CROWNED BY BLOOD
"Real as the stones you walk on. Real as the air you breathe."
"All of that is true," the Keeper replied, and at the child's confused expression, she laughed softly. "Come. Let me show you something."
She led the girl through corridors lined with portraits, some painted, a few captured in the newer art of light-drawing that the scholars had recently perfected. Each showed Luna differently: fierce and crowned, gentle and teaching, monstrous with claws extended, serene beneath starlight.
They stopped before the oldest portrait, painted when Luna still lived. The woman in the image was neither beautiful nor terrible, neither saint nor demon. Just a person scarred, tired, holding a small flower