Prologue

Prologue - The Moon’s Forgotten Pact

Before the forests of Willowmere had names, and before mortals learned to build walls against the dark, there was only the Moon and the Wild.

The Moon was light, gentle, patient, and eternal.

The Wild was hunger… the heartbeat beneath every root and bone.

They were lovers once. Their union birthed life, but also death, for neither could live without devouring the other. So the Moon tore herself in two…. one half to rule the heavens, the other to guard the earth. Her silver tears fell upon the soil, and where they touched, the first wolves rose from shadow.

The Moon named them her children, creatures of instinct and loyalty, built to hold the balance between light and chaos. But the Wild wanted them too. It whispered into their dreams, promising freedom from the Moon’s law, urging them to bite the hand that made them.

For centuries, the wolves lived between worlds….loyal and cursed, divine and doomed.

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When humans came, they found a land still humming with that power. They built their homes beside the river that glittered with silver sediment and named the place Willowmere. They thought the shimmer in the water was beauty. It was a warning.

The wolves watched the settlers from the treeline, unseen but listening. The Moon whispered to one family, the first Alpha pair, and offered them a covenant.

“Guard the veil between my realm and theirs,” she said, “and I will bless your blood.

Forget me, and I will take it back in silver and flame.”

They agreed, and the First Moon Pact was born.

Five bloodlines were bound that night beneath a bleeding moon:

The Drakens, sworn to strength and rule.

The Vareks, sworn to deception and shadow.

The Wrens, sworn to heal and to bind.

The Veyrs, half-born of the Wild, sworn to guard the dark.

Together they kept the peace for centuries, renewing the oath each century with ritual blood and moonfire. So long as the pact was honored, the veil stayed strong.

But mortals are forgetful things.

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As the years passed, they stopped singing the old songs. The Moon’s temples fell to ruin, her name swallowed by sermons and fear. The wolves faded into legend, the packs into families, and the pact into superstition.

Then the forgetting began.

First came the fog, rolling off the river thick as smoke. Those who walked in it sometimes vanished, and sometimes returned with empty eyes, unable to recall their own names.

Next came the silence, birds stopped migrating, insects stopped singing, and the lake stopped reflecting the sky.

And finally came the light…. small orbs drifting through the trees, guiding the curious to their doom.

The scholars who still believed called it “the Moon’s Hunt.” The old bloodlines knew better. It was punishment.

Every hundred years, when the veil grew too thin, the Moon demanded balance. Those with her blood, pure or diluted, were called into the Lumenwild, the in-between world where her light still ruled. There they would fight, bleed, and kill until one survivor remained. That soul became the next Keeper of the Veil.

But the last Hunt broke the rules.

The Alpha of that era, a Draken by name, defied the Moon. He tried to destroy the Lumenwild, and to free his people from her curse. His betrayal fractured the balance entirely. The veil tore. The Riftborn were born…. monsters made of bone and moonlight, corrupted by both realms.

The goddess turned her face away.

The Wild claimed what was left.

Since that night, Willowmere has been sick. The fog that hides its streets is the veil’s breath leaking through the cracks. Every birthmark shaped like a crescent, every dream of silver light, and every howl in the distance, were echoes of that broken promise.

And deep in the woods, where the river runs like liquid glass, the Moon waits for a new heir. Someone born of all four lines. Someone who can restore what was lost.

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Centuries pass. The town forgets. The bloodlines thin.

The Drakens still rule from the shadows, though they’ve forgotten why.

The Vareks spin lies behind smiles, still feeling the echo of their trickster roots.

The Wrens heal the body but not the soul.

The Veyrs live on the outskirts, half-man, half-nightmare.

And the memory keepers….have vanished.

All but one.

A girl no one remembers.

A name fading like mist.

A heartbeat that hums in time with the old song.

When the moon turns red and the light returns to the woods, she will follow… not out of bravery, but loneliness. She will cross the veil without knowing what she is. And when she does, the Hunt will awaken again.

The Riftborn will stir. The cursed bloodlines will rise.

The Alpha, the Trickster, the Healer, and the Hunter will be pulled into her fate.

The Moon will open her eyes once more.

And the world will remember what it means to be hunted.