THE MOON’S VENGEANCE

The night smelled of burning roots and blood. Smoke climbed into the sky in thick, trembling columns, swallowing the pale glow of the moon until it looked like a closed eye cold, blind, uncaring. The kind of night where prayers turned to ash before they reached the gods. I pressed my back against the clay wall of our home as it trembled under the weight of footsteps outside heavy, deliberate, hunting. My mother’s fingers dug into my arm, her breath ragged against my cheek. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. The screams outside said everything. The wolves were here. Not wolves like in the old tales wild, hungry creatures of fur and fang. These were the Night bane. The kind that wore human skin when they wished and tore through it when they didn’t. I could hear them. Their growls, Their laughter. And the roar of fire devouring everything I had ever known. My heart hammered with so much force I thought it would betray us. My mother cupped her hand over my mouth not rough, but stern. She had always been gentle, but now there was steel in her touch. The kind born only in final moments. “Don’t look,” she whispered. But I already had. Through the cracks in the wall, I had seen our neighbors cut down in the street. Seen the flames dancing over the thatched roofs. Seen the wolves run four-legged and five-times my size tearing through flesh like it was soft bread. And worse, I had seen him. A man standing in the firelight with silver eyes that glowed like the moon itself. Not bright. Not warm, Cold, Reflective. Like the light that falls on a grave. He didn’t shout orders. He didn’t snarl. He didn’t even move with urgency. He just watched, hands clasped behind his back, like the destruction of my world was nothing more than a performance staged for his quiet approval. Cassius Draven, Alpha of the Nightbane Pack. The Wolf of a Thousand Graves. We don't say his name here, But everyone knew his shadow. A crash shook the door, My mother’s grip tightened. “Octavia,” she whispered my name cracking like something breaking inside her. “Listen to me. Run. When I tell you run and don’t look back.” I shook my head so hard tears blurred the firelight. “No, I’m not leaving....” She took my face in her hands. Her palms were warm, Too warm. There was blood on them. “When the moon turned its face from us,” she murmured, voice trembling, “the world took something from our blood. Something sacred. But not all of it. Not yours.” I stared. I didn’t understand. Her eyes were shining wet, terrified, and yet… relieved. Before I could speak, The door splintered. My mother threw herself forward, body slamming into the intruder with a scream that didn’t sound human. I didn’t think, I ran. Out the back Into the night, Into the smoke and fire and the smell of my world dying. I stumbled through the heat, through the cracking of burning timber, through bodies I didn’t let myself look at. My lungs burned. My eyes stung. My feet bled on splintered wood and scorched dirt. Still I ran. I didn’t look back. I wouldn’t break the last command she ever gave me, But I heard her scream and that sound, That sound cleaved something inside me clean in two. The fire roared behind me, the moon stayed hidden and I knew, in that moment, that gods don’t save the weak, they let them burn. I didn’t stop running until the forest swallowed me, the trees rose tall and black, their branches twisting like fingers clawing at the sky. Shadows moved between them quick, slick, alive. The kind of shadows that breathed. I leaned against a trunk, chest heaving, the taste of metal thick in my mouth. For the first time since the attack began, I allowed myself to cry but not like a child, not loud, not broken. The tears came silent, Hot trails on cold skin. The world had already taken everything it could from me. I had nothing left to give it not even my sobs. The leaves rustled behind me. I froze, Slowly I turned. A wolf lay in the grass, Massive. Its fur black as pitch, Its eyes clouded with the film of dying light. It had been wounded slashed open across the ribs. Blood pooled beneath it, dark and glistening like wine. I should have backed away, Should have hidden, Should have feared it. But its breathing sounded like mine, Shallow, Hurting, Trying to hold onto something that was already slipping away. I knelt. The wolf didn’t snarl. For a moment just one, there was no fire, No screams, No silver-eyed monster. Just me and this dying creature. Two living things being eaten by the same night.My hand hovered above its fur. I didn’t know why I touched it. I just did. Its heartbeat pulsed once under my palm. And then Something inside me moved. Not in my chest, Not in my mind, In my blood. Hot, Sharp, Alive. Like something waking up after a very long sleep. The wolf’s eyes snapped open. They locked on mine. And in the moment before its last breath, It howled. Not with its throat. With its soul. The sound tore through me, ripping open something I didn’t know was there. The trees answered, The night answered, The moon.....The moon finally looked at me. And then A voice: “Found her.” Boots in the leaves, Claws on the earth. A shadow descending. Cassius Draven stepped out of the trees. His silver eyes gleamed, Not surprised, Not curious. Certain. Like he’d been looking for me all along.