The Luna's escape

Katherine Ashford

When I woke, I thought I was dead.

The air was too still.

Too heavy.

Too cold to belong to the living.

I blinked, but even the darkness seemed solid — pressing against my eyelids, swallowing every breath that dared leave me. For a long time, I couldn’t remember where I was. Only the ache. The deep, hollow ache that lived inside me.

Then my hand moved.

Slow. Trembling.

I touched my stomach.

Empty.

“No…” The word slipped out, soft and broken. “No… no, please…”

But there was no warmth. No heartbeat. Only the cold weight of loss sitting where life had once been.

Tears came before I could stop them — hot against my frozen skin. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, but even pain couldn’t pull me back from the emptiness inside.

My baby.

My child.

Gone.

The walls around me seemed to breathe — damp stone and rot and misery. A faint rustle, a cough, a low moan from somewhere in the dark. The dungeon wasn’t silent. It was filled with dying people who no longer had voices.

I tried to move. My legs refused. My head pounded, heavy and hot. My body felt broken in pieces — every inch of me bruised, torn, burned.

I forced out a sound that barely reached the air.

“Help…”

No one answered.

Not the guards. Not the prisoners. Not even the Goddess.

Then I tried to reach her.The one who had always answered me, even in my worst moments.

“Lyra,” I whispered into the hollow of my mind. “Lyra, please… say something.”

Nothing.

A hollow silence echoed back, colder than the dungeon itself.

Panic tightened in my chest. I reached again, harder this time, clawing at the bond that had always been there — the pulse that connected our hearts, our souls.

Still nothing.

It hit me like a final death.

She hadn’t spoken in weeks… maybe months.

And now she was gone.

Stripped from me.

A whimper left my throat. The sound of an animal that no longer remembered how to fight. I pressed my face into the dirt and wept — not just for the child I lost, but for the part of me that had been taken.

I had nothing left. No wolf. No child. No mate. No home.

Just me — and the darkness that wouldn’t stop breathing around me.

I don’t know how long I lay there before I heard footsteps.

Slow. Careful. Too soft to belong to a guard.

Then a voice — cracked, human. “Oh, Moon above… what have they done to you?”

I turned my head with effort. A middle-aged woman crouched beside me. Her eyes were tired, her clothes torn, her hands shaking as she reached for my face.

“Please,” she called weakly toward the corridor. “Someone bring a healer! She’s bleeding—she needs help!”

A cruel laugh answered from beyond the bars.

“She should die. Let her rot. Dirty Luna doesn’t deserve a healer.”

The woman flinched, but didn’t move away. She tore a strip from her own sleeve, dipped it into a bucket of filthy water, and wiped the blood from my lips.

Her touch was rough, but kind. The first kindness I’d felt in so long it almost hurt more than the wounds.

“Try to drink,” she whispered, lifting a small tin cup to my lips. “Just a little. Please.”

The water was stale, warm. It burned going down, but I drank.

When she pressed a piece of dry bread into my hand, I tried to eat, but it turned to sand in my mouth.

I swallowed anyway.

“Is this what I’ve become?” I murmured. “Is this my life now?”

The woman didn’t answer. She only looked at me — eyes full of something strange. Pity, perhaps. Or sorrow older than mine.

I turned my face away, tears falling quietly. “Moon Goddess… please. Just once more. Give me another chance. I’ll do it right this time. I’ll fix everything. Please…”

Someone in the darkness laughed again, a rasping, hateful sound.

“She’s praying? The Goddess won’t listen to her. Not to that.”

The woman’s eyes flicked toward the voice, then back to me. “Don’t listen,” she said softly. “Rest. You’ll need your strength, child.”

Her words brushed against my heart — something about them too familiar. Her tone. The gentle firmness of it. The way she said child.

I blinked through the blur, focusing on her face.

And then I saw it.

Not her features exactly — but a light, soft and silver, flickering behind her eyes. My breath caught. “Mom…?”

She smiled faintly, her thumb brushing my cheek. “You should have listened, Katherine,” she whispered. “But it’s not too late.”

Tears blurred everything. “I ruined it all,” I sobbed. “Everything I built… everything you taught me…”

Her hands came around me, pulling me against her chest, and for the first time since that awful day — I felt warmth.

“Shh,” she murmured, rocking me gently. “It’s okay, my love. The moon wanes before it shines again. Rest now. Just rest.”

Her voice became softer, fading into the rhythm of my breathing, until the dungeon walls melted into quiet again.

And I let myself drift — not into peace, not yet — but into the small, trembling hope that maybe the Goddess had heard me after all.

Something was calling me.

A voice.

Soft at first — distant, fading in and out like the tide.

“Katherine… Katherine… wake up…”

My eyes fluttered.

The darkness above me swayed, like shadows breathing.

For a moment, I thought it was her again — the woman, the warmth, my mother’s voice.

“Mother?” I whispered, reaching blindly into the cold.

No answer.

The dungeon was silent. The bodies around me — still.

No one moved. No one breathed. Only the drip of water echoing through the stone.

I forced myself upright, every muscle screaming in protest. My legs trembled, weak and unsteady. My stomach ached like something inside had been carved out.

Then I heard it — not the whisper this time, but real voices.

Above. Near the corridor.

“I want you to kill that witch inside,” a woman’s voice hissed.

My blood ran cold.

I knew that voice.

“Who? The Luna?” one of the guards asked.

“No,” she snapped. “The former Luna. Katherine. The Moon Goddess won’t save her — but I’ll make sure no one else tries.”

Seraphina.

My throat tightened. My heart began to hammer painfully. They were going to kill me.

I pressed my back against the wall, trying to still my breath. Every sound, every step outside the cell scraped against my nerves like claws.

The door creaked open.

Light spilled across the floor.

“Get her,” someone said. “Take her to the forest. Make it look like she tried to run.”

Hands grabbed me — rough, unrelenting.

I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. My body was too weak, too empty.

They dragged me through the hall, my feet scraping against the stone. The dungeon stank of blood and death. Every few steps, I saw another body — another prisoner who had long stopped being human.

When we reached the surface, the night air hit my skin like knives.

The forest loomed — black, endless, whispering with unseen things.

“Here,” one of them said. “This is far enough.”

I stumbled to my knees, coughing, dirt filling my mouth.

I heard the click of a blade being unsheathed.

“Any last words, Luna?”

I raised my head. The moon hung low and red above the trees — bleeding light.

My voice was barely a whisper.

“If the Goddess won’t save me… then the earth will remember me.”

And then—

A sound.

A crash from deeper in the forest — loud enough to startle the birds. The guards turned, just for a second, their attention breaking.

That was all I needed.

I moved — not with strength, but with desperation.

I ran.

Branches tore at my skin, roots clawed my feet, but I didn’t stop. The forest blurred — trees, air, pain — everything mixing into motion.

“Stop her!” someone shouted behind me.

I didn’t. I couldn’t. I ran until my body stopped belonging to me — until something inside me tore open and light rushed through my veins.

My bones cracked, my vision sharpened, and before I could think I wasn’t running on two legs anymore.

My wolf.

Not Lyra’s voice, not her spirit — but her instinct.

Silent. Cold. Distant.

Still, she carried me.

The wind howled through my fur as I sprinted faster than the guards could track, my paws slamming against the forest floor.

The trees broke into a clearing, and beyond it — a road.

Headlights.

Blinding white flooded my vision.

I barely had time to shift back — the bones snapping, the world spinning. I stumbled onto the road, naked, shaking, breathless.

A horn.

Screeching tires.

Then—impact.

The world went white.