Chapter Six: The Moon Oath
565 Words
The moon hung heavy and red over Veyruin’s spires, casting the palace in a haunting glow. It was the kind of night that made the air taste like magic. Elira stood barefoot in the heart of the old chapel, where the stained glass had long since cracked and vines twisted through the stone like veins.
Across from her, Kael knelt before a basin filled with silver water. The Moon Oath was forbidden, whispered about in terrified tones even among the oldest mages. It could not be performed by just anyone—it required two who were bound by blood or fate.
Tonight, they were both.
“Once we begin,” Kael warned, “there’s no taking it back. It will show us what was hidden. But it may also take something in return.”
Elira’s hands trembled, but her voice was steady. “I need to know who I am. And what you are to me.”
Kael reached out, palm up. She took it.
Together, they pressed their hands into the basin. The silver water hissed and boiled as their skin touched its surface. A pulse of magic shot through the room, shaking the broken glass in the windows. Light exploded from the basin—white and cold—and the chapel vanished.
They stood now in a memory.
A moonlit garden. Roses black as ink. A girl in a silver dress—Elira, younger. Innocent. Laughing. Opposite her, a boy no older than ten, with coal-dark hair and sad eyes—Kael.
But something was wrong.
Behind the children, the shadows crept closer. Not natural darkness—living shadow, full of teeth and whispers.
“Elira,” the boy called, “run!”
But the girl did not run. She turned. Faced them. And sang.
A haunting melody, words not of any language Elira knew. But the shadows paused. For just a moment—they bowed.
The vision shimmered. Shifted.
Now a ritual circle. The same girl, now a little older, standing beside the Queen of Veyruin—Kael’s mother. Blood in a bowl. The Queen whispering: “She is the key. Hide her. Change her name. Let the mountain cradle her memory.”
Another pulse.
Elira gasped, stumbling as they were pulled into the final vision.
A crypt. Cold. Ancient. Kael—older, but not yet cursed—stood before a mirror. In the glass, a spirit with Elira’s face smiled back at him.
“You will forget me,” she said. “But I will find you again.”
“How will I know you?”
“When the mark burns. When the shadows rise. When your heart remembers mine.”
And then it all shattered.
Elira collapsed onto the chapel floor, the silver basin overturned beside her. Her heart thundered. Her chest burned with new memories. She wasn’t just some orphan girl from the mountains.
She had been hidden. Bound. Chosen.
Kael knelt beside her, his voice hoarse. “Elira… you were always meant to break this curse.”
Tears filled her eyes. “But at what cost?”
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
Because they both felt it now.
Something had been awakened by the Moon Oath.
And far in the north, where the forest bled and the wind howled, a dark figure on horseback turned toward the palace.
The Spirit Hunter had heard the call.
- Writer
