# Character Sheet: Lyra

## Identity
- Full name: Lyra Vance
- Age: 19
- Role: Protagonist
- Faction/School: The Weaver’s Guild (Apprentice / Discarded)

## Voice Signature
- Stress expression scale: "It’s fine." = minor | "The pattern is fraying." = upset | "Let it burn then." = furious
- Verbal tic: Uses weaving metaphors unconsciously (e.g., "counting threads," "loose ends," "tightly wound") particularly when judging people's reliability.
- Sentence length pattern: Rhythmic and balanced. She speaks in triplets when confident; when panicked, her sentences become clipped, one-word commands.
- What they REACH FOR: Tactile. She constantly seeks textures—rubbing the hem of her sleeve, tracing the grain of a wooden table, or feeling for the "vibration" of magic in the air.
- What they NEVER say: "I trust you." (She might say "I believe you," but trust is a physical bond she doesn't grant lightly).
- Imperfection signature: When overwhelmed, she loses her metaphoric shield and becomes brutally, awkwardly literal, stripping away all subtext.
- One example line of their dialogue that could not belong to any other character:
  "You're a snag in a masterpiece, Silas; stay still before I’m forced to cut you out of the loom entirely."

## Magic / Power / Special Ability
- School/Discipline: Chrono-Weaving (The Binding Thread)
- Core principle: Reality is a tapestry of simultaneous moments; magic is the act of pulling a single thread from the past or future into the "now."
- Signature move or approach: *The Half-Stitch* — momentarily freezing a person or object in time by "pinning" their thread to the current second.
- Limitation: Every thread she pulls leaves a "Thinning" in her own timeline. If she overuses her power, she begins to physically fade or lose her own memories.
- Shared uncertainty: If a thread is pulled and the tapestry changes, was the original pattern ever real to begin with?

## Arc
- Want: To reclaim her seat in the Weaver’s Guild and prove she wasn't the one who broke the Great Loom.
- Need: To accept that the Guild's "perfect pattern" was a cage and that chaos (the frayed edge) is necessary for growth.
- Fatal flaw: Perfectionism. She would rather destroy a project than see it finished with a single visible mistake.
- Wound: Her mother, a Master Weaver, "unraveled" herself to save Lyra during a localized time-collapse, leaving Lyra with the paralyzing guilt of being the "thread that cost a soul."
- Transformation: From a rigid conformist seeking validation to a rebel who uses her "errors" as the foundation for a new kind of magic.

## Relationships
- Silas Thorne: Rival/Antagonist — A relationship of sharp edges and mutual begrudging respect; he represents the Guild's cold order that she both hates and craves.
- Kaelen: Love Interest/Ally — An "Unbound" who has no thread in the tapestry; his unpredictability terrifies her order-obsessed mind but offers her the only true freedom she’s ever known.

## Notes for Writers
- Lyra never looks people in the eye when she’s thinking; she looks at their hands to see how they "handle" the world.
- She has a physical tell: she counts under her breath (1, 2, 3, 4...) in sets of four when she is trying to manifest her power or stay calm.
- Despite her elegance, she is incredibly messy in her private workspace; she only enforces order on things she cannot control.
- Never write Lyra as "clumsy" or "stumbling." Even when she's failing, her movements are precise and intentional.
- She would never ask for help directly. She frames requests as "corrections needing to be made" or "logical necessities."