# Character Sheet: Lyra Vance

## Identity
- Full name: Lyra Vance
- Age: 27
- Role: Protagonist
- Faction/School: Independent (Locals of Cypress Bend / The Unseen)

## Voice Signature
- Stress expression scale: "It’s fine." = minor | "We need a plan, now." = upset | [Dead silence and white knuckles] = furious
- Verbal tic: Uses technical or architectural metaphors to describe people (e.g., "he has no load-bearing integrity").
- Sentence length pattern: Short, clipped declaratives when stressed; dense, descriptive observations when she feels safe or solitary.
- What they REACH FOR: Tactile. She feels the texture of wood, the weight of a crowbar, or the temperature of the air to ground herself.
- What they NEVER say: "I'm scared" or "I need help."
- Imperfection signature: When she is truly overwhelmed, she stops finishing sentences entirely, leaving the logic hanging in the air for someone else to bridge.
- One example line of their dialogue that could not belong to any other character:
  "The foundation of this entire town is rotting from the water table up, and you’re asking me if I like the new paint job on the gazebo?"

## Magic / Power / Special Ability
- School/Discipline: Psychometric Intuition (Structural focus)
- Core principle: Everything built by human hands retains the kinetic energy and intent of its creator.
- Signature move or approach: Touching a doorframe or transition point to "see" who passed through it and what their emotional state was.
- Limitation: It causes severe physical migraines and sensory "echoes" where she can't distinguish her own memories from the building's.
- Shared uncertainty: Does the house hate the inhabitants, or did the inhabitants teach the house how to hate?

## Arc
- Want: To flip the Blackwood Manor and leave Cypress Bend forever with enough money to never look back.
- Need: To acknowledge that she is part of the town’s history and stop running from the "rot" inside herself.
- Fatal flaw: Hyper-independence. She views any form of reliance on others as a structural weakness.
- Wound: The mysterious disappearance of her father during the 1998 flood, which the town blamed on his "unstable" nature.
- Transformation: From a cynical outsider trying to dismantle the past to the guardian who must reinforce the town’s spiritual foundations to save it.

## Relationships
- Elias Thorne: Love Interest — A wary, intellectual tension defined by Elias's desire to document the supernatural and Lyra's desire to physically gut it.
- Mayor Miller: Antagonist — A paternalistic but suffocating dynamic where Miller tries to "manage" Lyra while she actively tries to expose his family's role in the town's decay.
- Sarah Vance: Mother — A strained, distant relationship where both women use household chores and small talk to avoid discussing the "gift" they both share.

## Notes for Writers
- Lyra’s tell: She constantly adjusts her sleeves or checks her watch when she’s lying; she hates having her wrists exposed when she feels vulnerable.
- Speech quirk: She refers to buildings as "he" or "she" rather than "it," treating architecture as a living, breathing antagonist.
- Readers must NEVER see Lyra cry in front of another person; if she breaks, she ensures she is behind a locked door or deep in the woods.
- She carries a heavy brass key on a leather cord that doesn't fit any lock she’s found yet—she threads it through her fingers like a worry stone.
- She has a "contractor’s eye"—she will notice a hairline crack in a ceiling or a damp patch on a rug before she notices the person standing in the room.