The crescent was fading.
For weeks, it had hung in the sky like a scar — thin, silver, defiant.
Now it trembled.
Rovan felt it before anyone else did.
The remaining piece of the moon — the fragment that had burst from his ribs the night he devoured the sky — was bound to him. Not by magic alone.
By guilt.
By love.
By something far more dangerous.
Hope.
He stood at the edge of the Ravenspire cliffs, wind tearing through his blackened fur. The land below had not healed. Crops grew crooked. Wolves shifted unpredictably. Pups were born under restless skies.
The world survived.
But it was not whole.
Behind him, the elders whispered.
“It weakens each night.”
“The balance is failing.”
“The darkness is returning.”
They were right.
When he swallowed the moon, he didn’t just consume
