THE MOON BLESSING

POV:: Ilyra, The Mother, YOUNG PRIESTESS,

THE BLESSING MOON

The moon hung heavy over the Alpha’s Hall — swollen and silver with ancient promise.

It was the Blessing Moon, the sacred rite when expectant she-wolves were presented to the priestesses for Selene’s grace. One by one, their pregnancies were catalogued, touched, and whispered over, hoping the Moon might mark the child early. Fertility was not merely a gift — power, politics, and divine currency paid in blood.

Ilyra knelt at the altar, fingers slick with sacred oil, the scent of lavender and moonflower clinging to her sleeves. This was her third year beneath the Hall’s vaulted ceiling. She had memorised every chant, every rune. She could whisper calm into the most trembling wombs.

She thought she had seen everything.

She was wrong.

The line moved slowly — bloated women with swollen ankles, downcast eyes, breath held tight in their chests. Some wore pride like a pelt. Others barely met Ilyra’s gaze, clinging to mates or midwives.

Then the last woman stepped forward.

She wore no silks like the Alpha’s wives. No jewelled cords. No escort. Her cloak was plain, her hair undone, her face half-shadowed by torchlight. But the way she cradled her belly — as if holding the last flame in the world—made Ilyra’s hand falter.

She wasn’t on the registry.

The priestesses exchanged quiet glances. A mistake? A border-pack cousin? The High Priestess gave a subtle nod. Better to bless and dismiss than cause a scene.

Ilyra stepped forward, voice soft and reverent:

> “Child of the Moon, vessel of life… Do you seek Selene’s blessing?”

The woman did not speak. She only nodded once — eyes flicking to the moonstone altar, then skyward.

A cold wind stirred the Temple banners.

Ilyra dipped her fingers into the oil, whispering the ancient chant. She reached for the woman’s belly—

And the world came undone.

---

A blinding heat shot up her arm. Ilyra gasped — tried to recoil — but her hand stayed locked, bound by invisible fire.

Glyphs burned beneath the woman’s skin.

Not Selene’s script.

Older. Forgotten. Carved from something that remembered its name when the stars were still being sewn.

She opened her mouth to scream—

But her tongue turned to ash.

Then came the voice.

Not the woman’s.

Not Ilyra’s.

A voice older than language. Raw and ruinous.

> “She is not yours.”

“She will not kneel.”

“The gods have lied.”

---

The banners tore. The altar cracked. The oil caught fire.

And in the mother’s womb, something ancient stirred — something that had waited too long to burn.

Gasps echoed. The bowl of sacred oil shattered at Ilyra’s feet.

The woman still hadn’t spoken.

But the glyphs on her womb began to move — spiralling out in black flame, twisting like roots through the air. Symbols that didn’t burn. They bled.

Ilyra collapsed.

Her back arched, eyes turning white—

And prophecy spilt from her lips:

> “The Hollow-Blood stirs beneath your feet.

The one you tried to burn shall blaze again.

Ash will remember her.

Flame will crown her.

And every name you gave the divine… will break.”

The moonstone above them dimmed. A low groan trembled through the chamber walls.

And the bleeding glyphs turned the air to ash.

---

Alendra had seen blood-trances before.

Never like this.

The priestess was floating above the altar — fingertips dripping black ichor, her voice fractured and doubled.

One tone divine.

The other monstrous.

> “She comes clothed in ruin.

Fire for skin. Teeth for gods.

The womb that carried her weeps…

But she will not burn.”

The Alpha’s mate stormed forward, silks snapping like unsheathed blades.

“Silence this madness!” she barked. “This is blasphemy!”

But no one moved.

The priestess still floated. Still bleeding prophecy.

> “The Hollow-Blood has returned.

Born not of fate. Not of gods.

But in the end.”

The mother groaned, knees buckling beneath her. But the child inside her?

Still.

Humming.

As if the womb had become a tomb — and the tomb remembered how to breathe.

“She’s not distressed,” a priestess whispered. “She’s waiting.”

And then—

A final crack split the altar in two.

The Silverleaf Moon sigil above cracked — a jagged split down its centre. Crimson veins spidered through the ceiling.

Every candle in the hall died at once.

The priestess’s eyes turned silver — featureless. Glowing.

> “She does not kneel,” she whispered.

“She burns.”

The scribe dropped her quill.

“This is no blessing,” she breathed. “This is a reckoning.”

And then the final pronouncement:

> “She bears the Hollow-Blood.”

The Alpha’s mate did not hesitate.

> “Kill the vessel,” she commanded.

“Before it’s too late.”

---

THE ONE WHO CHOSE MERCY

POV: Unnamed Young Priestess

They called it mercy.

The mother lay shackled to moonstone — wrists bound in silver-threaded rope, lips cracked, body trembling. Her womb bloated with what the elders now called an abomination.

They had forced bitter herbs down her throat — twice. Meant to purge the cursed child.

But the child refused to die.

The temple groaned. Glyphs reversed. Sigils bled black.

A senior priestess muttered, “The sign of life… has flipped.”

Still, they prepared the knives.

“If the body won’t listen,” the High Matron growled, “we’ll carve the heresy out ourselves.”

The surgical tools gleamed — silver, sterile, merciless.

Behind the curtain, the youngest priestess watched.

Nameless. Rankless. Powerless.

But she’d heard the mother whisper something in her sleep:

> “Araya.”

Not a prophecy.

A name.

A plea.

And it made the girl weep.

That night, beneath a cursed sky, the girl moved.

No torch. No weapon. Just cloth, oil, and a stolen vial of moonflower balm.

The woman blinked from the shadows of her chains. Her voice cracked.

“Are you here to kill me?”

The girl shook her head.

“I’m here to help you run.”

The mother stared, eyes hollow with grief and suspicion. “Why?”

No answer.

Just trembling hands.

Just oiled chains and fraying rope.

“They’ll kill you for this,” the woman whispered.

The girl hesitated, jaw tight. Then softly:

> “I can look after myself.

But you… You have to run.”

The mother sobbed — not from fear this time, but relief.

“You’re not like the others.”

The girl smiled through her tears.

> “Maybe we don’t all have to be monsters.”

---

THE HUNT BEGINS

POV: The Mother (Unnamed)

Two moons had passed since that night.

She was still running.

They said her womb was cursed. That her breath fouled sanctified air. That her shadow dragged darkness across the world.

They branded her skin with holy iron.

But when she did not bleed…

They summoned the divine hunters.

Not mere men.

Beasts draped in moonlight like armour. Hounds with fur like ash, eyes like hollow stars. Creatures that whispered unborn gods’ names in languages long dead.

She ran through the marsh and the mountain. Forest and frost.

But the child inside—

Never kicked.

Never flinched.

She watched.

And waited.

She reached the edge of Blackwood Forest — bloodied, hunted, burning from within.

Clutched to her chest was a handwoven scarf. Dusk-blue and silver. Soft with age. Woven into its thread was a single name:

> Araya.

Her last hope.

Her daughter.

The pain struck like judgment.

The Earth cracked. The air warped around her like a curse come home.

She collapsed beside a weeping tree and screamed the child into the world.

There was no priestess.

No altar.

Just mud, blood, and stars that dared not look down.

And when the child was born—

She did not cry.

She simply opened her eyes.

And saw the world.

Ancient.

Wide.

Unafraid.

---

THE LAST VAULT SCRIBE

POV: The Vault

The Vault had no doors.

The only stone that forgot how to open.

He lived within it — a man made of dust and ritual. He hadn’t seen the sky in twelve years.

But tonight—

The stone wept.

Something cracked beneath his feet. The altar where cursed prophecies were sealed split clean down the middle, like the spine of a dead god.

A scroll rose.

Unbidden. Untouched.

It hovered in the air — wrapped in moon-gold seals. Bound in silk older than language.

And then—

The seals screamed.

One by one, they tore open. The silk bindings twisted. The wax bled like opened veins.

The scroll unfurled by itself.

Not downward.

Upward.

Ink bled up the page, symbols forming backwards, as if time was remembering what it tried to forget.

> “She has opened her eyes,” a voice whispered.

Not in his ears.

In his bones.

He tried to run. There was nowhere to go.

His tongue split. His eyes boiled white.

The scroll ignited in midair—

Not fire. Not divine. Something older.

Hollowfire.

It didn’t burn the scroll.

It devoured it.

And him.

When the priestesses finally broke the Vault stone, there was nothing left but ash and one line seared into the blackened marble:

> The Hollow-Blood walks.

---

The mother wrapped her gently in the scarf — the one she’d knitted with trembling hands.

The name stitched into the thread glowed faintly, where blood met silver.

She kissed her daughter’s brow, tears cutting trails through the dirt.

> “You have to live, little one,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there to watch you grow up.”

She tucked the baby beneath the roots — warm, hidden, blanketed in her only gift.

Lit a dying ember of stolen fire to keep her safe.

And then she ran the other way.

Not toward salvation.

But toward slaughter.

They found her at dawn.

The divine hounds snarled first — not at blood, but at the scent of ash.

She could no longer run.

Only crawl.

Only smile.

They did not tear her apart.

They’d been given sacred orders:

> “Do not grant her mercy.

Do not let her die clean.

The vessel must remember why she should never have carried fire.”

They peeled her fingernails one by one, whispering psalms in a forgotten tongue.

They branded her womb with molten glyphs — silver-scripted iron, searing the prophecy from her flesh.

When her skin split open, the hounds howled in delight.

She laughed.

Not from joy.

But from defiance.

So they broke her jaw.

They tied her to the old altar — the one crusted in salt, moss, and rot.

And they cut her open.

Not to save her.

But to find proof.

Proof that the Hollow-Blood had passed through her.

That their fear had not been in vain.

Her ribs cracked. Her lungs bled smoke. Her heart beat once.

Then stopped.

Yet even in death, the glyphs on her skin flickered — dim, like memory.

They boiled her eyes in moonwine.

Pressed them into her palms like mock stigmata.

They sewed her lips shut with silver thread, then carved open her spine to count the vertebrae.

> “Let the vessel speak no more.

Let her soul forget it was ever touched by flame.”

They hung her upside down from the ash tree that had never bloomed.

Her blood fed the roots.

Her womb wept soot.

And still… her smile never faded.

---

Far above — in the high, holy realm where stars fear to flicker —

Selene wept.

But she did not speak.

Not to her priestesses.

Not to the bounty hunters.

Not even to the wind.

She sat silent upon her silver throne in Aetheria, hands trembling, eyes fixed on a single ember burning far below.

> “She lives…” the moon goddess whispered.

“The fire lives.”

And for three nights, the moon did not rise.

The stars veiled themselves.

And the divine wolves of the north howled without reason — their cries threading through forests that should have been asleep.

Because the child had survived.

And her name was already burning.