The world fell apart.
Luna felt the ground vanish beneath her feet as gravity twisted into something unfamiliar. She screamed, but her voice was swallowed by the roaring void as she plunged downward, deeper than darkness, deeper than fear.
"Luna!"
Kael's shout echoed above her.
She reached for him instinctively, fingers stretching through empty air.
Then something grabbed her wrist.
Not Kael.
Cold.
Ancient.
She was yanked sideways, ripped out of the falling world, and slammed onto solid ground again.
She gasped, coughing violently.
The air here felt wrong.
Not cold.
Not warm.
Dead.
Luna pushed herself up slowly and looked around.
She was no longer in the chamber.
No walls.
No ceiling.
No sky.
Just an endless plain of black glass stretching in all directions, reflecting nothing but her own trembling figure.
"You finally arrived."
The voice came from behind her.
Luna spun.
Someone stood there.
Not the Primordial.
Not the Devourer.
A girl.
She looked exactly like Luna.
Same face.
Same eyes.
Same mark on her chest.
But her smile was wrong.
"You're late," the girl said softly.
Luna's heart slammed painfully. "Who are you?"
The girl tilted her head slightly, studying her with unsettling calm.
"I'm you," she replied.
"No," Luna whispered, shaking her head. "That's impossible."
The other Luna stepped closer, her feet making no sound on the black surface.
"Not impossible," she said gently. "Just buried."
Memories flooded Luna's mind again, but these were not visions.
They were hers.
Things she had never remembered.
Standing before the council centuries ago.
Kneeling before the Watchers.
Crowned in silver and shadow.
Her hands soaked in blood.
"I don't remember this," Luna whispered.
"That's because you weren't supposed to," the other Luna replied.
She reached out and touched Luna's chest.
The mark burned violently.
"You were never meant to be a vessel," she said quietly. "You were meant to be a queen."
Luna staggered backward. "Stop."
The other Luna smiled wider.
"Stop?" she echoed. "You already opened the door. You already woke Him. You already chose love over balance."
Her eyes darkened.
"Now you get to choose something else."
The black glass beneath them began to crack.
Luna felt the Devourer stirring again, but it felt distant now, muted.
The Primordial's presence loomed far above, watching.
Waiting.
The other Luna leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"Do you want to save Kael…"
She lifted her hand.
In the distance, the glass reflected a scene like a mirror.
Kael kneeling in the ruined chamber, surrounded by Watchers, chains forming around his body.
Luna's breath caught painfully.
"…or do you want to save the world?"
The cracks spread faster.
The reflection shifted.
Now Luna saw cities burning. Saw the Hollow Veil torn completely open. Saw creatures pouring through rifts in reality, consuming everything in their path.
And at the center of it all, Kael stood alone, fighting desperately to hold back the tide.
Dying.
Luna's other voice was soft, almost kind.
"You can only choose one."
Luna's hands trembled. "That's not fair."
"No," the other Luna agreed. "But it's honest."
She gestured, and two paths appeared in the glass beneath their feet.
One led back to the chamber. Back to Kael. Back to the life she'd been fighting for.
The other led deeper into the void. Toward the Primordial. Toward power enough to seal the rifts. Toward becoming something that could save everyone.
By sacrificing everything she was.
"Choose wrong," the other Luna said quietly, "and everyone you love dies screaming. Choose right, and you die instead—slowly, piece by piece, until nothing remains but the power wearing your face."
Luna looked between the two paths, chest tight, vision blurring with tears.
"There has to be another way."
"There isn't."
The Devourer's voice finally broke through, weak and strained.
She's lying.
The other Luna's smile never wavered. "Am I?"
She's showing you the extremes, the Devourer said. The poles. But you're not a creature of absolutes, little Moon. You've always existed in the space between.
Luna's breath caught.
"Between," she whispered.
The other Luna's expression flickered, just for a moment.
Yes, the Devourer urged. Between light and dark. Between human and power. Between sacrifice and selfishness.
Luna looked up at her mirror image.
"You're not me," she said slowly. "You're what I'm afraid of becoming."
The other Luna's smile faded.
"And what if you're right?" she asked coldly. "What if I am your future? What then?"
Luna took a shaking breath.
"Then I change it."
She stepped forward.
Not toward either path.
Toward the other Luna herself.
The girl's eyes widened. "What are you?"
Luna grabbed her wrist.
The moment they touched, the world exploded.
Images crashed through Luna's mind like a dam breaking.
Not just memories.
Lives.
She saw herself dying a hundred different ways.
Saw herself living a hundred different ways.
Saw versions of herself that chose power and became monsters.
Saw versions that chose love and watched everything burn.
Saw versions that tried to walk the line between and were torn apart.
But underneath it all.
Underneath the fear and the pain and the impossible choices.
She saw something else.
A thread.
Thin. Fragile. Silver.
Running through every version of herself.
The part that refused to break.
The part that kept choosing, even when every choice led to suffering.
The part that was her, no matter what form she wore.
Luna grabbed that thread.
And pulled.
The other Luna screamed.
The black glass shattered completely.
And Luna fell again.
But this time, she wasn't falling alone.
She crashed back into her body with enough force to crack stone.
She was in the chamber again.
Kael was there, chains half-formed around him, shouting her name.
The Watchers surrounded them, staff raised.
And standing at the center of it all.
The small girl on the throne of frozen light.
She looked exactly as Luna had seen her.
Eight years old.
The crown is too large.
Eyes too knowing.
She smiled.
"You broke the reflection," she said, almost impressed. "Most don't."
Luna pushed herself to her feet, every muscle screaming.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
The girl tilted her head.
"I'm what the Primordial was before it became Him."
She stood slowly, the oversized crown tilting on her head.
"I'm the child who made the first choice. Who split herself into fragments to escape what she'd become. Who's been waiting in this city of bones for someone strong enough to put the pieces back together."
She stepped off the throne.
And Luna saw it—saw the resemblance not in features, but in essence.
This child was the origin point.
The first Moonbound.
The one who'd started everything.
"You're me," Luna breathed. "The very first me."
The child smiled sadly.
"And you're the last chance to undo what I did."
She extended one small hand.
"Help me die," she said simply. "Before I remember how to live."
Behind her, the city of bones began to move.
Skeletons rose from thrones of frozen moonlight.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
All crowned.
All waiting.
All watching Luna with empty eyes that still somehow held expectation.
The child's voice was soft.
"They're all the versions of me that failed. All the times I tried to die and couldn't. All the cycles I've lived through, hoping someone would finally end it."
Her grip tightened on Luna's hand.
"Please," she whispered. "I'm so tired of being a god."
Luna stared at her.
At the desperation in those ancient child-eyes.
At the army of dead selves rising behind her.
Kael is still struggling against chains.
At the Watchers preparing to strike.
At the Primordial's eye still watching from above.
And she realized
This wasn't about choosing between paths anymore.
This was about choosing whether to let the cycle continue.
Or break it entirely.
"What happens if I help you?" Luna asked quietly.
The child's smile was heartbreaking.
"The Primordial loses its anchor. The rifts seal. The worlds separate again."
She paused.
"And you take my place."
Luna's blood went cold. "What?"
"Someone has to hold the door closed," the child said. "Someone has to carry the weight of what I did. Someone has to be the anchor."
Her eyes shimmered with tears that had been held back for millennia.
"I just want it to not be me anymore."
The army of bones stepped forward in unison.
The chamber shook.
Kael screamed Luna's name.
And the child squeezed her hand one final time.
"Decide quickly," she said.
Behind her, the city began to collapse.
And rising from its ruins—
Something older than the Primordial.
Older than the Devourer.
Older than choice itself.
A shadow with no form.
A hunger with no end.
The thing that even gods feared.
The child's voice cracked with terror.
"It's awake," she whispered. "The thing I split myself with to escape. The reason I became fragments in the first place."
The shadow moved toward them.
Slow.
Inevitable.
"If you don't take my place right now," the child said, pulling Luna closer, "it will consume us both. And then nothing will stop it from devouring everything."
Luna looked at Kael one last time.
He was still fighting.
Still reaching for her.
Still believing she'd find a way.
She looked at the child.
At the exhaustion in her eyes.
At the weight of millennia crushing such small shoulders.
And Luna made her choice.
She pulled the child into her arms.
"I'm not taking your place," she said firmly.
The child's eyes widened. "But—"
"And you're not going to keep carrying this alone."
Luna looked up at the approaching shadow.
At the Primordial watching from above.
The Devourer coiled inside her.
At every impossible force demanding she chooses between herself and the world.
And she smiled.
"You want an anchor?" she called to the void. "You want someone to hold the door?"
She held the child tighter.
"Then you get both of us. Or neither."
The shadow paused.
The Primordial's eye narrowed.
The Devourer went completely silent.
Because Luna had just done something no one had ever done before.
She'd refused to choose.
And in refusing.
She'd changed the game entirely.
The child stared up at her, hope and terror warring in her expression.
"What are you doing?"
Luna's mark blazed brighter than ever before.
"Something stupid," she said.
And then she did the impossible.
She reached inside herself.
Past the Devourer.
Past the moonlight.
Past every power that had ever tried to define her.
And grabbed the very foundation of the binding itself.
The original seal.
The first oath.
The moment the child had split herself to escape.
And reversed it.
The world screamed.
Reality inverted.
And Luna felt herself beginning to merge.
Not with the child.
Not with the Primordial.
With everything.
The last thing she heard before consciousness shattered was Kael's voice.
Raw. Broken. Desperate.
"Luna, no!"
Then white.
Then black.
Then
Nothing.