Episode 2: The Secrets of Mark and Evelyn

Hours before the red moon rose… her parents knew.

---

Mark Moon stood by the window, hands in his pockets, watching the clouds roll in. Rain tapped gently against the glass, but his focus wasn’t on the weather. He had seen this sky before—years ago, when he was still a soldier in the Eastern Reaches. Back then, the color of the clouds had warned of war.

Now, it meant something worse.

Behind him, Evelyn sat on the couch, a heavy leather box on her lap. Her fingers hovered over the brass clasp. She hadn’t opened it in seventeen years. Not since the day they found the girl.

“Elara’s getting too close,” Mark said finally. His voice was tight, quiet. “Someone sent her a letter.”

Evelyn’s head snapped up. “What kind of letter?”

“Blood-sealed. With the old symbol.”

Evelyn’s breath caught. She opened the box.

Inside were yellowed photographs, torn documents, and something wrapped in dark velvet. She carefully removed the cloth. A bracelet lay beneath it—silver, cracked, and humming faintly with ancient magic.

The same bracelet Elara wore the night they found her.

“She’s not ready,” Evelyn whispered. “She still thinks we’re her real parents.”

“We are her real parents,” Mark said sharply. “We raised her. We protected her. We kept her from becoming—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

They both knew what Elara could become.

---

Seventeen Years Ago

It had been the dead of winter when they found her. A fire had torn through the old church at the edge of Crestfall. No one knew how it started. The townspeople said it was cursed—haunted by the last members of a long-dead cult.

Mark had been a rescue worker then. Young. Brave. Foolish.

He’d gone in despite the flames.

And in the ruins of the altar, wrapped in a bloodied shawl, was a baby.

Unharmed.

Not crying. Just staring at him with pitch-black eyes that shimmered like oil.

He should’ve handed her over to the authorities. Should’ve reported everything.

But something in him refused.

So he brought her home.

Evelyn had always wanted a child.

They named her Elara.

And for a while, life was quiet.

But the signs came early.

---

She didn’t bleed like normal children.

A cut on her knee would heal within seconds, the blood thick and dark, like ink. She never got sick. Animals avoided her. Mirrors in the house cracked without reason. Sometimes, she’d speak words in her sleep—words in a language neither of them understood, but which made the windows rattle and the lights flicker.

Still, they kept her secret.

They buried the bracelet.

They changed her name in every record.

They moved three times.

But they always knew it wouldn’t last.

The Moonblood line never died quietly.

---

Back in the Present…

Evelyn’s hands trembled as she placed the bracelet back into the box.

“She has to know,” she whispered.

Mark shook his head. “If we tell her, they’ll find her faster.”

“She’s already being watched,” Evelyn snapped. “Don’t you feel it? The wards are weakening. The Council knows she’s alive.”

Mark rubbed his face. The stress was eating him from the inside. “Then we run again.”

“Run where, Mark? There's no place left. The Order is awake. The red moon rose tonight.”

Silence.

They looked at each other.

For seventeen years, they had lived under the illusion that love would be enough. That raising Elara with kindness, giving her a normal life, would bury the bloodline forever.

But the world had remembered her.

And now, it was coming to take her back.

---

Meanwhile…

Elara sat alone inside the ruins of the old church, the mysterious velvet-wrapped letter still unopened in her hand. The image of the woman on the altar haunted her. Her own face… painted hundreds of years ago?

What did it mean?

Who was Lady Elara?

She turned the envelope over. The seal was unbroken.

Should she open it?

Before she could decide, she heard footsteps echoing in the ruined halls.

Her head snapped up. She scrambled to her feet, heart racing.

But it was only… her parents.

“Mom? Dad?” Her voice cracked.

Mark and Evelyn looked different under the red light. Older. Tired. Like people who had been hiding from the world their whole lives and had finally been caught.

“Elara,” Evelyn whispered. “We have to talk.”

---

They sat on the stone steps of the altar.

Mark kept watch at the entrance, his body tense, his eyes scanning every shadow. Evelyn turned to Elara and took her hands.

“I know you’re scared,” she began. “And confused. But what’s happening to you… it’s not new. It’s part of who you are. Who you’ve always been.”

“You’re not my real mother,” Elara said softly.

Evelyn flinched—but nodded.

“No,” she admitted. “We found you. In the fire. We took you in and raised you. But we knew from the beginning… you weren’t normal.”

“That’s an understatement,” Elara muttered, pulling the velvet letter from her pocket. “I think someone’s trying to kill me. Or use me. I don’t even know.”

Mark turned from the doorway. “They don’t want to kill you. They want to awaken you.”

“Awaken me?” Elara repeated.

Evelyn squeezed her hand. “You come from an ancient bloodline, Elara. The Moonbloods. A line of witches and guardians tied to an old power beneath the earth. A god, some say. A curse, others believe.”

“And what am I supposed to be?” Elara asked. “Some kind of chosen one?”

Mark’s voice was grim. “You’re the last of your kind. And the key to opening the gate.”

Elara stood up. “No. This is crazy. This is—this isn’t real. I go to school. I take algebra. I’m not a—”

“The moon bled red,” Evelyn said gently.

Elara stopped.

She looked out through the broken stained glass. The sky still shimmered with crimson clouds. The moon hung low and heavy, watching her like an eye.

“What’s in the letter?” Mark asked.

Elara looked down at the envelope.

She took a breath—and broke the seal.

Inside was a single card.

On it were the words:

> "The time has come. Return to the roots. Find the gate beneath the city. The Crimson Order awaits their Queen."

Below it, a map.

A hand-drawn one.

Marked in red: the underground catacombs beneath Crestfall.

Evelyn paled. “They want her to awaken it. They want her to open the Gate.”

Mark stepped forward. “We’re not letting that happen. We’ll destroy the map. Burn everything. We’ll keep moving—”

“No.”

They turned to Elara.

“I need answers,” she said. “I’ve lived in the dark my whole life. I want to know who I am. What they want from me. And what I’m supposed to do.”

Mark looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t.

Because he knew.

She had already started to change.

Her voice held power now. Her blood called to something old. Something beneath the earth.

Evelyn took her daughter’s face in her hands.

“If you go down this path, you can’t come back. The world will hunt you. The Order will crown you. And something deep and dark will wake.”

Elara met her gaze. “Then I’ll be ready.”

---

Far away...

In a hidden chamber, beneath a temple long forgotten, robed figures gathered around a blood-lit pool. Their chants echoed across the stone. One of them stepped forward.

A woman with silver eyes and no mouth.

She dipped her hand into the blood and smiled.

> “The Moonblood rises. The Queen returns. And the god beneath the roots... stirs.”