The forest had not returned to peace. It held its breath.
Ash floated in the moonlight like snow. Trees bowed and groaned as though mourning. The remnants of the rift—a jagged scar of scorched ground and burned roots—smoked beneath Selene’s feet. She stood in the center of the devastation, every inch of her body aching, her skin still glowing faintly with magic she hadn’t yet learned to control.
Behind her, Rowan stood watch. Silent. Still bleeding from his side.
“Say it,” Selene murmured without turning. “I know you’re thinking something.”
Rowan’s voice was rough. “I was going to say... you shouldn’t be standing.”
“The girl who became a god will soon forget she was ever a girl at all.”Selene stared into the fire, those words echoing like a curse inside her chest. No one else heard them the way she did—not as prophecy, but as warning.Rowan’s voice broke the silence. “What does that mean?”She didn’t look at him. “It means every time I use what’s inside me—every time I reach deeper into what the Moon left behind—I lose something. A memory. A reflex. A name I used to answer to.”Rowan moved closer. “Then stop using it.”Selene turned slowly, and her voice was barely a whi
The stars did not fall.They rearranged.Night after night, wolves across every region looked up and swore the constellations had changed. The familiar shapes—the hunter, the twin flames, the eternal wolf—were fractured. New patterns burned into the sky, ones no elder could explain.And in a chamber carved from bone and shadow, a child studied them all.He flipped through the book with blank pages. Words inked themselves as he watched. Not in a language spoken aloud, but in memories. In truths too heavy to carry.One sentence emerged in glowing gold:“Even a god who
The world did not immediately notice the change.The sun still rose. The birds still sang. The rivers continued their endless course, unaware that a girl had vanished into the soul of the world and returned as something else entirely.But wolves did.They felt it first in their bones. The tether between spirit and form grew taut with awareness, like the air before a storm. Those who had once rejected prophecy began to dream. And in those dreams, Selene stood on a bridge made of starlight, watching both the past and the future unravel into her hands.Rowan could not sleep.The night after she vanished, he stood alone in the ruins of the Temple,
They left at first light.Selene, Rowan, Agnes, Vera, and a select handful of warriors and spirit-bound travelers—all sworn to her, not by blood but by choice. The shard given by the moonchild pulsed softly in Selene's palm, its glow dim yet persistent, like a heart too tired to beat loudly.The journey to the temple took them north, past forgotten borders and lands no map dared mark. It was said that before the Moon Goddess gifted wolves their second form, this was where they walked on two legs only in legend. Where they were beasts and not yet aware of the sky.No one had walked this path in centuries. Because to find it, one had to give up something vital.Memory.
They called it peace, but Selene could still feel the tremble in the ground.The veil was closed. The god of forgetting was broken.Yet, something beneath it all still stirred. Something that hadn’t spoken in eons.Something that remembered everything.---The days after her return passed like a dream caught between exhaustion and awe.The packs that had survived came forward—not in submission, but in reverence. Not because she demanded it. But because they saw what she'd done. What she'd become.Still, Selene refused the crown.“I’m not a queen,” she told them. “I’m not a goddess. I’m not a symbol for you to shape into comfort.”She paused, letting her voice anchor into truth.“I’m just the girl who remembered what everyone else wanted to forget. And I bled to make sure no one else would have to.”They didn’t cheer.They listened.And that, she realized, was enough.---Rowan found her days later, standing alone by the mirror lake.“You always go quiet after the hardest battles,” he
The place beyond names didn’t resemble a battlefield.It was quiet.Colorless.A pale, mist-draped expanse that stretched in every direction without a horizon. There were no landmarks, no trees, no stars. Just fog and silence.And Selene.She stood at the center of it all, barefoot on nothing, eyes hollow, a ghost made of what once was. Her hair floated like ink in water. Her body shimmered like it didn’t quite remember how to stay solid.Rowan stepped into the space with slow, deliberate steps. Each one echoed like a heartbeat in a world that had none.“Selene,” he called.She didn’t look at him.Didn’t blink.Didn’t breathe.He stepped closer. “You don’t know me right now. I get it. I knew you wouldn’t. But I’m here to remind you.”No response.Rowan dropped to one knee in front of her, reaching up to gently touch her hand. It was cold. Not physically—but spiritually. Like her fire had been extinguished from the inside out.He swallowed hard. “You’re Selene. You’re a bridge, a threa