All Chapters of The Last Moonbane: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Seraphina’s POVIt began with the eyes.Not the corpse’s.Ours.Lily stood near the edge of the clearing, arms wrapped tightly around herself, barely blinking. The other two students—second-years, names I hadn’t bothered to learn—stood a little apart, as if distance could offer them protection. But it wasn’t grief that froze them in place.It was something slower.Thicker.A silence that didn’t mourn, but waited.And I—I was staring at the thing in the grass.The pendant.It hadn’t looked like anything when I first saw it. Just a dull curve of silver, small and harmless, lying beside the chest of the boy who’d died hours earlier. He hadn’t wanted to touch it. But he’d been pressured to. Encouraged.Forced, even.And then he died.His body had gone still in an instant—no convulsions, no screaming. One heartbeat, he was there. The next, gone.We buried him.Or tried to.The soil here was shallow and uncooperative. Roots tangled our blades, moss rejected our shovels. We pushed stones ov

Seraphina’s POVBy the time I woke, the fire was low and the camp quiet.I was warm—someone had thrown an extra cloak over me—and I was curled against a patch of moss, my pack tucked under my arm. Everything ached. My arms, my ribs, my mind.But I was alive.Stephen sat a few feet away, legs folded, staring into the coals. His sword lay across his knees. His coat was singed at the edge, and there was a thin streak of dried blood at his jawline. Not his.He turned before I spoke.“You’re awake.”I nodded, sitting up slowly.“How long—”“Four hours. Maybe five. You were exhausted.”I rubbed a hand over my face. “I didn’t mean to sleep.”“You needed it.”I looked around. Two others sat on watch a bit further out, one in a low tree perch, another sharpening a short blade. Stephen had a team. A good one, by the looks of it.Still. I could see the tension in their shoulders.“What happened to you?” I asked.He didn’t answer right away.Then, softly, “Same thing that happened to you.”I shif

Seraphina’s POVConvincing the others hadn’t been easy.Marta wanted direct confrontation. Stephen preferred caution. The rest hovered between disbelief and fatigue.But they had noticed it too—how Diantha never looked afraid, how she always knew where to go, how her team never questioned her even when the rest of us were drowning in confusion and blood.They saw what I saw.And they agreed to follow me.Quietly.Plans like this aren’t drawn on paper.They’re spoken in half-sentences. Shared across flickers of eye contact. Formed between people who already know what’s at stake—and who each understand the part they must play.We didn’t need a vote.We only needed one question:“Are you ready?”And one answer:“Yes.”It started with a lead.Marta reported that one of Diantha’s inner circle—someone named Casen, always quiet, always watching—had discovered a “sealed cache” northeast of the ridge. Supposedly older than the others. Guarded by a creature that hadn’t fully formed.Diantha cla

Seraphina’s POVIt began with the sound of dragging feet.At first, we thought it was wind scraping through the old stones of the gorge. But then it multiplied. Became staggered. Became purposeful.Too many feet.Too much breath.The others looked up from their places near the fire. Marta swore under her breath. Stephen had already drawn his blade before anyone said a word.“They’re coming,” he said.No one asked who.We all knew.The trees split open.Dozens—no, scores—of them, moving in jagged clusters across the black soil. Their bodies were wrong: too still in some places, twitching in others. Some had torn clothes, some no faces at all. Their eyes were hollow, glowing faintly from within.Each one wore a piece of jewelry.A pendant. A cuff. An earring.Their pace was slow.But they didn’t need to rush.They had already cornered us.“Scatter!” someone shouted.But it was too late for that.The gorge narrowed behind us. The eastern pass was already crawling with more of them. The w

Seraphina’s POVThe trial was over.At least, that was what everyone wanted to believe.When we returned to Loisage, we weren’t students anymore—not really. We were survivors. And survivors don’t resume classes. They recover.For over a month, we stayed in the infirmary wing. The castle’s stone corridors were quieter than I’d ever known them. Classes were suspended. Examinations postponed. Letters from worried families flooded the administrative offices, until they, too, were silenced—by money, by influence, or by fear.The healers told me I was lucky.I didn’t feel lucky.I felt like something important had broken and no one was willing to say what it was.By the time I was strong enough to walk across my dorm room without seeing stars, the official reports had already been issued.Loisage had claimed full responsibility for the breach of containment, blaming an “unforeseen magical instability” within the trial site. The public statement used all the right words—tragedy, mourning, le