Halo: The Mona Lisa Novels & Stories

VALERIA’S POV I stopped in my tracks, my breath caught in my throat as I turned toward the source of the voice. The air shimmered, and there she stood—a vision of beauty and power. Her form radiated an ethereal glow, a soft, silvery light that seemed to pulsate with an otherworldly rhythm. A delicate halo framed her, and her presence was both calming and commanding, like the serene yet undeniable pull of the moon itself. My lips parted, but no words came. I tried to speak, to understand what I was seeing. “Are… are you… you…” I stuttered, my voice trembling.

The glass table was a mess of honey, champagne, and the remains of the men's desire. Sarah lay there, unable to move. She felt like a hollow shell that had been filled with gold. Leo walked over to the main monitor. He pressed play. On the screen, a high-definition version of Sarah was begging for more. She looked wild. She looked destroyed. She looked beautiful. "This is the masterpiece," Leo whispered. Sarah looked at the screen, then at the three men who stood over her like guards of a secret temple.

The silver tiara around her head catches the sun and casts a halo around her. “If we had known, we would have helped. All you had to do was ask,” she says in a voice that sounds more like a song than words. I look back at Noah. He’s not enchanted by Titania as I thought he would be. He appears repulsed and suspicious. “Oh come off it,” he says. “You twisted, fucking liar. You are helping now because you have no other choice.” Noah makes his way down the beach, his feet sinking away in the soft sand and debris left here by the tsunami. “And you want me in the front, so I can die, so I can pay the price for whatever magic you’re cooking up.”

“Vera… Gabriel… the halo around the moon… it’s changing.” I felt it before the words even hit the air—the temperature in the room dropped. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I turned toward the messenger. The walls of the tent seemed to pulse, as though the very land itself was reacting. “The halo…” the messenger’s voice shook. “It’s thickening, turning red at the edges.” The room fell silent, the weight of the words hanging heavy. Everyone turned to the large window, their gazes drawn to the sky outside.

Everything afterward had only been cleaner language poured over the same violence. Above us, the chamber shook under that revelation as if truth itself had mass. Through the sovereign seat I saw the first hound lurch sideways, its antlers smashing into the broken wall. Red-black light sprayed from the seam beneath its throat in erratic pulses. Elara shouted for Luna Lea to get Alpha Cameron clear. Marian was laughing and crying at once now, unable to decide whether collapse was victory or punishment. The hunger was still fighting to hold shape in my face, but the room had begun to distrust its own design.

"I’m the trigger." ​"Wait!" Liam shouted. "I'm getting a signal from Harl. It's... it's a visual feed." ​The monitor in front of my fixed gaze flickered to life. It wasn't a paradise. The lunar colony was a sterile, white labyrinth where thousands of people stood in rows, their eyes wide and vacant, their skin translucent. They weren't "refined"—they were processed. They were being used as biological processors for a massive, central AI. ​Harl was strapped to a chair in the centre of a glass room. A silver needle was hovering inches from his eye. Beside him, the Seditious Ledger was being scanned by a beam of violet light.

Chapter 54 The Gift The Halo deck shimmered to life, its holographic projections weaving a breathtaking tapestry of color and light. Niklaus and Kie had chosen a Starlit night: a view from Heaven. It was amazing it seemed like you were walking on thin air among the stars in the Heavens.

The Hadens had found them again. The three of them; Mariana, Scholastica, and Cordis immediately started fighting them off. Theresa tried to run away with the glowing halo but was stopped by one of the Hadens who pushed her to the ground, making the halo to fall to the ground. He ventured to pick it up with his hands but the temperature of the halo melted off his hand, up to his shoulder level, and while he was screaming in pain and agony, Theresa gave him a death blow, clamped the halo with the hook rod, and ran off.

I held her in my arms, whispering comfort as Clara fought to reboot the med systems. “She’s inside the network,” Clara hissed. “Our ship. Our backups. Our minds if we’re not careful.” Lucien’s eyes burned. “Then we kill the source.” “You want to kill a child?” I snapped. “I want to stop the end of the world,” he snarled back. And for the first time… I wasn’t sure which was which anymore. We jumped to HALCYON at midnight. It hovered like a dead god over the curve of Earth. Lights pulsed along its ringed edges. Drones floated like metal bees. And in the center, suspended in a glass cathedral—Rhea.