The wagon groaned to a halt, its rusted wheels shrieking like something dying. Elara Vire opened her eyes to darkness and dust. Her wrists throbbed under silver-threaded chains.
They had reached the capital.
She shouldn't have been here. Only nobles and marked wolves ever glimpsed Moonspire. But fate—or something stranger—had chosen her, a nameless orphan, as this year's Blood Offering.
She hadn't screamed when they dragged her out of the orphanage. Hadn't flinched when they burned the moon-sigil into her arm. She didn't believe in gods. Or the curse.
But as she stared at the towering obsidian spires—each topped with howling stone wolves—something stirred in her. A question with no shape.
"Move," a guard snapped. His armor gleamed like old bone. A silver fang tattoo slithered up his neck. A Moonfang.
Elara stepped down. They stood in a courtyard of mirrors—tall, rune-carved slabs arranged in a perfect circle under the eternal full moon. At the center stood the Moon Mirror—a towering black stone with no reflection.
No one knew who made it. Some whispered it was carved from a fallen star. Others said it was punishment—a relic from the First Betrayal, when the werewolves nearly vanished.
Everyone agreed on one thing:
The Mirror saw what no one else could.
And when it did, it judged.
"Elara Vire," called a priestess. "Step forward."
Crowds gathered—nobles in shimmering robes, silent monks, masked seers. On the high dais, beneath a silver canopy, sat a figure she'd only seen on coins.
Crown Prince Caelum Dravemir.
Moonblood. Living myth.
His eyes were made of moonlight. No warmth, no humanity. He stared at her like he already knew the ending to a story no one else had read.
The priestess handed her a dagger wrapped in iron.
"Cut your palm. Place the blood."
A test, they said. A ritual. For a hundred years, no reaction. The Mirror stayed silent.
Elara hesitated. Something about the stone—its pull—felt wrong.
"Do it," Caelum said. His voice was the sound before a storm breaks.
She obeyed. Blood welled in her palm. She pressed it to the Mirror.
Silence.
Then the world shifted.
The Mirror sang.
A sound like stars crying. Nobles gasped. Wolves dropped. The black surface blazed white.
And then—visions.
Not her reflection.
A woman in silver armor, eyes wild, swinging a moonblade through fire and ash. A temple in ruins. The Moon Goddess, weeping.
"Elara?" someone whispered.
"No," another breathed. "That's… Lycaena the Heretic."
The crowd recoiled. The priestess dropped her censer. Guards reached for swords.
Elara fell, dizzy. Whose memory was this? What had her blood awakened?
Caelum descended the dais.
He knelt.
And before anyone could speak, he touched her brow and whispered:
"By the blood you carry, by the crime you bear,
I claim you, heretic soul.
As my bride. As my curse.
Until death redeems us both."