All Chapters of Blood Moon: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

After the Season of Reflection Assembly, the new, widely accepted narrative floating around the courtyard was that Clementine Thorne and Jessalyra Claw hadn’t been snatched at all. Instead, the popular consensus was that the two girls had secret, forbidden feelings for one another and had simply eloped to the mainland to escape the rigorous academic pressures of the academy.It was a brilliant, utterly ridiculous piece of fiction, likely manufactured by my mother's public relations instincts. But it worked. Dread’s pack was heavily mocked for still being on edge, their snarling paranoia treated like a bad case of teenage angst. I wanted to point out how statistically improbable it was for two unrelated shifters to vanish into thin air within a week of each other, but I kept my mouth shut. Living under Headmistress Dionysea’s roof taught you that pointing out the cracks in her pristine walls was a fantastic way to get your privileges revoked.Besides, I had my own distraction

By the time the sun came up, I had successfully convinced myself that Clair Westfield was a clinical lunatic who shouldn't be trusted with an island map, let alone local history.Linking my existence to a sixteen-year-old maritime disaster just because the math looked clean was peak teen-drama logic. People love a tragedy, and they love a conspiracy even more. My parents were eccentric, sure. My mom was a literal lich who treated affection like a quarterly performance review, and my dad spent ninety percent of his waking hours trying to turn base metals into household cleaning products. But a pair of baby-snatching, ward-sabotaging criminal masterminds? That was ridiculous.I consciously decided to put the entire conversation in a small, lead-lined box in the back of my brain and bury it under a mountain of denial. It was surprisingly therapeutic."You're staring at your toast like it insulted our family name," my father said, stepping into the kitchen wit

The morning before the Blood Moon, the academy smelled like an over-committed candle shop.Everywhere you went, students were burning protective sage, enchanting obsidian charms, or practicing celestial invocations that smelled aggressively of sulfur and burnt hair. In homeroom, our teacher didn't even bother taking attendance. Instead, she passed around a stack of parchment and told us to begin finalizing our "Blood Moon Intentions"—the specific rituals or spell-weavings we intended to align with the lunar apex."Remember, class," she said, her voice tight with the kind of forced cheerfulness usually reserved for flight attendants during extreme turbulence. "The blood moon multiplies ambient arcana tenfold. Think about what you want to manifest."I stared at my blank parchment. As a human with the magical capacity of a damp cardboard box, my options for manifestation were somewhat limited. I briefly considered writing down 'I intend to not get murdered in a corridor,' or perhaps 'I m