The mountain village of Tsukimori had three rules that every child learned before they could walk.
First: Never leave the Aurora Veil after the sun sets.
Second: Never speak ill of the moon, for it listens.
Third: When the Eternal Moon bleeds red, lock your doors, shutter your windows, and pray to the Sanctum Sun that dawn comes swiftly.
An Jal Roktense had never broken any of these rules. At seventeen, he was the village's gentlest soul—a young man who apologized to the vegetables he harvested and who once spent three hours coaxing a trapped sparrow from the rafters of the shrine rather than simply reaching in and grabbing it. His hands, calloused from farmwork, had never formed a fist in anger. His eyes, a warm amber like honey in sunlight, had never gazed upon another person with hatred.
The village elders called him "soft." His mother, before the lung sickness took her two winters past, had called him "kind." His seven-year-old sister Angela simply called him "Jal-nii," and believed with absolute certainty that he was the strongest person in the world.
She was wrong, of course.
But on the night the rules broke, on the night the Eternal Moon bled, on the night An Jal's world ended and began again—she would be proven right in a way that would shatter them both.
The day had been ordinary in the way that last days always are, unremarkable until memory paints them with the gold of loss.
An Jal woke before dawn, as he always did, to the sound of Angela's soft breathing from the futon beside his. Their home was small—two rooms connected by a sliding door that no longer slid properly, a kitchen that smelled perpetually of miso and mountain herbs, and a small altar to their parents decorated with fresh flowers that An Jal replaced every three days.
He moved through his morning routine with the practiced ease of someone who had done it a thousand times: preparing rice, boiling water for tea, laying out Angela's school clothes, and setting aside the lunch he'd prepared the night before. By the time the first rays of the Sanctum Sun crested the eastern peaks, painting the Aurora Veil in shades of rose and gold, Angela was awake and complaining about having to wear the itchy wool sweater.
"It's cold, Angie," An Jal said, using the nickname only he was allowed to use. "Grandmother Yuki said it might snow today."
"Grandmother Yuki says it might snow every day," Angela countered, but she pulled the sweater on anyway, her small face scrunching up in exaggerated displeasure. "When I'm big, I'm going to move somewhere warm. Somewhere the Aurora Veil is always bright and the moon never looks at us."
An Jal paused in the act of pouring tea, a strange chill running down his spine. "Don't say that, Angie. The moon—"
"—listens, I know, I know." She stuck her tongue out at him, completely unafraid. "But it's true! Why do we have to be scared of it? The Sentinels protect us, don't they? That's what Teacher Himura says. She says the Astral Sentinels fight the Lunari so we can be safe."
"Teacher Himura is right," An Jal said softly, setting the teacup before his sister. "But the Sentinels can't be everywhere. That's why we have the rules."
Angela's expression sobered, her wide brown eyes—so like their mother's—studying her brother's face. At seven, she already possessed an uncomfortable talent for reading his moods. "You felt something again, didn't you? When I mentioned the moon?"
An Jal didn't answer immediately. How could he explain the strange sensitivity he'd possessed for as long as he could remember? The way he could touch an old photograph and feel the joy or sorrow of the moment it captured? The way he could enter a room and know, with absolute certainty, whether violence or love had last filled it? The way the moon, on certain nights, seemed to whisper at the edges of his consciousness in a language he didn't understand but somehow recognized?
"It's nothing," he finally said, which was a lie, but a kind one. "Drink your tea before it gets cold."
The morning passed in the comfortable rhythm of village life. An Jal spent it in the terraced rice fields on the eastern slope, helping old Sakamoto-san repair the irrigation channels damaged by the autumn storms. The work was hard, his hands aching and his back protesting, but there was a meditative quality to it that he'd always appreciated. Physical labor quieted the strange sensitivity, grounded him in the immediate and tangible.
Sakamoto-san, seventy-three and built like a gnarled oak, worked beside him with the steady efficiency of someone who'd been farming since before An Jal was born. They worked in companionable silence for most of the morning, until the old man paused to drink from his water flask and squinted up at the sky.
"Aurora Veil's thin today," he observed.
An Jal followed his gaze. The old man was right. The luminous barrier that had protected Tsukimori and all the villages of the Veiled Realm for as long as anyone could remember seemed somehow translucent, its usual vibrant shimmer reduced to a pale, wavering glow. Beyond it, the sky was a strange color—not quite day, not quite dusk, but something in between.
"Lunar phase must be changing," An Jal offered, though he felt that inexplicable chill again, stronger this time.
"Mmm." Sakamoto-san took another drink, his weathered face unreadable. "You know, your grandfather—your mother's father, not that wastrel who sired your father and had the good sense to die young—he used to tell me stories about the old days. Before the Aurora Veil, when humans and Lunari lived in what he called 'terrible proximity.'"
An Jal had heard the stories before, everyone had, but something in the old man's tone made him set down his tools and listen.
"He said that in those days, a person could feel when a Lunari was near. Said it was like having someone watch you from a room you knew was empty. Like hearing your name whispered in your own voice. Like remembering something that never happened." Sakamoto-san's eyes, still sharp despite his age, fixed on An Jal. "You ever feel anything like that, boy?"
The question was casual, but the weight behind it was not.
An Jal's mouth went dry. "Why would you ask me that?"
"Because twice now, I've seen you stop mid-step and look at nothing. Because I've watched you touch the shrine offerings and flinch like they'd burned you. Because your mother, rest her soul, once told me in confidence that you'd wake up crying as a child, saying you remembered things that hadn't happened yet." The old man's expression softened. "I'm not accusing you of anything, Jal-kun. I'm asking if you're all right."
The honest concern in Sakamoto-san's voice nearly broke something in An Jal. How long had he been carrying this strangeness alone? How many times had he swallowed the strange sensations, the inexplicable knowing, because he was afraid of being different in a village that valued normalcy above all else?
"I'm fine," he heard himself say. "Just tired."
Sakamoto-san looked at him for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "All right. But Jal-kun? If you ever need to talk about the things that don't make sense... well, I'm an old man. I've seen enough strangeness in my life to know that not everything fits into neat little boxes."
Before An Jal could respond, a sound cut through the afternoon air—the sharp, discordant clang of the village's warning bell.
One ring meant a wild animal near the perimeter.
Two rings meant a fire or natural disaster.
Three rings meant—
The bell rang a fourth time. Then a fifth. Then it kept ringing, a frantic, desperate rhythm that An Jal had never heard in his entire life.
Sakamoto-san's face went pale. "No. Not in seventy years. Not since—"
An Jal was already running.
The village was chaos.
People scattered in every direction, parents scooping up children, the elderly being helped toward the communal shelter beneath the shrine. The Aurora Veil above flickered and pulsed, no longer a steady protective glow but something erratic, dying. And beyond it, visible for the first time in An Jal's life, the Eternal Moon hung in the daytime sky—huge, swollen, and bleeding crimson.
A Blood Moon. In daylight.
"ANGELA!" An Jal's voice tore from his throat as he sprinted toward the village school, his legs pumping, his lungs burning. The school was on the western edge of the village, closest to the tree line, closest to the Umbra Hinterlands beyond. "ANGELA!"
He rounded the corner of the grain storehouse and stopped so abruptly he nearly fell.
The school building was gone.
Not destroyed—gone. Where the modest wooden structure had stood for fifty years, there was now a gaping wound in reality itself, a swirling vortex of shadow and wrong colors that hurt to look at. The edges of the wound dripped something that wasn't quite liquid, and the air around it shimmered with heat that was somehow cold.
And pouring through it, birthed from nightmare and crystallized sorrow, came the Lunari.
An Jal had seen illustrations in the Tribunal's public safety scrolls, stylized warnings meant to educate without terrifying. Nothing had prepared him for the reality.
They were beautiful and wrong in equal measure. The first through the breach resembled a stag, but its antlers were formed from what looked like frozen screams, and its eyes wept a luminous silver fluid that hissed where it touched the ground. Behind it came something that had perhaps once been human, but memory and malice had reshaped it into a tall, elegant figure wreathed in tattered cloth that moved independent of wind. Its face was a smooth, featureless mask that somehow still conveyed infinite hunger.
More followed. So many more.
"The children are in the shelter!" A voice—Teacher Himura, An Jal's mind supplied—shouted from somewhere to his left. "The children are—oh gods, OH GODS—"
An Jal's body moved before his mind could catch up. He sprinted toward the breach, toward the Lunari, toward certain death, because somewhere in that chaos was his sister, and he would burn the world before he let anything happen to her.
"ANGELA!"
"Jal-nii?"
The small voice came from behind a overturned cart. An Jal pivoted, skidding in the dirt, and there she was—Angela, her wool sweater torn, her face streaked with tears and dust, but alive, whole, safe.
Relief crashed through him so powerfully his knees nearly buckled. "Angie, thank the Sanctum, come here, we need to—"
The stag-thing's shadow fell over them both.
An Jal looked up and up, into eyes that held no malice, no intelligence, only an endless, gnawing emptiness. The creature's mouth opened, revealing not teeth but a swirling void, and An Jal understood with perfect, terrible clarity that it was going to devour them. Not kill them—devour them, consume their memories and emotions, add their essence to the nightmare that birthed it.
He spread his arms wide, putting himself between the Lunari and Angela.
"Run," he whispered. "Angie, run."
"I won't leave you!"
"RUN!"
The stag-thing lunged.
And An Jal, gentle An Jal who had never raised his hand in anger, who apologized to vegetables and rescued birds, did something he didn't know he could do.
He reached out—not with his hands, but with that strange sensitivity he'd carried all his life—and he pulled.
The world inverted.
For a single, eternal instant, An Jal felt everything. The terror of every villager. The hunger of the Lunari. The anguish of the dying Aurora Veil. The weight of the Eternal Moon's gaze. And beneath it all, deeper than memory, older than thought, something else. Something vast and cold and intimately familiar, stirring in the depths of his soul like a sleeper waking after an age-long dream.
Not yet, a voice that was and wasn't his own whispered in his mind. Not yet, but soon.
Oh, my foolish, broken self. You tried to forget, but memory is eternal.
. Light exploded from An Jal's body—not the warm gold of the Sanctum Sun, but the cold silver of moonlight. It crashed into the stag-thing like a physical wave, and the Lunari shrieked, a sound of agony and recognition, before dissolving into wisps of shadow that spiraled upward and vanished.
An Jal collapsed to his knees, gasping, his vision swimming. His hands—his gentle, calloused farmer's hands—were glowing with a soft lunar luminescence. And when he looked up at his sister, at Angela's wide, terrified eyes, he saw his reflection in them.
His left eye was still amber, warm and human and his.
His right eye had turned silver, cold and fathomless and ancient.
"Jal-nii?" Angela whispered. "Your eye..."
An Jal opened his mouth to reassure her, to tell her everything would be all right, but the words died in his throat as a new sound cut through the chaos—the measured, rhythmic thunder of approaching hoofbeats.
Through the fleeing villagers, through the remaining Lunari who now seemed confused and hesitant, rode a group of warriors unlike anything An Jal had ever seen. They wore armor that seemed woven from starlight and shadow, and each carried weapons that pulsed with barely contained power. At their head rode a woman with severe features and eyes the color of polished steel, her hand resting on the hilt of a sword that seemed to phase in and out of material reality.
The Veil Wardens had arrived.
The woman's gaze swept the village, calculating, assessing, until it locked onto An Jal. Her eyes widened fractionally—the first hint of surprise he'd seen on her stone-carved face.
"Lunar Resonance signature detected," she said, her voice carrying despite the chaos. "Heterochromatic manifestation. Possible Awakened entity." Her hand tightened on her sword hilt. "Capture formation. Non-lethal if possible."
"Wait," An Jal tried to say, but his voice came out wrong, layered, as if someone else was speaking through him. "I didn't—I'm not—"
"Jal-nii!" Angela grabbed his arm, and that simple touch seemed to anchor him, pulling him back from wherever he'd been drifting.
The woman's eyes flicked to Angela, and her expression tightened. "Civilian in proximity. Approach with caution." She dismounted in a single fluid motion, her boots hitting the ground with barely a sound. "Boy. Your name."
"An Jal. An Jal Roktense." His voice was his own again, shaking but human. "Please, I don't understand what's happening, I just wanted to protect my sister—"
"Your sister." The woman's gaze returned to Angela, and something changed in her expression—not softening, exactly, but a subtle shift toward something that might have been empathy. "Keep her behind you. The remaining Lunari are entering a frenzy state."
As if summoned by her words, three of the shadow-creatures—things that looked like wolves made of crystallized despair—broke from their confused milling and charged directly at An Jal and Angela.
The woman moved.
An Jal barely saw it. One moment she was ten feet away, the next her sword had traced three perfect arcs through the air, and the wolf-things simply... stopped. They stood frozen for a heartbeat, then crumbled into ash that dispersed on a wind that wasn't blowing.
"Waning Breath Style, Third Form: Erosion of Certainty," she said calmly, as if she'd just demonstrated a basic farming technique. She turned back to An Jal. "You have three choices, An Jal Roktense. First: come with us peacefully for evaluation and possible integration into Tribunal oversight. Second: resist, be subdued, and be taken by force for the same. Third: run, be hunted, and likely die when the next Lunar surge finds you unprepared."
"That's not three choices," An Jal said numbly. "That's one choice with three different flavors of surrender."
The ghost of something that might have been respect flickered in the woman's steel eyes. "Clever. Most don't realize that in the moment." She stepped closer, and An Jal could see now that her armor was decorated with intricate engravings—charts of the moon's phases, equations he didn't recognize, and symbols that made his new silver eye pulse with recognition. "But it's still the truth. You've Awakened, boy. You've touched the Lunar Resonance—or it's touched you. Either way, you're marked now. The Eternal Moon sees you. And what it sees, the Lunari hunt."
As if to emphasize her point, a low, reverberating howl echoed from the breach in reality, and something massive stirred in the shadows beyond.
"We're sealing this rift," the woman continued. "My team will evacuate the survivors and establish a temporary Aurora Barrier. But you—" she pointed at An Jal with her phase-shifting blade "—you're coming with us. The question is whether your sister comes as a refugee in need of protection, or as a hostage to ensure your compliance."
"Don't you dare—" An Jal started, the strange power stirring in his chest again.
"I'd advise against using that power again," the woman interrupted sharply. "Your control is non-existent. You're as likely to kill your sister as protect her. And frankly, boy, if you force my hand, if you make me choose between the safety of this village and neutralizing a potential Lunar threat—" her eyes were hard as winter ice "—I will choose the village. Every. Single. Time."
The truth of it hit An Jal like a physical blow. This woman would kill him without hesitation if she deemed it necessary. And worse, she'd be right to do so. He didn't understand what was happening to him, didn't know what he'd done or how to control it. He was dangerous.
He looked down at Angela, at her tear-streaked face and her small hand clutching his sleeve, and made the only choice he could.
"I'll go with you," he said quietly. "But Angela comes with me. And she stays safe. That's not negotiable."
The woman studied him for a long moment, then gave a single, sharp nod. "Acceptable. But understand this, An Jal Roktense—your sister's safety now depends entirely on your cooperation and control. If you become a threat, if that power consumes you—"
"I understand," An Jal said, and he did. It was the same terrible arithmetic he'd just performed: one life against many. If he lost control, if he became like the Lunari, then Angela would be in danger from him, not just from the monsters.
"Good." The woman sheathed her sword in a movement so smooth it seemed like the weapon was simply returning home. "I am Captain Mitsubishi Otasuki of the Veil Wardens, subordinate to Umbra Enforcer Kinoshita Umeko, and acting under the authority of the Celestial Tribunal. As of this moment, An Jal Roktense, you are under investigative custody pending evaluation of your Awakening."
She turned to her team, barking orders in a language An Jal didn't know, and the armored warriors moved with practiced efficiency. Some engaged the remaining Lunari. Others began herding frightened villagers toward the shrine. Two approached An Jal, producing what looked like silver restraints that glowed with a soft lunar light.
"Are those necessary?" An Jal asked, even as he held out his wrists.
"Lunar Binding Cuffs," Otasuki explained as her subordinates fastened them around An Jal's wrists. The metal was cold, but not uncomfortably so. "They'll suppress your resonance and prevent involuntary discharge. Think of them as..." she paused, perhaps searching for a comparison a villager would understand, "...training wheels. Until you learn to control your power, they'll control it for you."
The moment the cuffs closed, An Jal felt the strange, vast presence in his mind recede, like a tide pulling away from shore. The silver light faded from his hands. His right eye still felt different—cold, aware of things it shouldn't be aware of—but the overwhelming, terrifying power was muted, distant.
"Better?" Otasuki asked.
"Yes," An Jal admitted. Then, quieter: "What am I?"
Otasuki's expression was unreadable. "We'll discuss that once we're somewhere secure. For now—" she glanced at the swollen red moon hanging in the sky, now beginning to fade as the Sanctum Sun reasserted itself "—we need to move. The Blood Moon's influence is waning, but the breach remains unstable."
"What about my village? My friends, the people here—"
"Will be protected and evacuated if necessary. The Tribunal takes care of its own, An Jal Roktense. Your village falls under our jurisdiction." She turned to lead the way, then paused. "One more thing. That power you used, that burst of lunar resonance—do you remember how it felt?"
An Jal closed his eyes, trying to recall that moment when the world had inverted. "It felt like... like remembering something I'd forgotten. Like coming home to a place I'd never been. And..." he hesitated.
"And?" Otasuki prompted.
"And like I was two people at once. Me, and someone else. Someone very old, and very tired, and very, very sad."
Otasuki's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. She exchanged a glance with one of her subordinates, and An Jal saw something pass between them—concern, perhaps, or recognition.
"What?" An Jal demanded. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Otasuki said slowly, "that your Awakening is... complicated. And we need to get you to someone who can provide answers I'm not qualified to give." She gestured toward a pair of horses being led forward. "Mount up. Your sister rides with you."
As An Jal helped Angela onto the horse and climbed up behind her, wrapping his bound arms around her small frame, he looked back at Tsukimori one last time. The village that had been his entire world, the only home he'd ever known, was now a scene of devastation. The school was gone. Homes were damaged. And everywhere, people were staring at him—not with gratitude for driving off the Lunari, but with fear.
Fear of him.
"Jal-nii," Angela whispered, pressing back against his chest. "I'm scared."
"Me too, Angie," An Jal admitted, because he'd never lied to his sister and he wouldn't start now. "Me too."
As the Veil Wardens formed up around them and began the journey south toward the capital, toward the Celestial Tribunal and answers and a future An Jal couldn't begin to imagine, he felt that vast, ancient presence stir one more time in the depths of his bound soul.
You can't run from memory, little king, the voice whispered. I am you. You are me. And soon, so very soon, you'll remember everything.
And then the real pain begins.
Above them, the Eternal Moon—no longer bleeding red but returned to its usual bruised twilight—watched in patient, terrible silence.