The Lunar Palace had once been a wonder that eclipsed the stars themselves.
Its halls were carved from living moonstone—crystal that drank in the light of distant galaxies and returned it as a soft, eternal silver glow. Spires rose like frozen flames against the void, their tips piercing darkness itself, while crescent bridges arched delicately between them, as though the entire palace had been shaped from a single, flawless breath of night. Courtiers drifted through those corridors in robes woven from comet tails and nebula dust, their voices a constant undercurrent of poetry, ambition, and whispered intrigue.
Now, the palace was dying.
Prince Yue felt it with every step as he crossed the Hall of Tides.
The moonstone beneath his feet had dimmed to a sickly pallor. Cracks spider-webbed across the floor like frost creeping over winter glass, each fracture humming faintly with instability. Tapestries that once glorified the moon's triumphs over the sun sagged in tatters, their threads unraveling into motes of silver dust that vanished before touching the ground.
Servants moved swiftly and silently, eyes fixed on the floor, as though acknowledging the decay might hasten it.
Yue did not blame them.
The same dread coiled tightly around his own heart.
He ascended the spiral stair toward the Crescent Balcony—the highest point of the palace, open to the endless void. The moon's natural curve formed a seat there, a smooth arc of silver stone that cradled the body as though it had been waiting for him across centuries.
He lowered himself onto it, robes pooling around him like spilled starlight.
His hair—once pale as frost over midnight waters—stirred gently in a breeze that should not exist in the vacuum between worlds.
From here, he could see everything.
And nothing.
The void stretched endlessly in every direction, punctured by distant suns burning in silent indifference. Below, the mortal world turned—a blue-green sphere veined with clouds and oceans, blissfully unaware of the divine courts warring above it.
And beyond it all, the sun.
A golden tyrant.
Forever circling. Forever hungry.
The Grand Eclipse Festival was three nights away.
Tradition demanded that the Lunar Court gather in the Heart Chamber to renew the veil—to pour fresh illusion into the fragile boundaries that kept realms apart. It was meant to be a celebration. A renewal of balance.
Instead, it felt like a funeral waiting to happen.
Yue closed his eyes and surrendered to the silence.
He had sat here for centuries. Watching. Waiting. Weaving.
His gift was illusion made manifest. With a single thought, he could reshape perception itself—turn shadow into substance, restore the palace to its former glory, make the moon blaze brighter than it ever had.
But illusion, no matter how exquisite, was not truth.
And truth had begun to gnaw at the foundation of everything he knew.
For months now, visions had plagued him.
Unbidden. Unwanted.
Glimpses of the world below—not the mythic mortal realm of old legends filled with dragons and heroes, but something rawer. Cities of glass and steel that clawed at the sky. Rivers of light streaming endlessly along black roads at night. People—countless, hurried, fragile—living entire lives in the span of a single lunar cycle.
No magic.
No courts.
No eternal war between sun and moon.
Just fleeting existence.
And in those visions, Yue felt something he could not name.
Not pity.
Not envy.
A pull.
Like gravity from a star he had never seen.
Soft footsteps echoed behind him—measured, deliberate.
Only one person walked the palace with such unguarded confidence.
"Brother."
Yue opened his eyes.
Princess Solara emerged from the stairwell, her presence a quiet contradiction to the eternal night. Golden hair framed her face, kissed perpetually by sunlight even here. Her robes were edged in crimson, their warmth mocking the moon's pallor.
Their mother, the Lunar Queen, had borne two children—one for each half of the eternal balance.
Yue had taken the night.
Solara had always leaned toward day.
She carried a small casket of dark wood inlaid with gold.
"You shouldn't be alone tonight," she said softly. Her voice was warm, like the promise of dawn. "The court whispers that the eclipse will be… different this year."
Yue allowed himself a faint smile. "The court always whispers."
Solara stepped beside him, gaze drifting into the void. For a long moment, neither spoke.
At last, she opened the casket.
Inside rested six crystals, each the color of molten gold veined with white fire.
"From the border emissaries," she said. "They claim these are gifts of reconciliation—solar essence tempered to coexist with lunar magic."
Yue's gaze sharpened.
Gifts from the Solar Court were never simple.
Yet the crystals *sang* to him—a low, harmonious resonance that promised strength. Stability.
"They will help reinforce the veil," Solara continued. "You said yourself the basin is weakening."
He had said that.
Only to her.
"I will use them," Yue decided. "Thank you, sister."
Her smile was radiant. "Then let us perform the rite now—before the festival. A private renewal. Just you and me… as it was when we were children."
An unease stirred within him, faint but persistent.
Still, Yue rose.
The crescent seat felt colder than it ever had.
Together, they descended into the heart of the palace.
The Heart Chamber was a perfect sphere of obsidian and moonstone. At its center floated the Lunar Basin—a wide, shallow vessel filled with liquid starlight that swirled endlessly, source of all illusion and dream.
Tonight, its glow was weak.
The starlight moved sluggishly, as though exhausted.
Yue stepped onto the dais and began the chant—ancient words spoken in the language of first light, from an age when sun and moon had been one.
Silver threads uncoiled from his fingertips, weaving into the basin's surface, seeking fractures, mending frayed edges.
Solara approached.
One by one, she placed the golden crystals along the basin's rim.
When the sixth crystal touched stone—
The world screamed.
Heat surged through the chamber—violent, alien. The crystals flared white-hot as cracks raced across the basin like frozen lightning.
Yue's chant shattered. "Solara—"
"I'm sorry, brother."
Her voice was steady. Almost gentle.
"But the age of endless night is over."
The basin exploded.
Liquid starlight erupted outward in a silent detonation. Illusion became blades, slicing through air and stone alike. Yue threw up a barrier of pure will—but solar essence burned through it like acid through silk.
The great window darkened.
The eclipse had begun hours too early.
The sun's corona bled crimson across the stars.
Reality unraveled.
Walls turned translucent. The floor tilted violently. Distant screams echoed as corridors dissolved into shadow.
The palace groaned like a dying god.
"Why?" Yue demanded, staggering toward her.
Solara stood untouched amid the chaos, golden hair blazing beneath the blood-red light. "Because balance has become stagnation. The Solar Court offered me a place at the new dawn—a world united under one light."
She met his gaze.
"You cling to separation. To dreams that keep mortals ignorant… and us imprisoned."
Yue reached deeper.
Far deeper.
He wove illusion around the basin's shattered remnants, forcing them into cohesion. For a heartbeat—it worked.
Then the crystals pulsed again.
His magic betrayed him.
Silver threads twisted into chains, binding his arms, his chest, his throat. Solar fire surged through lunar illusion, corrupting it completely.
Yue collapsed to his knees.
Solara stepped closer. Tears glimmered in her eyes—real, or another lie?
"I loved you," she whispered. "But love cannot preserve what must die."
The dais cracked.
Above them, the Crescent Balcony collapsed inward, stones tumbling into the void.
Yue felt the palace's death in his bones.
His power sealed itself away, layer by layer, enforced by a law greater than his will. Frost crawled across his skin. His robes burned to ash and reformed into coarse, unfamiliar cloth. His silver hair darkened, shortened, dulled.
The floor vanished.
He fell.
The void rushed past—no, he rushed toward the mortal world, now terrifyingly close. Continents sprawled beneath him. Oceans glinted. Cities burned like scattered embers.
He reached upward toward the eclipsed moon.
"Why…" he whispered. "Why show me that world… only to cast me into it powerless?"
The atmosphere seized him.
Heat consumed him.
The final seal snapped shut.
Darkness followed.