The Hunger Between Moons

Prologue — Dream Fragment

The dream came to Rowan in shades of silver.

Moonlight poured through no window, for there were no walls; only a horizon of mist where the air itself shimmered like water about to break. He stood barefoot in a field of ash-colored grass that bowed toward some unseen tide. Every breath felt borrowed, as if the world were holding him in suspension between sleep and memory.

Somewhere in the distance, a wolf was breathing.

Not howling—breathing. A slow, deliberate rhythm that matched the pulse in his wrists. He lifted his hand and saw the veins trace faint light beneath the skin, a geometry he did not recognize yet somehow remembered.

He walked forward.

The ground exhaled fog that clung to his legs, trailing behind like unspun silk. Trees began to take shape: trunks the color of bone, leaves that trembled without wind. Between them hung strands of light, glistening threads stretched from branch to branch, humming softly when he passed. When he brushed one, it sang—a low, aching note that sounded like his own name spoken by someone he had tried to forget.

“Rowan,” the voice murmured.

It was neither man nor beast, but both, each syllable carrying the weight of centuries.

He turned, and the forest turned with him. The air thickened until movement became a dream within a dream. The moon hung low, enormous, its face fractured by shadow. From its light stepped a figure—barefoot, dusted with silver, eyes the same color as the horizon.

Ash.

He should not have known the name, yet he did. The sound of it ached somewhere behind his ribs.

Ash’s mouth moved, but the words came as wind through hollow stone.

Do you remember what you promised?

Rowan tried to answer, but his voice was caught behind his teeth. The moon pulsed once—heartbeat, heartbeat—and the distance between them vanished. He felt the warmth of breath against his throat, the press of something unseen moving beneath his own skin, as though the dream were teaching him the language of blood.

The ground trembled.

The sky folded in on itself, scattering light like broken glass. Each shard carried a reflection: him and Ash, standing beneath a white tree that bled at its roots; their shadows stretching toward one another until they merged.

Then came silence.

The breath of the wolf stopped.

The world leaned closer, listening.

Rowan lifted his hand again. This time, the light beneath his skin burned brighter, not silver but crimson, and for a single moment, he saw what lay beneath—the shape waiting to be born, the inheritance curled within the marrow of his bones.

He whispered a name, though he did not know whose.

The forest answered with the sound of distant wings.

When he woke, the moon had already gone.

Only the echo remained—soft, persistent, and alive beneath his skin.