DAWN OF THE BLUE MOON

The white snow covering the battlefield turned crimson, when Gabriel realized he was dying and losing the war. A heavy kind of silence followed, the kind that came after the sound of swords piercing flesh, after screams had been torn apart, and after prayers had gone unanswered. Smoke clung to the air, thick and bitter, and the ground beneath him was soaked with blood that was no longer just his own. He lay on his back, staring at a sky that had begun to darken long before the sun should have set. Around him, his men fell one by one. He watched them die the way a man watched waves crash against rocks, powerless to stop what had already been decided. A sword pierced the chest of the soldier nearest to him. Another was dragged across the dirt, another had his head torn out, his fingers clawing at nothing as his throat was cut. Gabriel tried to move, but his body refused him. Pain flared and then dulled, spreading like ice through his veins. His hand tightened around the torn silver cross pendant pressed against his chest. It had been whole once. Clean and blessed. A promise he carried into war because Camilla had pressed it into his palm with trembling fingers and a smile she tried to make brave. "You must promise me," she had said. "Please... come back. Come back to me alive." His vision blurred, and then she was there. Not in the battlefield, not in blood or smoke, but in light. Camilla stood before him exactly as she had the day he left, her blue eyes warm and bright, her lips curved into a smile that broke something open inside his chest. "Gabriel," she whispered. He tried to speak her name, but his mouth filled with blood. The enemy leader stepped into his line of sight, towering over him with a raised sword. The man's armor gleamed with stolen light, and his eyes held no mercy. "This ends now," the man said. The blade rose higher. Then the sky changed. A sound swept across the battlefield, low and unnatural, like wings cutting through the air. The enemy soldiers froze. Some dropped their weapons. Others turned and ran without a word, their screams swallowed by the growing darkness. Bats filled the sky, a living shadow that blotted out the dying sun. Gabriel's breath came shallow and broken, and in that thin space between life and death, then a voice reached him. "Do you want to live?" "Do you want revenge?" "Just tell me... I can give that to you." It was not loud, yet it echoed inside his skull. "Do you desire strength and power?" Gabriel forced his eyes open. Before him stood a silhouette cloaked in black, tall and unmoving, with eyes that burned red like dying embers. Around them, women knelt among the fallen, their mouths stained crimson as they fed without shame or restraint. Fear should have claimed him. Instead, something colder settled in his chest. "I need to live," Gabriel whispered, blood slipping past his lips. "I need to win this war. I promised my king. I swore to Camilla, I will return." The figure stepped closer, and the scent of iron and night wrapped around him. "Then accept," the voice said softly. "And you will survive." Desperate, Gabriel did not ask the cost and he nodded. Death did not take him... It abandoned him. His body burned as if fire had been poured into his veins. Bones snapped and reset, the sound sharp and unforgiving. His spine arched as his heart stuttered, seized, and then began to beat again, this time stronger, louder, violent in its return. When he finally opened his eyes hours later, the moon had fully risen. He was no longer the man who had fallen. The air around him felt heavier, bending as if responding to his presence. His skin had turned pale beneath the moonlight, his features sharpened into something unnaturally precise. His dark hair spilled loosely around his face, darker than before, as though night itself had claimed it. When he looked down at his reflection upon his sword, red eyes stared back at him, burning, hungry, and not human. Immortal and unstoppable. A sudden thirst tore through him, so fierce it forced a growl from his throat. He reached for the silver cross lying beside him, but the moment his fingers brushed against it, pain exploded through his palm. His skin blistered instantly. With a sharp breath, he dropped it. Refusing to leave it behind, Gabriel tore a strip of cloth from a dead soldier's cloak, wrapped the cross carefully, and shoved it into his pocket. He stood, unsteady and disoriented, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what he had become. Panic surged, and he ran. The speed shocked him. The battlefield vanished behind him in seconds as the forest swallowed him whole. His chest burned, his throat screamed. He plunged his hands into a freezing river and drank, but the water did nothing. The thirst only worsened. Then he smelled blood. A deer stood at the edge of the clearing. He did not remember moving, only the warmth flooding his mouth and the horrifying relief that followed. When he pulled away, shame crushed him to his knees. That was when Freyr appeared. Freyr told him the truth of his existence, of the power now coursing through him, and of the revenge waiting to be claimed. Gabriel resisted. He raged and begged for death instead. He returned to the battlefield and fell to his knees among the frozen bodies of his men. Then memory struck him like lightning. The enemy would march again and will attack the kingdom. The kingdom would fall, he would allow it to happen. His fists clenched. He must come to them first. Gabriel accepted his fate. That night, he stormed the enemy's camp like a living nightmare. He moved through shadows, resisting the scent of human blood with every breath. Steel sang and bodies fell. Fear spread faster than fire. The enemy did not stand a chance. By the time the last body fell, the war was over. The kingdom was saved. But when he returned, dawn betrayed him. He hid with Freyr in the caverns that would one day become the Obsidian Citadel. From the shadows, he watched Camilla walk through streets he could no longer tread. He watched her wait. He watched her stop waiting, believing he was gone, and moved on. And then he watched her marry another man. Gabriel never touched her again. The silver cross remained in his possession, untouched and unworn,a relic of the man he used to be. Gabriel learned, over endless nights, that surviving the war had cost him the life he once knew.