The Human Luna

Personal

(Toni's POV)

I pushed further into the heart of the forest, the silence of the woods shifting from eerie to something that felt like an active, suffocating presence. As I crested a small, jagged ridge, I stopped dead. Below me lay a valley that looked like it had been carved out of a nightmare. I had come across the ruins of a pack—not just a few damaged buildings, but an entire community that had been systematically erased from existence.

The sight was devastating. Burned-out homes, their frames reduced to blackened skeletons of wood and iron, stood like tombstones against the gray sky. Bleached bones of the dead were scattered across the ash-colored soil, some half-buried, others lying in clusters that suggested they had died together, huddled in a final, desperate attempt at comfort. Twisted remnants of vehicles—trucks and transport vans—were tossed aside like discarded toys, their metal charred and warped from intense heat.

I walked slowly into the ruins, my boots crunching on a layer of gray soot that covered everything. The air here tasted of old smoke and cold iron. As I navigated through the wreckage of what might have been a communal hall, something caught my eye. Half-buried in the ash was a small, stuffed baby doll.

I knelt, my fingers trembling as I picked it up. Any color the doll had once possessed had long since faded, bleached away by years of exposure to the harsh sun and the chemical residue of the war. It wasn't soft anymore; the stuffing had hardened, making the toy stiff and brittle, a ghostly relic of a childhood that had been cut short.

A sudden, crushing wave of sadness rose in me, a grief that didn't belong to me but felt as if it were being forced into my soul by the land itself. I felt the urge to share this, to show my followers the sheer human cost of the "glories" my family always spoke of. I reached for my phone, preparing to start a live stream, but before I could hit the button, the world snapped.

The present vanished. The silence was replaced by a cacophony of screams and the thunderous, rhythmic eruption of gunfire. It was too chaotic, the noise too dense to make out specific words, but the terror was unmistakable. I was standing in the middle of the village, but it wasn't a ruin—it was alive, and it was burning.

I saw a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, her eyes wide with a terror that no child should ever know. She was screaming, her voice a high, thin wail that pierced through the gunfire, shouting for her mommy. She turned and bolted toward a nearby building, her small legs pumping with desperation. I tried to reach out, to scream for her to stop, but my voice was gone, swallowed by the roar of the conflict. Just as she crossed the threshold of the door, the building erupted in a blinding blaze of fire and a deafening explosion that knocked me backward.

I screamed, a raw, visceral sound, but I knew none of them could hear me. I was a ghost in my own memory, a witness to a crime that had been scrubbed from the history books.

Around me, the c*****e continued. I saw wolves rushing past, some in their human forms, their clothes torn and bloodied, others already shifted into massive, snarling beasts. They were fighting a losing battle, trying to create a perimeter to safely evacuate the young and the elderly, but the effort was futile. I looked toward the horizon and saw that the entire sky was on fire, the orange glow reflecting the annihilation of everything they loved.

A wolf rushed past me, his flank torn open. I could see the blood soaking through his shirt, the jagged entrance of a bullet wound. He didn't even look at me as he staggered toward one of the vehicles, his movements slow and labored.

Then, the human soldiers advanced. They moved in a tight, disciplined line, their weapons readied, their faces cold and devoid of mercy. And then I saw the man in charge. He was standing atop a ridge, directing the assault with a clinical, detached precision. The air left my lungs. My heart stopped dead in my chest. I knew that face. I had seen it in silver-framed photographs on my mother's mantel. I had heard stories about his "valor" and his "unwavering strength" since I was a toddler.

That was my grandfather.

I watched in horror as he calmly ordered another attack, his voice likely devoid of any doubt, sending a fresh wave of soldiers into the heart of the screaming village to finish what the fire had started.

The flashback dissolved as quickly as it had arrived, snapping me back to the silent, dead valley of the present. I collapsed to my knees, clutching my chest, my fingers digging into my shirt as I struggled to still my hammering heart. I gasped for air, but it felt as if the atmosphere had turned to lead, making every breath an impossible struggle.

Not once had my family told me about the specifics of his service. Not once did they mention the "cleansing" of packs or the s*******r of non-combatants. I had never dug into the official records of his past—perhaps because I had trusted them. I had believed the lie that he was a war hero, a protector of the human race.

But I had seen it. I had seen the truth with my own eyes. He hadn't been protecting anyone; he had been a butcher. He had led a m******e of children and the elderly, and he had done it with a smile of duty on his face.

This... this was the legacy my family wanted to protect. This was the "honor" my mother had tried to guilt-trip me with. Like hell they will, I thought, a cold, hard anger replacing the grief. Like hell they get to keep this a secret.

I wouldn't just debunk ghosts and urban legends. I would expose the blood on my own family's hands. I would dig into every archive, every hidden record, and with Iseult's help, I would drag my grandfather's "heroism" into the light and show the world the monster he truly was.

My hands were shaking so violently that I nearly dropped my water bottle as I tried to take a drink. I took a few jagged sips, the cold water helping to ground me, though the image of that little girl running into the flames remained burned into my retinas. I stayed on my knees for a long time, trying to steady my breathing and process the fact that my entire identity had been built on a foundation of lies. I knew The Scar would be challenging, but I never expected it to be personal.

Slowly, I reached for my phone. I opened the app and started the live stream. Thousands of people joined within seconds, the notification bells chiming in my ear.

"Hey guys," I said, my voice sounding hollow and fragile, even to me. I panned the camera around, showing the blackened frames of the houses and the scattered bones. "For those of you who are good with research... I want you to look into this area. I am at the ruins of what once was a pack. I can see numerous ruins of buildings, burned down to their frames, vehicles destroyed and tossed aside.

Nothing has ever grown here to cover it up. There are trees, sure, but nothing close to the buildings, guys. It's almost as if... whatever happened here, even the soil wants the story told."

I could see the comments flooding in. Many of them noticed that I looked rocked to the core, my face pale and my eyes distant. They knew I was prone to flashbacks; it was well-documented that some people could perceive "echoes" of the past. It was a rare gift—or a curse, depending on who you asked.

My family had always hated that I was one of those people. They had called it a "trick of the mind" or a "distraction." Now I knew why. They weren't afraid for my sanity; they were afraid of what I might find. They were afraid that I would look into the shadows of the past and see the faces of the people they had murdered.

I looked back at the stiff, faded baby doll in my hand and felt a new, fierce determination. I wasn't just a vlogger anymore. I was a hunter of truths. And I was going to make sure the world knew exactly who the real monsters were.