The Crescent Moon broadcast hadn't even been archived for twelve hours before the first attack hit. It began with whispers in a Montana border town, a place too small for major headlines and too stubborn for fear.
Three children vanished from a church-run afterschool program. Two hikers went missing on the same trail their family had walked for decades. A livestock barn burned down with no witnesses, only claw marks scorched into the wood.
No one connected the dots until a sheriff's deputy, one of the few Crescent Moon had quietly been training, sent word through their underground relay.
"It's them. Rogues. Not feral. Fast. Coordinated. Tattooed with symbols I've never seen. They left one alive. To send a message." The man, whose name was Chad, was shaken. He supposed some part of him never believed it could ever be real.
