Rain hammered the SUV roof as Damon Thorne Valemont veered onto a forsaken service road, headlights slicing through fog that reeked of ozone and rot. Beside him, Dahlia Moon sat tense, cloak drawn tight, the Nullstone pendant cold against her chest. With each mile, the city's glow faded, swallowed by darkness vast enough to devour stars.
You said we're meeting an oracle, she murmured. Not the kind who reads tea leaves. Damon's hands tightened on the wheel. "Syra trades in futures measured in blood. She reads truth in bone ash. If anyone can unlock your memories—it's her."
"Will she help voluntarily?"
She doesn't do anything voluntarily. But I owe her pain, and that's currency she respects.
Through the veil of rain, a wrought-iron gate emerged, crowned with three rusted ravens. Runes shimmered violet across its bars as the SUV rolled to a stop. The gate creaked open on its own. The path ahead twisted through a graveyard of faceless statues—effigies with features chiseled off, saints stripped of memory. Fog clung like dead hands to the windows until the manor revealed itself: a mausoleum pretending to be a home, spires of black stone, iron vines coiling across its windows, and a single lantern flickering ghost-blue above the threshold.
Inside, the air dropped to near freezing. Candles lined the entryway, their flames perfectly still and burning blue. From the top of a sweeping staircase descended Syra—ashen skin, silver-bound hair, eyes milk-white and unblinking. Yet her gaze cut like glass. "Valemont," she rasped, her voice cracking the silence. You drag curses to my doorstep again. Damon bowed his head. And pay the price. Her attention shifted to Dahlia. She inhaled once and stilled. "This isn't a curse. She's a paradox."
"She's Moonblood."
Syra's blind eyes glittered. Then follow me. The bones are ready. She led them down spiral stairs that plunged into the earth. Torchlight turned her shadow monstrous as they descended into catacombs where walls whispered with old magic. At the heart lay a chamber floored with skull mosaics—wolf and human, jawbone to crown. A shallow pit burned in the center, filled with black sand. Syra knelt and cast crimson powder into the coals. Fire flared blue-white. "Three drops," she said, pointing at Dahlia's hand.
Dahlia drew a blade across her palm. Three crimson beads sizzled in the flames and exploded into visions. Metal cradles. Infants marked with silver sigils. Hooded figures chanting in dead tongues. A moon eclipsed by a dragon-shaped shadow. Tides boiling. Damon kneeling in ashes, carving her name into bone.
Syra's voice multiplied, echoing with a dozen layers. "Born beneath a counterfeit moon, forged from the marrow of a dead god, she is the storm the Order failed to leash. Moonblood remembers." The flames rose higher, shaping visions in smoke. Dahlia stood on a cliff of corpses, silver hair whipping in the wind. Behind her: a throne of chains. Before her: a faceless wolf dripping void. Then nothing.
Syra collapsed, lips blackened with ash. Damon caught her. We need the path, he said. Where does her memory lie? Syra's breath rattled. Beyond the Red Spire. Where the sky bleeds iron. The Cradle crypt—it's where the Hollow Order stored what they stole."
"What guards it?"
Her white eyes rolled to Dahlia. The thing they made from her first scream. A howl echoed from the manor walls—low, unnatural, wrong. Damon tensed. We leave now.
In the armory hall he strapped on ash-steel blades and vials of silver salt. Dahlia slid a moonsteel dagger into her boot. Its weight felt... known. They escaped through side tunnels into pitch-black forest. Rain fell as mist now, the air heavy with something ancient. Lightning laced the sky behind distant pines. On the trail, a lone figure blocked their path. A golden-eyed boy—the young Seer they'd once spared. He held an obsidian disc pulsing with ley-glyphs. "Without this," he said, voice shaking, "Sareth's ritual stalls."
Damon took the disc. "Why give it to us?" The boy looked at Dahlia. You burned false fire and lived. I choose the living storm over the dead night. They pressed east. By dawn, the world had turned to ash treeless, lifeless. The Red Spire split the sky: a tower of rusted metal cables climbing into thunderclouds, lightning dancing through its coils like caged serpents. At noon they crossed a glass field where time lagged behind their steps—each footfall echoing seconds late. An hour before dusk, they reached the Spire's base—a ruined amphitheater of broken pillars and a single doorway yawning open into blood-tinted dark. Damon traced ward runes along the stone. The barrier shimmered then collapsed.
Inside, the air pulsed with a heartbeat rhythm. Walls thrummed with molten iron veins. As they descended a spiral of steel stairs, Dahlia's brand glowed brighter, leading them. Level Twelve. The Cradle crypt. A translucent stone sphere floated above a pit of grinding gears. Inside it, suspended in fluid, floated a waxen effigy of a girl. Her.
"The Order grew clones," Damon said, voice tight. Syra's warning whispered back: The thing they made from her first scream. The effigy's silver eyes snapped open. The sphere shattered. A shadow burst forth—formless at first, then solidifying into a creature with Dahlia's face and bladed limbs. Damon lunged. Too slow. The clone sliced across his arm. Blood hissed on steel. Dahlia faced her twin. Her fear made flesh. "You are not me," she said, summoning moonfire. The clone screeched—its voice a layered wail of agony and rage. They collided. Silver light met iron shadow. Damon struck low, hamstringing the thing. Dahlia drove moonfire straight through its chest. The creature imploded into sparks. The crypt cracked open. Glyphs rained from the walls. A flood of memory surged—infants in tubes, her own tiny hands glowing, the Hollow Order chanting: "Storm, awaken. World, renew." She staggered. Damon caught her. You good?
Better, she breathed. I remember enough to hate them properly.
The Spire trembled. They fled as the structure collapsed behind them, raining rust and ash. Outside, sunset bled into a sky torn open by ruin. Dahlia turned west, Nullstone warm against her skin.
"Next we end Sareth."
Damon nodded. "Side by side."
Thunder rolled like a war drum in the distance. And the storm followed them.