All Chapters of MOONBOUND DESIRE : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The wind that blew across Vireya that night was not natural.It carried ash, though no fires burned nearby. It whispered names not yet spoken aloud. And it tugged at Selene’s cloak like a child afraid of being left behind.The journey had begun.They were leaving Vireya in secret—under moonlight and false stars.---Selene stood in the royal nursery one last time, her fingers brushing over the hand-carved crib that had once held both her children. The room smelled of jasmine and old wood, and the faint shimmer of protection spells lingered on the walls.She remembered Elira’s first laugh. Theron’s first burst of fire. The quiet nights when she and Kael had stood in the doorway just watching them breathe.Now those breaths stirred the fate of the world.---Kael waited by the palace gates with Rowan and Naeria. Their mounts—moonborn wolves with coats of silver and black—pawed restlessly against the stones.“I set a glamour over the garden wall,” Naeria said, checking her satchel of spi

Time ended at the gate.Or perhaps it began.Selene stepped forward with one hand gripping Kael’s, the other holding Elira close. Behind them, Rowan and Naeria moved with swords drawn and magic pulsing. Theron stood just ahead—silent, glowing, caught in the strange gaze of the other child who had emerged from the mirror.The girl of fire.She looked like him. Moved like him. But her eyes—Her eyes held centuries.---They crossed the mirror.It didn’t feel like walking.It felt like falling upward, like being unraveled thread by thread and re-stitched with memories not their own. Selene’s skin burned. Kael grunted beside her. Elira cried out—but not in pain.In knowing.And then they landed.---The world beyond Elunari was not a world at all.It was a realm of echoes.Everything shimmered in fragments. Trees flickered between growth and ruin. Rivers ran backward. The stars above spun in circles, then halted completely.And standing at the center of it all—A throne of flame.Empty.B

The Vale of Mourning had no map.No trail.No scent.Only memory.It called to those marked by fate and scarred by choice. And when Selene crossed its invisible threshold, even the wind held its breath.---They traveled east beneath a sky split by three moons. The white moon of the goddess. The red moon of flame. And the third—new and black—like an eye without a soul.Each night it drifted closer.Elira couldn’t sleep beneath it.Theron stopped drawing symbols.And Selene?She began hearing her name whispered in the dark.---The Vale of Mourning lay hidden between forgotten peaks—its entrance veiled by mist that moved like mourning veils in the wind. The trees were tall and twisted, their bark black as onyx and their leaves a shade of blue that drank the light.Even Naeria hesitated at the edge.“Whatever sleeps here,” she whispered, “has not forgotten pain.”---They camped in the center of the Vale, at the base of a ruined altar etched with countless names.Selene’s breath caught

The figure from the Hollow Gate did not speak again.It merely watched.Its body was made of absence. Not blackness, but the space between light. No face. No features. Just a suggestion of what could be.Selene stood before it, her fingers trembling around the violet-glowing shard of mirror she carried.“Who are you?” she asked.> “I am the consequence.”Its voice was every version of her own.---The wind stopped.Kael moved to her side, but could not step past the figure. An invisible veil blocked him.Naeria tried to call out, but her voice muted the moment it crossed the gate’s edge.Only Selene could hear.Only Selene could move forward.---The moment her feet touched the shimmer of the crack, the world blinked.And changed.---She stood in a forest made of mirrors.Every tree shimmered with images—each one showing another her.Versions she didn’t remember living.One ran from the Ashborn and never looked back.Another accepted the Fire Queen’s throne.One lost her children.On

The third moon loomed lower now.Its shadow brushed the edges of mountains, casting violet halos on every ridge and river below. And in its silent glow, something ancient stirred—something Selene could feel in the marrow of her soul.Not a prophecy.Not a promise.But a presence.Watching. Waiting.Calling her home.---Theron was the first to hear it.Not with his ears—but with his blood.He sat by the fire, hands still, eyes open, breathing like he was tethered to something below the earth.“It’s humming,” he whispered.Selene knelt beside him. “What is?”He turned toward her slowly.And in a voice not entirely his own, he said:> “The god who sleeps beneath the third moon.”---Elira had changed, too.She no longer walked—she glided.Starlight spilled from her palms without pain, and every word she spoke sounded like it echoed backward through time.Selene watched them both from the edge of camp, heart aching with awe and fear.“They’re becoming what prophecy never accounted for,”