Lunar Guard

Chapter 2

Raven’s Peak had been a town of quiet dignity, its gaslit streets lined with elegant townhouses, its squares bustling with merchants and gentlemen tipping their hats to passing ladies. The air had once been filled with the distant hum of industry, the clatter of carriage wheels, and the steady rhythm of everyday life.

But then—suddenly, without warning—it changed.

The disappearances began first. Workers never returned home. Housewives vanished from their kitchens. Children who had been playing in the streets were simply *gone.* Then, the bodies started appearing—pale, crumpled figures lying by the river’s edge, their fine garments soaked, their faces frozen in eerie stillness.

The town had erupted into chaos. Families locked their doors. The constabulary formed search parties. But none of it mattered. Those who were taken never came back *whole.*

Aria moved briskly through the dimly lit infirmary, her white apron already stained with blood and sweat. She had treated illnesses before—fevers, infections, injuries from factory mishaps—but never this. Never *this.*

She pressed her fingers to the wrist of a young woman laid out on the examination table. Her pulse was steady, yet the woman might as well have been a corpse. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Her lips parted as if caught mid-sentence, but no sound came.

Aria swallowed, fighting the gnawing dread in her stomach.

“I have never seen anything like this before,” she murmured, more to herself than to the panicked townsfolk gathered beyond the infirmary doors.

She had tried every treatment she knew—tonics, stimulants, even desperate prayers whispered over clasped hands. Nothing stirred the afflicted. They remained as they were: *hollow.*

“It’s as if their souls have been torn from their bodies,” she whispered, pressing a trembling hand to the woman’s forehead. “Leaving only… desolation behind.”

A draft swept through the infirmary, making the lamps gutter. Outside, the gaslights flickered as if something unseen had passed through the streets. A deep, uneasy silence settled over the town, heavier than before.

And Aria—standing amidst the lifeless bodies of the living—felt, with chilling certainty, that whatever had come to Raven’s Peak was not done yet.

All her life, Aria had felt it—that gnawing sense of displacement, like a melody played just out of tune. Was it the town, or was it *her*?

She had grown up among the gaslit streets of Raven’s Peak, surrounded by familiar faces that never truly *knew* her. People greeted her politely, acknowledged her skill as a nurse, yet there was always something unspoken in their eyes. A quiet hesitation. A distance that never closed.

And then there was the matter of her past—or rather, the absence of it.

She had no memories of her parents. No grave to visit, no faded portraits tucked away in dusty drawers. Whenever she asked, the townsfolk would avert their gazes, their answers vague and unsatisfying. *They were good people, may they rest in peace.* *You were so young, it’s best not to dwell on it.*

But there were no records. No letters. No belongings passed down.

It was as if they had never existed at all.

And now, as Raven’s Peak teetered on the edge of something unthinkable, that feeling—the one she had carried all her life—clawed its way back to the surface.

Something was wrong.

With the town.

With her.

With everything.

The news spread like wildfire through Raven’s Peak—more bodies had been found along the riverbank. Fishermen, their faces pale and drawn, had been the first to stumble upon them in the early morning mist.

Aria wasted no time. She gathered her skirts and hurried through the streets, her breath tight in her chest. The constables barely acknowledged her as she passed, too preoccupied with their own grim purpose. The cobblestones were slick with the remnants of last night’s rain, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and something more acrid—decay.

By the time she reached the outskirts of town, where the border river carved its way through the misty moors, the sun had barely begun to rise. The once-gentle current whispered against the shore, a soft, lapping sound that might have been beautiful under different circumstances. Now, it was a haunting melody against the grotesque stillness of the scene before her.

The bodies lay in unnatural repose along the muddy banks, their limbs twisted, their clothes clinging to their bloated forms. Aria’s breath caught in her throat as she stepped closer.

Deep gashes marred their flesh, as though something with terrible claws had torn into them. Their hands, stiff in death, were curled as if they had tried to fight against something unseen. And their faces—God, their faces.

Mouths frozen mid-scream. Eyes wide and unseeing, locked in an eternity of horror.

She dropped to her knees beside one of them, a young man barely past twenty, his damp curls clinging to his forehead. Aria pressed her fingers against his throat out of instinct, though she knew there would be no pulse. His skin was ice-cold. But it was not just death that had taken him—there was something *wrong* with these bodies.

Water dripped from their open mouths. Their lungs had not simply filled with river water; they had *drowned*—but not by accident.

The realization sent a shudder through her. *Who had done this?* And more chilling still—*why?*

Behind her, the constables muttered amongst themselves. Some crossed themselves. Others refused to step too close, as if afraid the dead might still have something left to say.

Aria swallowed, her throat dry. She had seen death before. But this?

This was something else.

And as she stared into those frozen, terrified faces, a single, dreadful thought whispered through her mind:

*Perhaps they had seen their killer. And perhaps that was the cruelest fate of all.*

A shiver ran down Aria’s spine. No matter where she turned, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something—*someone*—was watching her.

She cast a glance over her shoulder. The constables were deep in hushed conversation, their faces tight with unease. Medics moved swiftly, tending to the dead with mechanical efficiency.

The press, their cameras cumbersome and intrusive, clicked and whirred as they documented the horror. Nothing was amiss. And yet—something was wrong.

Then it hit her.

A searing pain lanced through her skull, sudden and blinding. Aria staggered, gasping as her vision fractured.

Darkness. Writhing. Moving.*

Shadows—not cast by men, but alive. They swarmed, shifting like a living tide, crimson eyes burning through the void. They crawled over the rooftops, spilled through the streets, slithered through alleyways like hungry specters. And they were coming—coming for Raven’s Peak.

A single heartbeat later, the vision was gone.

Aria inhaled sharply, her body locking up as the world snapped back into focus. She was standing in the mud, surrounded by the dead, her hands trembling. She could feel the weight of a dozen qeyes on her now—the constables, the medics, even the reporters.

“Miss Aria?” someone called cautiously.

She barely heard them.

The vision had passed in the blink of an eye, but the terror it left in its wake remained. Her stomach twisted, nausea rising. She had felt them—those things in the dark. Not men, not beasts, but something far, far worse.

And they were coming.

For the first time since this nightmare began, Aria wasn’t just afraid of what had already happened.

She was afraid of what was about to.