Chapter 5

He walked into our camp like smoke. Tall, silent, wrapped in iron-colored robes. Voice that scraped like bone.

“You are the child of two wars,” he said to me.

“Do you know which one you’ll finish?”

Then he vanished into nothing. Dax never carried a weapon. Until today. He stood between me and a traitor wolf.

“You’re not the only one who can bleed for her,” he said.

Then he sliced the traitor’s throat open. His hands shook. Not from fear. But from love.

They argued in the clearing. Three of them wanted to leave. Said I was more beast than Luna now.

Said I’d bring ruin.

I let them go. But Seris didn’t. She hunted them at night. And in the morning, only their bones remained.

A hawk came with another message. No poison this time. Only blood sealed in glass. Lira’s voice echoed through my head as I read it:

“Come alone. Come unarmed. I’ll give you the truth.”

I left that night. Unarmed, yes. But not alone.

She waited atop the Red Cliffs. Wind snapping her white cloak. Moonlight catching the blade she wore on her hip.

“You’re not who you were,” she said.

“No,” I replied. “But neither are you.”

Then the earth trembled. And the cliffs cracked, just like us. She dropped the glamour mid-sentence. No beauty. No grace. Just scars and fire where her eyes should be.

“This is what your mother did to me,” Lira hissed.

I stared at her.

“I don’t care what she did,” I said.

“I care what you’re doing now.”

Lira offered me a choice: Kill the Man with No Scent. Or she kills Dax. We sealed the agreement in the old way. A piece of each other’s flesh. My teeth broke her skin, I didn’t regret it.

He stumbled on it in the canyon. A child-sized stone. No name. No offerings. Only the scent of moonroot and regret.

“She was your sister,” he whispered.

And I felt the memory rise, A crib. A scream. A claw. Then nothing. Except guilt.

He stood before me, shaking.

“I followed you through fire,” he said.

“But this… pact? With her?”

“I don’t need your approval,” I replied.

He dropped his blade at my feet.

“You lost yourself, Luna.”

“No,” I whispered.

“I found myself. And it terrified you.”

I gathered those who stayed. The loyal. The broken. The dangerous. We burned our old sigils under the moon.

Painted new ones in ash and blood.

“We are not wolves anymore,” I said.

“We are Eclipse.”

And the howl that followed wasn’t mine alone. It was ours.

The moon bled red. The earth opened in silence. From the crater rose something tall, robed, wrong.

No scent. No breath. No time.

The Man with No Scent was just a vessel. This was the god inside. The Hollow One. And it already knew my name.

He came to me while I dreamed. Not Vaeron. Not Dax. A stranger with eyes like frostfire. He touched my hand. The dream caught fire.

And when his lips met mine, the past rewound, my bones screamed. He kissed me out of time.

I woke to screams. Not from the Hollow One. From Seris. She writhed under silver chains, skin splitting.

“I told you I’d follow,” she sobbed.

“But not like this.”

The Eclipse wolves dragged her in chains. A young blind Oracle.

“They sent me to warn you,” she wept.

“But when I saw your fate… I tried to change it.”

Her eyes bled.

“I saw you kill the moon.”

Something inside me believed her. He knelt, not to me, to the stars.

“If she turns, I’ll be the one to end it.”

I heard him. I said nothing. But my heart cracked louder than thunder. Because part of me wanted to turn.

Just to see if he’d do it.