Mira Vasen — The witness

Mira Vasen is the smallest cadet at Aerithar Academy and the only one who has waited three years for the Pairing rite. She came to bond a dragon. She came to win a Riders’ Council vote. She came to make someone account for the night her mother burned in a barn at Brennfall. What she did not come for was the tenth dragon.

Their tracks

The album, scored to Mira.

6 of the twelve tracks live in Mira’s emotional weather. Click through for the full lyric and scene context.

The Tenth
The opening rite. The black wing crests the eastern ridge. The morning she does not die.
The Tunic
The first time the bond pulls a grief out of her she had not known she was saving.
Hair
The loft. The partition. The hair she cuts because she will not let the want show.
Both Can Be True
The book’s moral spine. A witness who finds out she was a tool, and decides not to be.
I Had Been a Brick
Her reckoning. A country built out of one death she could not bury.
First Light
She had not become what she came here to be. She had become someone else.

What she came for

Justice for Brennfall. A vote on the Riders’ Council. The chance to make someone account for what was done to her mother. She joined the academy to win that vote, not to bond a dragon. The dragon was supposed to be a credential. He chose her instead.

What the bond does to her

It strips her of the one thing she trusted: distance. Mira reads people for a living — hands first, faces second, intent third. The bond gives Aedran the same access. He does not abuse it. That is somehow worse.

What she will not do

She will not say “vengeance.” She will not cry where another person can see her until trust shatters her. She will not initiate a touch with Aedran — not in Act 1, not in Act 2A. The bond can pull at her wanting, but the door stays latched until she lifts it.

Mira, in three lines

“Right.”

— Mira’s catchphrase — used when conceding ground she did not want to give.

“I had not been a witness. I had been a brick.”