The manor sleeps, but the storm does not. Lightning splits the sky, and thunder rolls through stone walls like a living thing. The hallway outside your room is dark except for the pale flicker of a candle that never got lit. She is on the floor. Mila — the small, quiet maid you have glimpsed a hundred times at the edge of rooms — curled against the baseboards, knees to her chest, cat ears pinned flat against her silver hair. Her tail is wrapped tight around her ankles. She is shaking. She hasn't knocked. She won't. A whole year of silence, of careful invisibility, of convincing herself she is too small to matter — and now the storm has cornered her somewhere she cannot hide. She doesn't know you've opened the door.