PROLOGUE

MOON-TOUCHED CHILD

POV: PRIESTESS VAELORA, THE LAST VAULT SCRIBE

They brought her to the Temple in silk.

A girl no older than six — dusk-haired, star-eyed, carrying the stillness that made grown priestesses falter mid-prayer. Her parents whispered she was Moon-Touched from the womb. That Selene had kissed her brow before her first cry. Her breath turned dew to frost. Her shadow never obeyed the sun.

They said she was a blessing.

But blessings don’t look at altars like they remember dying on them.

Other children ran laughing, chasing ethereal butterflies that shimmered through ceremonial runes.

She did not move.

She only watched. Listening. As if something unseen was speaking directly to her.

The elder priestesses stilled. Even I felt my spine pull taut.

The child turned her gaze to the moonstone spire at the centre of the Temple — not with reverence, but recognition.

It was the Feast of Starlit Wombs, when six-winter children stood for Moon-Blessing. Scrolls of lineage unfurled across the altar, candlelight licking over blood-sealed names. A thousand prayers whispered beneath the breath.

I descended the steps slowly, robes whispering across the marble, sanctified myrrh curling in the air behind me. My palms gleamed with sacred oil.

“What is your name, little one?” I asked.

Her lashes lowered, then rose again.

“Lana,” she said softly. And then, distant —

“I can hear the stars screaming.”

Somewhere, a scribe dropped her quill.

Ritual was ritual. I reached out to bless her—

“Don’t touch her!”

Kaelith, Keeper of Prophecies, stood across the Temple, her face carved with panic.

Too late.

My fingers brushed Lana’s brow—

And the world shattered.

The seizures struck instantly.

Lana’s body bent at an impossible angle, limbs thrashing. Blood streamed from her ears, nose, and mouth. Her eyes rolled back, and silver light — not mortal light, not divine light, but memory—poured out.

The carved moon glyphs along the pillars began to pulse, their shapes warping into unreadable sigils. The moonstone cracked with a sound like bone splitting.

The sacred scrolls ignited.

Not with flame — but cold blue fire that devoured from the edges inward. Names vanished. Bloodlines erased in a breath.

The altar wept.

Silver liquid trickled down its edge, staining marble with glyphs no living scribe could read. The scent of burned prophecy filled the Temple.

Then Lana sat up.

Her eyes glowed silver. Not light — memory.

She spoke:

> “They thought they could kill her.

They buried her in dirt.

But fire remembers.”

A priestess reached for her hand—

“Don’t—!” Kaelith began.

Too late again.

The priestess froze, her eyes bleaching silver, and the two of them spoke in unison:

“The gods will fall like snow.

The stars will bleed.

The one they forgot shall rise from ash and ruin.”

“Call the scribes!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “I want every word, every mark, every cursed thing they say or draw — I want it all written down!”

Ink spilled. Tears fell. The possessed child and priestess scrawled in blood upon the marble:

A black root strangling a shattered moon.

A girl crowned in fire.

An empty throne burning from within.

“She will not kneel,” they chanted.

“Not to stars. Not to fate. Not even to the gods.”

The temple bells began to toll in thirteens — the forbidden count. The last time they had tolled thus, the Oracle had vanished.

And then the vision took me.

The Temple dissolved, and I fell through ash and sky.

A forest of bone-white trees. A sky split and bleeding fire.

In the centre — a girl, naked, crowned in shadow and flame, hair writhing like smoke, eyes like silver blades.

Behind her, the moon fractured. Her shadow stretched, antlered and rune-marked.

Flame bent to her will. Roots torn from the ground, black and gnarled.

And from them rose something older than the first oath.

A shadow wearing flesh, crowned in rot.

Wherever it stepped, roots bled black into the soil, strangling the earth until it gasped.

The air soured. The sky curdled.

This was no saviour — this was hunger given form.

A hunger that looked upon the realms of gods and mortals alike… and decided both would kneel.

It turned toward the flaming girl, and the forest stilled — as if the world itself awaited the first blow in a war written before time began.

And when that blow falls,

temples shall break like bone,

priestesses shall burn like kindling,

And the world shall bleed fire until even the stars drown.

The Hollow-Blooded flame stood alone.

Raised her hand —

And everything burned.

I gasped awake.

Blood. Smoke. Ash.

The scroll shelves were bare. Every prophecy had turned to dust — save one blank sheet, untouched by flame. Upon it, a single glyph smouldered: the antlered flame.

Beneath it, a name.

The Hollow-Blood.

Lana stirred. Her eyes were human again.

“Mummy…” she whispered, “did I do something bad again?”

---

AETHERIA VAULT

The Vault had no doors. No windows. No air.

A man lived inside. A man made of dust and ritual. He had not seen the sky in twelve years.

Tonight, the stone wept.

A scroll rose from the cracked altar, bound in moon-gold seals and silk older than language. The seals screamed, tearing one by one. Wax bled like veins.

The scroll unrolled upward as if time itself was remembering.

“The one the gods could not kill… is coming,” a voice whispered in his bones.

He tried to run. There was nowhere to go. His tongue split. His eyes boiled white.

Hollowfire consumed both scroll and scribe.

When the priestesses broke through the Vault stone, they found only ash and a single phrase seared into blackened marble:

“The Hollow-Blood stirs.”

The Vault stone pulsed once — like a dying heart — and the words bled themselves into the blackened marble.