PROLOGUE — The Girl in the Gap

When the Canvas shattered, Maelle did not fall with it. Not completely. She was never just paint. She was an answer to a question Aline refused to face: "What if Alicia had never burned? What if my daughter could walk unscarred, confident, and whole?" Maelle was that fantasy given form — a body painted from the negative space of Alicia's fear. When the painted world collapsed, fantasy and reality collided. The Canvas disintegrated. Alicia's real body remained in the true Lumière — scarred, voiceless from the fire that burned her throat, alive but forever changed. Maelle became the line drawn between them.