathe, carving a sliver of space for herself, one defiant step at a time.

Because if she stops, even for a moment... everything she's fought for could slip away. And no one will wait for her to rise again.