All Chapters of Moonshadow: The Full Saga: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The Moon Temple waited like a memory carved into stone.High above the pack dens, where the mountain’s bones broke through the forest in jagged ridges, the old path curled, half-swallowed by moss and time. Once, Luna had crept along this way as a runt, ears flattened against whispered warnings: *The Temple is not for the likes of you. Only chosen wolves walk there.*Tonight, the path felt different.Not forbidden.Not exactly welcoming, either.Expectant.The sky was clear, the stars hard and bright. The Moon hung low and wide, Her cracked face flooding the world with a cold, silver light that turned every leaf and rock into a thing of sharp edges.Luna climbed in human form, boots crunching on gravel, fingers brushing the rough stone of the mountain wall.Behind her, Orion padded in wolf-shape, paws silent, fur silvered by moonlight. He had argued, as he always did, to walk at her side through whatever this night demanded. The Moon had been firm.*The Trials are for her,* the Goddess

The first sign was the birds.They went silent.One瞬 the dusk woods were full of their evening calls—sharp chirps, low coos, the rattle of wings through leaves.The next, the sound cut.Clean.Total.As if someone had drawn a blade through the twilight and severed every throat.Luna’s hand stilled over the map spread across the Council table.Ink glistened wet where she had been sketching new ward-lines radiating from the Moon Temple.Rhea, mid-argument with Scar about patrol rotations, broke off, ears pricking.Kerran’s quill hovered in the air.Elia’s head snapped up from the roll of herbs she was cataloging.Even the pups wrestling outside went still, their laughter snuffed.Silence pressed into the hall.Too thick.Too absolute.Orion felt it like a pressure drop.The air got heavier.Denser.His skin prickled.Then the bond flared.Luna’s mark burned hot.Her heartbeat stuttered, then raced.He was on his feet before he knew he had moved.“Something is wrong,” she said.Her voice

The first omen came as a whisper in the roots.Luna was not in the Moon Temple or the Grove when it found her.She was in the lower dens, of all places, crouched in the straw beside a whelping she-wolf, palms slick with birth and sweat.The air was thick with the copper tang of blood and the sharp, milky scent of new life.The mother, a young wolf from one of the absorbed rogue bands, panted, flanks heaving. Her mate hovered in the doorway, eyes wide, tail tucked so tight it nearly brushed his belly.Elia’s steady hands moved like water, sure and practiced. She murmured low encouragements, words more vibration than meaning, keeping the nervous father from fainting and the mother from bolting.Luna’s job was simple.Hold.Support.Serve.Not lead.Not burn.She braced her palms against the mother’s hips, lending her a fraction of her own strength as the last contraction shuddered through her.The pup slid free into Elia’s waiting hands, wet and squirming.A heartbeat of stillness.Then

The Holy Clan inquisitors did not come quietly.They came with bells.The sound drifted through the trees like poison, high and crystalline, designed to unsettle wolves who still remembered when such things meant death.Luna felt the notes crawl up her spine, each one a splinter of old fear.Beside her, Kael flinched hard enough that Orion had to brace him."They rang those when they took my mother," he whispered, voice tight. "When she told me to run."Luna's jaw clenched."They will not ring again," she said.The border ward hummed against her awareness.It did not stop the inquisitors—only warned of their approach.She had woven it loose on purpose after the war.Better to see threats coming than trap them inside.Three figures emerged from the mist.Robed.Masked.The lead wore silver stitched into white cloth, forming sigils that hurt to look at directly.The other two flanked him, dressed in gray, hands gloved in leather treated with oils that stank of suppression and rot.The l

The map was older than memory.Kerran had found it in the deepest vault of the Moon Archives, wrapped in cloth that disintegrated at his touch and sealed with wax that bore no recognizable sigil.When he unrolled it on the table in Luna's den, the ink shimmered faintly—not with age, but with residual magic."This," he said, voice hushed with academic reverence, "is a problem."Luna leaned over the parchment, Orion at her shoulder, Kael hovering uncertainly at the edge.The map showed terrain that no longer existed.Mountains where there were now valleys.Rivers that had changed course centuries ago.But at its center, marked with a symbol that made Luna's crescent pulse—a perfect circle bisected by a crescent and a star—was a single word in the old tongue:*Aetherholm.*The Cradle."The First Temple," Kerran said. "Before the Moon Temple. Before the packs as we know them. This is where the first Alphas were chosen. Where the pact between wolf and goddess was sealed. Where—"He hesitat