🌕 Moonblood: The Curse of Arodan
Chapter Eleven: 11
The wind screamed over the northern hills.
Snow bit at their cloaks as Draven, Elira, and Callen trudged across the Frosted Heights. The air was thin here, sharp with cold and heavy with silence. No birds. No signs of life.
Only the sound of boots crunching frozen grass—and the soft hum of magic beneath their skin.
"We're close," Elira said, pointing to a rise in the hills. "The locket glows brighter."
Draven touched it through his shirt. It was pulsing now, like a heartbeat of stone and starlight.
"What are we looking for again?" Callen asked, teeth chattering.
Draven didn't answer. The moon had already shown him once: a name… broken. A heart… returned.
And a throne that either rises… or turns.
Beyond the next ridge stood the ruins.
They emerged from the snow like the bones of some great beast—pillars of black stone carved with crescent marks, half-buried beneath ice. Ivy frozen in place twisted around statues with broken faces.
The ground itself felt wrong.
"We shouldn't be here," Callen whispered. "This place… it's haunted."
Elira stepped ahead of them, brushing frost from a symbol on a doorway.
"It's not haunted," she said.
"It remembers."
Inside the ruins, the air was warmer.
Faint silver light bled from cracks in the walls, as if the moon still touched this place. Carvings lined the stone: kings and queens with marks like Draven's… but also others. Children. Soldiers. Priests.
And above them all, one figure—tall, faceless, robed in moonlight, with a silver flame in both hands.
Draven stared. "Who is that?"
Elira bowed her head. "The First Flamebearer. The one who lit the Moonblood."
"They weren't just rulers," Draven said softly. "They were… something more."
"Chosen," Elira confirmed. "Not by men. By the moon itself."
In the heart of the ruin stood a shattered throne of glass and silver. One arm was missing, broken. The other still held a symbol—a crown, cracked in half.
The same one from the torn banner.
Draven stepped toward it.
The mark on his wrist began to burn—not painfully, but deeply, like fire warming frozen skin.
And then he heard it again.
"Second of three.
Lost in name, found in light.
Take what was given,
And become what was feared."
A stone slab behind the throne split open, revealing a narrow chamber lit by glowing crystal veins.
Callen took a step toward it. "Wait—Draven, listen—"
Too late.
A shape moved in the snow outside.
The summoned creature had found them.
It moved like smoke, trailing tendrils of shadow across the frozen ground. Where it passed, ice cracked. Where it touched stone, walls wept dark frost.
It reached the ruin's outer wall and stopped.
Then it opened its mouth—not to scream, but to echo.
"Moonblood… must fall."
Inside the ruin, Draven stepped into the crystal chamber.
In the center lay a small pedestal. On it: a stone ring carved with ancient runes. Inside it, a piece of folded cloth.
He picked it up.
Wrapped in the cloth was a name, etched into old parchment with moon-ink:
Arilyn
Beneath it: Daughter of flame, sister of shadow.
Draven blinked. "This is one of the names…"
Elira's eyes widened. "You've found the second piece of the Moonblood line. Arilyn was the first to carry the flame without a crown. She vanished centuries ago."
Callen called from the doorway. "Draven! It's here!"
A deep, groaning growl echoed through the ruin.
The shadows had arrived.
The creature burst into the chamber like a living storm.
Draven raised his hands, and a shield of silver light flared in front of him—but the thing was strong. Too strong.
Callen charged forward, grabbing a broken spear from the wall.
"No—Callen!" Draven shouted.
The creature swung.
A shadowed tendril struck Callen in the chest, sending him flying into the wall. He hit the stone hard and slumped, unmoving.
"NO!"
Something inside Draven snapped.
The light from his wrist burst outward—not a flame, not a shield—but a pulse of pure moonfire, throwing the creature back in a wave of light.
Elira helped Draven lift Callen.
He was breathing—but barely.
"We can't fight it here," Elira said. "We have to move."
Draven turned one last time to look at the throne.
It was glowing now. Softly. Waiting.
"We'll come back," he said.
Then they fled into the snow.
As the moon rose that night, the creature howled into the sky.
But deep inside the ruin, the throne shimmered with silver.
And on the wind, the name Arilyn whispered once more.
The Moonblood was awakening.
One name found.
Two more to come.