Lyra Nhadra

Lyra Nhadra was born on the platforms of Orison, in a world suspended above the clouds. Her mother, a pianist, filled the long absences of her father, a member of Crusader Security, by filling their apartment with music. That was where Lyra learned to listen before she learned to understand. To accept that some presences are lived through silence and waiting.

At a very young age, she sat at the piano, never intending to make it a career. She sang sometimes, softly, inventing stories she kept to herself. Yet when the time came to choose a path, she turned to science, to celestial mechanics. Thrusters and their workings ultimately felt more aligned with who she was than those invisible calculations.

After graduating, Lyra joined Crusader Industries and began traveling across Stanton through successive assignments. She wrote little, and without conviction, accumulating fragments of text that never quite found their place. Ideas without an anchor, noted between rotations, then left behind. The turning point came later, during a Crusader Industries maintenance mission following the recent events in Pyro.

There, Lyra encountered men and women living in a system without promises. Some seemed resigned to it. Others wanted to fight with everything they had to “save” Pyro, through beliefs, clan wars, and disputed territories. Others still thought only of leaving. It was in this context that her client, a native of Pyro IV, confided in her. She could not take that life anymore, the constant rivalry, the endless conflicts. She would probably leave tomorrow, or the day after. Nyx, maybe. Or perhaps she would resign herself to staying. She was afraid, but she also felt out of place there.

Lyra then understood that leaving Pyro was not necessarily an act of escape, but sometimes a fragile act of faith. Hoping for a better life elsewhere, perhaps in Nyx, without certainty, simply because staying was no longer possible.

Leaving Pyro was born from that idea. The song tells the precise moment when one decides to leave, without knowing what awaits on the other side.

Back on Orison, Lyra sat at the piano with her mother. Few words were exchanged. Only a few notes, the ones that this time would no longer change.

It was in this context, almost by chance, that she hummed one of those fragments in the Cloudview showroom, without any particular intention. Nok was there, looking for a small ship that could serve as a mobile studio. He stopped. He listened. Then he told her about Levski, and about a project called SubOrbital.

A first demo was sent through interstellar relays, addressed to Nok. The reply arrived two days later. Meeting in Levski. Week of October 13 to 19, 2955.

The week in Levski naturally organized itself around music. After Leaving Pyro, the Rourke brothers suggested she tell the story they were living as well, here and now. Same Sky was born in a single day. The idea took shape in the morning, the words settled quickly with Jax and Rigg, and the melody followed after the midday break. By late afternoon, Nok and SLS were there to record, without trying to polish what had just appeared. Everything moved fast, but without haste.

Jax often stayed close to her, attentive, discreet. Lyra felt that slight inner shift, that fragile sense that some encounters leave a mark, even when they choose not to linger.

Lyra returned to her life at Crusader, to familiar assignments and routes. Yet what she had left in Levski had not disappeared. It had simply found the time to wait.