The journal woke me again before dawn. It lay on the desk where I’d left it, closed and harmless, but the air around it shimmered faintly with moonlight. I should have ignored it. Instead, I opened the cover.
The ink on the first page bled outward, lines curling into new shapes until the words re-formed:
The oath was written in blood so it could never fade:
The room tilted. The cold candle flame stretched and thinned, and the world fell away.
I was standing in the temple again. The First Luna knelt before the alter, her hands steady now. The dagger gleamed in her grasp, the same one that waited on my desk in the waking world. Around her, twelve wolves formed a circle, their eyes bright with reverence and fear.
“The Moon fades,” one of them said.
“Without your vow, her light will di
