Lahat ng Kabanata ng Blood Moon Rising - The Lumenwild Trials: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

Elara POVBy the time I saw the light in the woods, Willowmere had already started to die.No one talked about it, but everyone felt it. The air clung to my skin like cold smoke. Streetlights blinked out and stayed broken. The lake quit reflecting the moon. Even the willows, the ones that gave the town its name, bent lower every year, it's branches heavy with something unseen.People whispered about gas leaks or old mining shafts or radon in the soil. They always needed an explanation. But there wasn’t one. Not for the whispers in the fog. Not for the wolves that sang in moonlight no one else could see.I noticed. I always did. Maybe because I was the only one no one else saw.I was seventeen and already tired of being temporary. The system had shuffled me through more homes than I could count. In this one, the walls smelled like bleach and cigarette smoke, and the woman who was supposed to be my guardian kept the deadbolt on her bedroom door.I didn’t bother trying to belong anymore.

We walked until the world itself began to blur.The forest wasn’t just alive here and it was awake. Every step hummed beneath my feet, the ground breathing in rhythm with something ancient and unseen. The air shimmered faintly, silver dust rising whenever we disturbed the moss. Even the trees seemed to lean toward us, their branches curving like arms reaching out to listen.I stayed close to Cael. Not because I trusted him and not yet but because he looked like the only thing in this place that obeyed gravity.The others moved ahead in silence, shadows against the glowing undergrowth.Kian whistled under his breath, all restless energy. The violet-eyed one, Auren but I’d learned his name when Kian said it half in jest and walked with the stillness of someone who had learned patience by bleeding for it. And the last, the dark one they called Nyx, moved like smoke, his presence heavy enough to silence even Kian’s jokes after a while.When I stumbled over a root, Cael’s hand shot out,

The days that followed blurred together like half-remembered dreams.If days could even exist here. The Lumenwild didn’t have mornings or nights it only shifting shades of light, silver at its gentlest, crimson when the moons drew close. Sometimes the world glowed so bright it felt like standing inside a heartbeat.Cael said the Sanctum had protected the wolves for centuries, hidden deep within the roots of the veil. Now, its walls pulsed with my presence and veins of light that brightened whenever I walked by, like the place itself recognized me.It made everyone uneasy.Especially me.Cael kept his distance at first, all command and composure. But the Elders had decreed he would train me, teach me to wield the Moonfire before it consumed me. So, most mornings and or whatever passed for them but we met in the hollow courtyard beneath the two moons.“Again,” he said, circling me like a patient storm.I glared at him. “I’m trying.”“Trying isn’t control.”My hands shook. The mark under

Auren’s POVThe light was still burning behind my eyelids long after it had vanished.The clearing was silent now, the kind of silence that comes after something sacred has been broken, or born. Smoke curled through the air, pale and shimmering, carrying the scent of silver ash and scorched earth.Elara lay at the center of it all, her cloak half-burned, her skin illuminated by faint threads of moonlight that pulsed beneath the surface like veins of living fire. The Heart floated above her, no longer flickering, but steady and strong. Alive. Because of her.Cael knelt beside her, his face pale and unreadable, fingers hovering an inch from her skin as if afraid to touch. I’d seen him face down Riftborn without blinking. Now, he looked like a man staring at the edge of a blade pressed against his throat.“She’s breathing,” I said quietly.“I know.” His voice was rough, too controlled. “But it’s not the same.”He was right. The rhythm of her breath matched the glow of the Heart, one inha

Cael’s POVThe Sanctum hadn’t changed in centuries, but it felt smaller now.Light poured through the vaulted roots that arched over us like the bones of the forest itself. The air shimmered with ancient wards, with soft gold and pale blue, overlapping like woven glass. I’d stood in this chamber a hundred times before, but never as a man carrying both a promise and a threat in his arms.And Elara was both.She stood at my side, shoulders squared though her hands trembled. The mark on her chest pulsed faintly beneath the fabric of her tunic. Every Elder in the circle was watching it. Watching her.There were nine of them, cloaked in silver and white, faces obscured by veils of light. They weren’t wolves anymore, none of them had been for a long time. They’d traded their fangs for prophecy, their instincts for vision. And still, they could devour with a glance.Elder Varyn was the first to speak. “You brought the Rift’s child into our heart, Cael. Explain yourself.”“She’s not of the Ri