Arya wasn't planning to wander. It just happened. One minute she was leaving hockey practice, stick slung over her shoulder, jersey half-shoved into her duffel, the next she was cutting down an alley behind the school, following the fading orange smudge of the setting sun.

The air was crisp, the kind of early spring chill that bit at her fingertips. The concrete under her boots was cracked and uneven. She liked places like this, forgotten places. No one expected anything from you in places like this.

It caught her eye without warning.

Tucked into the far corner of a crumbling brick wall, half-hidden by overgrown vines and the wreckage of an old fence, was a mural.

Big, rough, beautiful in a way that felt almost reckless.

A girl.

Laughing, head thrown back, eyes shut, alive.

Not polished. Not perfect. Not posed.

Just real.

Her hair was a wild mess around her face. Her shirt was torn at the sleeve. Her body was marked with smudges and scratches like battle scars.

And underneath it, painted in heavy, confident strokes:

Built from fire. Still standing.

Arya stopped, her duffel slipping slightly from her shoulder.

Something inside her chest, something she had not even realised she had been bracing for, cracked open.

It wasn't that the girl looked like her. She didn't. It wasn't that Arya liked art. She didn't, particularly. It was something deeper than recognition.

Something raw. Something like standing in front of a mirror you didn't know you needed.

She stepped closer, her fingers twitching at her sides.

The lines of the mural were wild, the shading messy and alive, the white, grey, and black palette somehow burning brighter than anything else she had seen all week.

Near the bottom, a small signature caught her eye.

Graea.

Simple. Sharp.

Arya tilted her head slightly.

She had heard the name whispered around school. Graea, the street artist no one could catch. Some teachers called it vandalism. Some kids called it art.

Arya didn't know what it was.

She just knew that standing here, staring at this mural, she didn't feel like she was looking at something. She felt like she was being seen.

Really, properly seen.

She didn't tell anyone.

She didn't take a picture.

She didn't even think about mentioning it when she got home.

Some things you didn't share right away. Some things you held tight to your chest, quiet and trembling and yours.

Arya slung her duffel bag back over her shoulder, took one last look at the mural, and walked away into the falling dusk.

But something lingered in her chest as she went.

Something heavy. Something hopeful. Something burning.

⸻

The mural stayed burned into Arya's mind the whole walk home.

Every time she blinked, she could see it again. The wild hair. The reckless laugh. The way the words felt like they were stitched directly into her ribs.

Built from fire. Still standing.

She kicked a stray stone down the cracked pavement, her duffel bag heavy against her shoulder, but somehow she barely felt it.

When she finally reached the Phantom house, the sprawling rented place they called home for now, the porch light was already on, spilling soft gold over the front steps.

Laughter drifted from inside, muted and warm.

Arya hesitated at the bottom of the steps, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

She should go inside.

She should dump her stuff, collapse on the couch, steal whatever leftovers Tyler and Sky had not devoured, and lose herself in the familiar noise of the people she loved.

But instead, she sank down onto the porch steps, the duffel sliding to the ground beside her.

The air smelled faintly of cut grass.

She tilted her head back, looking up at the bruised purple sky, the first stars blinking through.

The feeling had not gone away. If anything, it had settled heavier inside her.

She dug through her backpack, pulling out an old, battered spiral notebook, the kind she used for random lists or forgotten homework, and stared at the blank back page.

For a second, she just sat there. Pen poised. Not moving.

Then, without really thinking about it, she started to sketch.

It was rough. Clumsy. Messy in a way that would have made Tessa roll her eyes and Dominic snatch the pen from her hand to fix it.

But Arya did not care.

She was not trying to draw well. She was trying not to forget.

The wild hair. The messy lines. The crooked grin.

And underneath it, in her own jagged handwriting, she wrote the words again.

Built from fire. Still standing.

Her chest tightened a little as she looked at it.

She did not know who Graea was.

She did not know why this mattered so much. She just knew it did.

A voice called from inside, Sky probably, telling her to get her ass inside before Tyler ate all the good snacks.

Arya smiled faintly, tucking the notebook back into her bag.

Not yet.

She stayed on the porch a little longer, her chin resting on her knees, the mural burning behind her eyelids every time she closed her eyes.

Somewhere in the city, whoever Graea was, they had seen her.

And somehow, even without knowing it, they had built something that fit perfectly into the broken, stubborn pieces of her.

Arya did not know what that meant yet.

But she knew it mattered.

She knew it was just the beginning.