Chapter 3 — The Forbidden Cry
The bells of the Temple of Lunara tolled long before dawn.
Their chime was supposed to summon calm the silver tone of devotion that rolled down from the marble heights to every village below.
But this night, the sound was warped, too sharp, too fast. It was the toll of warning.
Inside the great hall, shadows danced beneath the moonlight streaming through a thousand stained windows. The walls themselves seemed alive, rippling with pale reflection from the crimson sky outside. Every priest and acolyte knelt, heads bowed low, whispering prayers that went unanswered.
At the altar's heart stood High Priestess Selara, her once steady hands trembling as she read from the obsidian tablets. The inscriptions glowed faintly, symbols of divine balance sun and moon, life and death. But the light flickered, fighting against the strange red hue now creeping through the glass.
"The Blood Eclipse," she murmured. "The sign foretold."
An acolyte rushed to her side, eyes wide with terror. "Reverend Mother, the moon bleeds still! The goddess is silent"
"Silence!" Selara snapped. "The goddess does not fall silent. She listens."
But even as she spoke, she knew it was a lie.
The air inside the temple changed warm one moment, freezing the next. The candles along the altar hissed out in perfect unison. A stillness fell so absolute it was suffocating. Then, faintly, it began: the sound of a child's cry, carried not through air, but through the very bones of the world.
The priests froze. Heads lifted. Some clutched their ears, weeping. It wasn't the cry of a human infant it was something deeper, older. A note of creation and ruin interwoven. It reverberated through stone, through blood, through faith itself.
Selara dropped to her knees, her heart hammering. "Lunara preserve us… what is that?"
The obsidian tablets cracked.
Miles away, in the shadowed forest, the source of that cry trembled inside the hollow oak.
The infant Ariana Voss stirred, wrapped in the mooncloth her mother had left behind. The air around her rippled, heavy with unseen energy. Animals had gathered in a silent ring foxes, owls, wolves, even the smallest of insects all staring at her as though she were a god reborn.
Above, the moon was dimming. Clouds swirled in patterns too deliberate to be wind. The trees groaned, their roots pulling upward as if to shield the child.
The first cry had been weak, almost mortal.
The second came from something far greater.
It began as a single breath then erupted into a sound of impossible resonance.
The air shattered. Bark split from trees. Frost bloomed instantly along the grass. A wolf, caught in the shockwave, dropped to its knees, not in pain but in worship.
Every creature in the forest bowed.
The power radiated outward in rings of invisible fire, racing through roots, rivers, mountains until it struck the base of the temple like a hammer.
At that exact moment, the Temple of Lunara exploded in light.
Marble cracked. The silver statues of the goddess trembled and groaned as fractures crawled up their faces. The sacred moonstone suspended above the altar the heart of all divine communication pulsed wildly, then shattered, raining shards like falling stars.
A scream tore through the hall but it wasn't human.
It came from the goddess's idol itself.
The carved lips of Lunara's statue opened, releasing a sound like a thousand voices layered as one. The air thickened until every kneeling body was forced to the ground.
The High Priestess could not breathe. Her vision blurred, but she saw faintly a light tearing across the clouds, reaching down into the mortal realm. And within that light, a shadow moved small, trembling, yet infinite.
"She cries," the goddess's voice whispered through every mind at once.
"My creation calls me mother and my end."
Then silence.
One by one, the priests collapsed, some unconscious, others dead, blood trickling from their ears. Only Selara remained kneeling, clutching the broken shards of moonstone in her hands. Her voice cracked as she whispered, "Forgive us, Lady of Night. Forgive us for what we birthed."
But forgiveness never came. Only