Ashes Of Truth
911 Words
The letter trembled in Luna’s fist as she walked back into the house.
It was past midnight. The hallway felt colder, narrower like the shadows were listening.
She didn’t knock.
She pushed open her parents' bedroom door.
Marcus jolted upright, blinking in the dark. “Luna?”
Hilda stirred beside him. “What’s wrong?”
Luna turned on the light. Her face was pale but burning. “You need to tell me the truth.”
She held the letter up like a weapon.
Marcus’s eyes dropped to the page and froze.
“Where did you get that?” he asked quietly.
“In the attic. Hidden. Like everything else.”
Hilda sat up, her voice soft. “Luna”
“No,” Luna snapped. “Don’t call me like nothing’s changed. You knew. This whole time. About my parents. About me.”
Neither of them answered right away.
The silence hurt more than a lie.
“I thought I was going crazy,” she continued, her voice cracking. “Things break when I’m angry. I hear whispers. I feel things I can’t explain. And you just… watched it happen?”
Marcos looked down, then finally spoke.
“We were trying to protect you.”
“By lying?”
“By giving you a chance to be normal,” Hilda said gently. “A life without fear. Without magic.”
“But it’s in me,” Luna said. “You knew I’d never be normal.”
Tears welled in Hilda’s eyes. “We hoped... that maybe the blood would sleep.”
Luna stepped back. “Well, it didn’t.”
The letter slipped from her fingers.
“I need to know everything,” she said, her voice steady now. “Who they were. What I am. And what’s coming for me.”
Marcus looked at her with a sadness deeper than she had ever seen in his eyes.
“Then you need to hear the story of the Moonfire Pact,” he said.
Marcus sighed, rubbing his hands together like he was warming them on invisible flames.
“The story begins long before you were born,” he said. “Before this town was even called Black Hollow.”
Luna sat on the edge of the bed, arms crossed, jaw tight.
“There was a time,” Marcus continued, “when the world wasn’t divided into magic and non-magic because everyone had a little of both. But as power grew, fear did too. And some families… chose to protect their power at any cost.”
He looked at her.
“Your family was one of them.”
“They called themselves the Children of the Moonfire Pact. Sorcerers bound by an ancient oath made during the blood eclipse, a rare celestial event that only happens once every few centuries. They believed the eclipse was a gateway, a veil between the human world and something older… and hungrier.”
Luna’s fingers dug into her sleeves. “And they used that… thing?”
“No one knows what they spoke to,” Marcus said. “Only that they came back with more power than anyone had seen before. But it twisted them. Even those who began with good intentions started to change. Towns burned. Villages vanished.”
“And my parents?” Luna asked.
“They were the last. Solara and Valdez. Brilliant. Terrifying. And pregnant… with you.”
Hilda finally spoke. “Your father was the most powerful and ruthless of them all. He was the most feared man in this town. His wife, Solara, always there by his side, equally terrifying. Dark magic was her biggest strength. Their temple was set ablaze. Burning down everything and everyone inside to ashes. You were found in the ashes, wrapped in a fireproof cloak with that pendant.”
Luna touched the pocket where she had stashed it.
“So what am I?” she whispered. “A curse? A weapon?”
Marcus stood and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You’re a choice,” he said. “You carry darkness, yes. But you’re not bound to it unless you let it bind to you.”
Luna swallowed hard.
“And if I already feel it pulling?”
“Then you learn to pull harder.”
Luna ran outside, stood in the backyard, barefoot in the grass, the night air cool against her skin.
Above her, the moon glowed full and silver, hauntingly familiar.
She clenched the pendant in her fist, the old metal warming against her palm like it knew her. Like it had waited.
The words echoed in her head:
“You’re a choice.”
But it didn’t feel that way.
She didn’t choose this blood.
She didn’t choose the whispers in her dreams.
She didn’t choose to burn everything she touched when her rage got too loud.
The air shimmered around her, subtly, unnaturally. A nearby candle on the windowsill flickered, then sparked higher.
Luna closed her eyes.
Focused.
And for just a moment… the air was still. The flicker faded.
She opened her eyes.
Something deep inside her had listened. And for the first time, obeyed.
It frightened her.
But it also thrilled her.
She turned toward the woods behind the house. The trees loomed tall, black, and silent. Somewhere out there, her past waited. Her future, too.
Luna’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I’m not afraid of the fire anymore.”
The candle behind her extinguished itself with a hiss.
- Writer
