The wind in Virelia was not silent—it had teeth.
It gnawed at stone and flesh alike, whispering through bone-pale trees, clawing over the charred remains of the old watchtowers that once lit the mountain paths. In the distance, wolves howled not for prey, but for the dead they could still taste on the wind.
Elira didn't flinch as she stood barefoot on the edge of that broken cliff, her toes dark with ash, her fingers curled around a shard of moonlight that pulsed like a second heart. She had stood there for hours, unmoving, as if time dared not claim her. Beneath her, the valley sprawled like a gutted beast, its rivers blackened, its forests dying. Above, Lunis—the last unbroken moon—hung heavy, a watchful eye over a dying world.
The shard in her hand thrummed again. This time, it spoke.
Come down. Come to the roots. The bones are waking. They remember your name, even if you don't.
She squeezed the crystal tighter until her palm bled. The whispers always came after sunset now—never full voices, never clear. But the meanings stuck like thornfish in her mind. They wanted her to remember. She didn't want to.
Behind her, the wind shifted.
"Elira," came a voice, low and worn. "You've been out here too long."
Kael stepped into view, his cloak torn and stained from travel, eyes darker than usual under the shadow of his hood. He moved like someone used to silence, his hand never straying far from the short blade at his hip.
"I told you not to follow," she said without looking back.
"And you've been told not to touch those things," he snapped. "But here we are. Again."
She turned then, slowly, her eyes like embers—dull, but still smoldering.
"You think the shard poisoned me."
"I know it has," he said. "You haven't slept in five nights. You speak to wind and bone. You bleed for a stone that calls your name."
Elira laughed—a sound without humor. "Perhaps I was already poisoned before I touched it."
Kael looked away, jaw clenched. The wind hissed between them like a third presence.
"They're coming tonight," she said finally. "The Watchers. The shard showed me their shadows on the moonlight. Tall as towers, skin like tar. They walk from the west now."
"There's no such thing as Watchers," Kael muttered.
She opened her hand, revealing the shard—still pulsing, still alive.
"Then what are these made for?" she whispered.
Far to the west…
Beneath the roots of the dead forest, something moved.
The bones of kings forgotten, still clad in rusting gold, shuddered in their graves. Black vines coiled around them like veins, feeding them secrets pulled from the fractures in the sky. And in the deepest hollow of that ancient crypt, a heartbeat echoed.
Not of a man. Not of a beast.
Of a god who had waited.
A voice like oil on fire slithered into the minds of the creatures nearby, boiling the thoughts from them like marrow from bone. The dead stood. The damned howled. And above it all, the Watchers opened their eyes.
Night in Virelia did not fall. It bled.
The last light of the day spilled across the jagged rocks like a dying animal—slow, ugly, and reluctant. The skies above stretched with thin red veins where clouds should be, streaking toward the horizon like fingers trying to hold back the coming dark. And beneath that ever-weeping sky, Elira and Kael walked the shattered trail back toward the village of Duskmere.
They didn't speak. The silence between them was not comfort—it was armor.
Kael walked half a pace behind her, watching her movements, studying her profile when she wasn't looking. He remembered her laughter once, bright and feral like spring storms. That had been before the shard. Before she had begun sleepwalking into the woods and waking with bruises shaped like hands that had never touched her.
Now she wore silence like a shroud.
As they approached the ridge that overlooked Duskmere, Elira paused.
Below them, the village flickered dimly with firelight. That was wrong.
The hearths in Duskmere burned blue, fueled by the witchwood that grew only near the moonwells. Blue flames meant the wards were still strong. Orange flames meant someone had burned something else—something not of the wells.
Kael followed her gaze and drew in a breath. "Why—"
"They've broken the wells," Elira said, voice hollow. "Or someone has."
Kael swore under his breath and unsheathed his blade. "We have to warn them—"
"They already know."
Below, in Duskmere...
Mother Keth stood in the ashes of the temple, her eyes closed, lips moving in prayerless murmurs. The moonwell had been breached—its glasslike waters blackened and steaming. The acolytes lay strewn like scattered dolls, each with faces frozen in horror. Only the priestess remained upright, and even she trembled.
"I begged them," she whispered, blood trickling from her ears. "I begged them not to draw the glyphs. Not here. Not in the hour of thinning."
A low groan echoed from the depths of the well. Then a scream—wet, wrong, and too long to be human.
Keth opened her eyes. "They've come."
The villagers began to scream.
Back on the ridge...
Kael saw it first.
A figure—tall, too tall—moved between the huts. Its arms dragged on the ground. Its face had no eyes, just a wide slit of a mouth that never stopped moving, whispering gibberish that made the dogs bark and the birds fall dead from the air.
A Watcher.
Elira stepped forward, her shard now glowing like a dying sun.
"Don't," Kael hissed, grabbing her arm. "You can't fight that."
"I'm not going to fight," she said. "I'm going to call them."
"Call who?"
"The others."
She raised the shard. The wind screamed.
The light that erupted from her hand was not white, not gold—it was memory made visible. For a moment, Kael saw flashes: a burning cathedral, children with silver eyes, a battlefield beneath broken stars. Then it was gone.
But the Watcher stopped moving.
Its mouth closed.
Then, slowly, it turned and bowed.
Kael staggered back, blade trembling in his hand. "Elira... what are you?"
She looked down at her palm. The shard had melted into her skin.
"I don't know."
Elsewhere, across the continent...
In the black citadel of Uth-Kaarn, the High Oracle stirred.
His eyes, sewn shut for a century, wept moonlight as the glyphs carved into his skin began to glow. Around him, the Cult of the Hollow Star began to chant, their voices echoing in frequencies that peeled paint and bone alike.
"The Moonblood has awakened," the Oracle croaked. "The Child of the Second Sundering walks in the ashes of the west."
He raised a hand. "Bring her to me. Dead or dreaming."
From the cages below, the Hounds of Silence howled.
Back in Duskmere...
The Watcher had vanished. Not fled—vanished.
No sign of its weight remained in the snow. No scorch marks, no rot. Only silence, and a village crouched in fear behind shattered doors and dying flame. The people did not speak as Elira walked among them. They lowered their heads. Some wept.
Mother Keth knelt at the ruins of the moonwell, tears steaming on her cheeks.
"You summoned it."
"I didn't summon it," Elira replied. "It was already here. I made it kneel."
Kael stepped between them. "You'll scare them."
"She should," Mother Keth rasped. "They should be terrified. The shard doesn't grant control. It grants memory. And memory is a prison."
Elira turned her gaze on the priestess. "You knew."
"I was there at the First Sundering," Keth whispered.
"You're lying."
"I wish I were."
Later that night…
Elira lay alone in the ruined temple, the shard now fully absorbed into her wrist like a brand. It pulsed with each heartbeat, like it was alive inside her. Outside, Kael stood watch, torch in hand, always circling, never still.
She dreamed.
In the dream, she was beneath the moons again, but all three were shattered. The sky wept blood. Mountains floated above the earth like ships. And across a field of bones, something waited.
A throne.
A crown of obsidian, half-melted.
And her name—not Elira, but something older—etched into the stone in runes that bled.
She woke gasping.
Kael was gone.