The night had teeth.
But the dawn… the dawn mocked me.
When my eyes opened, the first thing I saw wasn't smoke, or fire, or the ashes clinging to my hands. It was the sky.
A sky too beautiful to belong to this ruined city.
Ribbons of pale orange bled into the horizon, soft clouds brushed with gold, as if the heavens wanted to pretend that everything was fine. That the world had not just swallowed my mother's voice, her warmth, her laugh. That nothing had been lost.
But I knew better.
Lunareth never gave without taking more in return.
I pushed myself up, my thin body trembling as though gravity itself wanted me on my knees. Around me, the alley was quiet strange quiet. The dogs that had barked through the night had fallen silent, as though even they knew not to intrude on this hour. Only the bell tower groaned faintly, its iron tongue swaying with the morning wind.
I still clutched the piece of bread.
It was dry now, harder, the crust cracking in my grip. But I held onto it as though it were my mother's hand itself. Her handwriting still smeared the paper wrapping. "Son."
That word just three letters was the only thing keeping me tethered.
I forced myself to stand. My coat sagged from my shoulders, the sleeves too long, the fabric already damp with dew. The city stretched before me, streets lined with cracked stones and sagging arches. Yet for a moment, with the sunlight crawling over the marble statues and fractured fountains, Lunareth almost looked alive.
Almost.
I remembered it then the Lunareth of my childhood.
Stalls crowded with colors, laughter echoing through plazas, the air rich with bread, spices, and roasted meat. My mother tugging me through markets, bargaining with merchants whose voices rose like song. The white bridges glowing under lanterns, the moonlight painting the river silver.
And now?
Now the bridges were broken. The fountains dry. The markets nothing but wooden skeletons where thieves crouched like vultures.
Yet the sky remained beautiful.
That was the cruelest part.
"Why… does the world still look like this?" My voice was hoarse, cracked. "Why is it so beautiful when everything inside me is gone?"
The silence answered me. The silence always did.
I walked. I didn't know where my legs were carrying me, only that if I stopped, the weight of grief would crush me whole. My shoes scuffed the stones, and I counted each sound like a prayer.
One step. Another. Another.
The city stirred awake around me. A shutter banged open. A vendor dragged a cart, its wheels squealing like a wounded animal. Stray dogs slunk from corners, their ribs visible beneath fur, eyes glowing with hunger. They watched me but didn't approach.
People, too, began to appear. Men with hollow cheeks, women carrying buckets, children running barefoot.
Their gazes brushed against me but didn't linger. They never lingered.
It was as if something in me screamed "danger".
I couldn't blame them. Even I felt it.
The whispers.
They had followed me since that night. Not loud, not clear just faint murmurs curling at the edge of hearing. Sometimes like my name. Sometimes like laughter. Sometimes like nothing at all, just static in the air.
But they were always there.
They grew louder in Lunareth's narrow alleys, where shadows tangled like spiderwebs. Sometimes I swore I saw them move, stretching longer than they should, curving toward me as if reaching.
This was my curse.
The eclipse had marked me.
By midday, the sun blazed high. Its light caught the broken glass scattered across streets, glittering like jewels. It should have been beautiful. It "was" beautiful. But all beauty in this city felt wrong now, like flowers blooming in graves.
I reached the plaza.
Or what was left of it.
Once, this had been Lunareth's heart. A circular space paved with white stone, surrounded by arches, a fountain at the center where water once danced in streams of silver. Now the fountain was cracked, water long gone, graffiti scrawled across the marble.
Yet children played here still.
Their laughter rang out sharp, piercing me. For a second, I closed my eyes and imagined I was among them again, before everything burned. My mother sitting on a bench nearby, watching me with that tired, warm smile.
But when I opened them again, all I saw were strangers. And their eyes avoided mine.
I turned to leave
And froze.
Because the shadows shifted.
It began at the fountain's base. A ripple, as though darkness itself had turned liquid, pooling unnaturally. The children didn't notice. They kept laughing, chasing each other, their voices echoing bright.
But my chest tightened. The whispers grew louder.
"Not again…" My voice shook.
The shadow swelled, rising like smoke. It warped into something vaguely human long limbs, a head that twisted too far, fingers like knives. Eyes opened in the dark. Too many eyes. All fixed on me.
The children screamed then. They saw it. Their laughter shattered into panic, small feet scattering across the plaza. One tripped, fell, scrambled back.
The shadow turned toward me.
And smiled.
I couldn't breathe.
My body wanted to run, but my legs locked. This was the curse. My curse. Wherever I went, the eclipse followed. It wasn't random. It wasn't chance. It wanted 'me'.
The thing moved. It dragged itself across the stones, limbs scraping, nails screeching. The whispers rose higher, overlapping into a maddening chant.
"No…" My throat tore with the word. "Stay away!"
But it didn't. It lunged.
Instinct took over. I threw the bread aside, raised my arms like they could shield me. But something else answered. Something deeper than muscle, deeper than flesh.
A pressure burst from my chest.
Lightless, but burning.
It exploded outward. The air rippled. The shadow-beast slammed back, shrieking, its form warping. For a heartbeat, silence.
Then I realized.
The ground around me was cracked.
The fountain's marble split.
And the children… had stopped screaming.
They were staring at me.
Not at the beast.
At me.
Because in their eyes, I wasn't human anymore.
The shadow shrieked again, reforming, lunging once more. I staggered back, my hands trembling. Power still rippled across my veins, alien, hungry.
I could feel it.
The eclipse.
It lived inside me now.
And it wanted blood.
I don't remember the next few moments clearly. Only flashes. The creature's claws slicing air. My body moving without thought. A wave of force erupting from my hands, tearing through its form. The beast unraveling into smoke, scattering across the plaza.
When silence fell again, it was gone.
But the whispers weren't. They lingered, curling like satisfied sighs.
And the children…
They were gone too.
They had run, screaming, away from me.
I stood alone in the plaza. My chest heaved. My hands shook. The bread lay broken at my feet, crumbs scattered like dust.
I should have felt relief. The thing was gone. The children were safe.
But all I felt… was emptiness.
Because I saw their faces.
The fear.
Not of the shadow.
Of me.
I sank onto the cracked fountain, my hands covering my face.
"…What am I becoming?"
The sky above was still beautiful. Blue, cloudless, serene.
But I knew the truth.
That beauty didn't belong to me anymore.
The eclipse had claimed me.
And in Lunareth, I was no longer a boy.
I was a curse.
The city kept moving.
Life didn't pause for me not for my grief, not for my curse. Lunareth didn't care.
I sat on the broken fountain long after the children fled. The plaza returned to silence, save for the creaking of shutters, the shuffle of merchants, the tired groans of carts rolling over cobblestones. People passed the edges of the plaza, but none came near. They avoided my gaze, crossing to the other side, like shadows skirting sunlight.
And I… I couldn't even blame them.
The thing I had unleashed
That power, that crushing wave that cracked stone like brittle glass
It wasn't human.
And it lived inside me.
The bread lay ruined at my feet. It should've been my salvation, my anchor. My mother's handwriting, her word ''Son''… it had reminded me of who I was. Or who I thought I was.
But now?
Now even that seemed to crumble.
Because what kind of son was I?
What kind of son carried a curse that made children flee, that warped the world around him?
I lifted the paper, crumpled it in my hand. My chest ached as I whispered, "I'm sorry, Mother."
The wind carried the words away. The sky was so clear it mocked me, the sun glowing like a god I couldn't touch. Everything was bright, alive, and I was the only shadow in sight.
My legs finally carried me from the plaza. I walked aimlessly, slipping into Lunareth's veins of alleys and narrow corridors. The city was a labyrinth of broken marble and iron fences, of markets half-collapsed and houses that leaned like drunkards. I knew these streets I had grown up here. But every corner felt strange now, too sharp, too watchful.
The whispers followed me. They were faint, a murmur under the scrape of my shoes, but constant.
Sometimes they sounded like my name.
Sometimes they sounded like *Mother*.
Every time I turned, nothing was there. Only the shadows, stretching long and thin in the light.
By late afternoon, my body was heavy. Hunger gnawed again, my stomach twisting like a clenched fist. I had wasted the bread. My mother's gift gone.
My feet dragged me toward the river. Lunareth's river was the one part of the city that still looked alive. The waters still flowed, dark and deep, carrying fragments of the city's beauty like secrets. White bridges arched across, some cracked, some whole. Once, I had raced across them with friends. Once, my mother had held my hand there, warning me not to lean too far over the edge.
Now the banks were lined with scavengers. People dipped buckets into the murky water, hoping to drink, hoping not to fall sick. Children crouched, searching for scraps that had drifted downstream.
I stood at the edge, staring at my reflection.
The boy who stared back wasn't the boy I remembered. His cheeks were sharp, hollow. His eyes, once bright, were now clouded, dark rings beneath them. His lips were tight, unsmiling.
But what unsettled me most wasn't his face.
It was the flicker.
For a heartbeat, the reflection wasn't mine.
The eyes glowed faintly.
The mouth curved—not into a smile, but something twisted.
And behind him, shadows rippled like wings.
I staggered back, breath ripping from my chest. My reflection returned, normal, broken, human.
But I knew the truth.
The eclipse lived in me.
And one day, that thing in the water would not give me back control.
The sky dimmed slowly. Evening crept over Lunareth, the sunlight retreating into streaks of orange, then red, then violet. Torches sparked alive along certain streets, though most remained dark. The city's wealthy had long since fled to the higher districts, leaving the lower levels to rot. Here, shadows grew faster, thicker.
I found myself wandering toward the edge of the city. The bell tower loomed behind me, its rusted voice tolling the hours. Ahead, the ruins of Lunareth stretched to the horizon, a graveyard of arches and forgotten statues.
And then I heard it.
Screaming.
Not far. Not faint.
A sharp, raw sound that sliced through the dusk.
My body froze, but my heart jolted. Without thinking, my legs moved. I sprinted through alleys, the sound of my footsteps colliding with cries that grew louder.
I burst into another plaza. Smaller than the one before, hemmed in by toppled columns. And there
A man.
Or what used to be a man.
He was hunched, his body twisted unnaturally, shadows crawling along his arms and chest like veins. His eyes glowed faintly red, his mouth frothing.
Around him, three villagers were cornered against a wall two women and a boy. Their eyes wide, their bodies trembling, nowhere left to run.
The twisted man roared.
And I knew.
Another apparition of the eclipse.
I should've run.
That would have been the smart choice. The survival choice.
But my body didn't move away. It moved forward.
Maybe it was guilt for the children earlier. Maybe it was desperation for redemption. Maybe it was the curse inside me pulling me closer to its kin.
I didn't know.
I only knew that my feet struck the stones, that the women screamed when they saw me, that the shadow-man's gaze snapped to mine.
His head jerked unnaturally, neck cracking. His mouth opened wide too wide, teeth jagged like glass. And then he lunged.
Time broke apart.
I remember his claws slashing down, the air slicing open. I remember raising my arm and the force bursting from me again. It was raw, uncontrolled, a pulse that shook the ground. The man's body slammed back, crashing into the wall, stone splintering under the impact.
But he didn't fall.
He reformed, shadows stitching his body together like threads. He snarled, eyes burning brighter.
The villagers sobbed.
And I realized… I couldn't stop.
The curse had chosen.
It wasn't running from me. It was demanding I fight.
I roared, though I didn't recognize the sound as mine. My body surged forward, faster than it ever should. My hands collided with his chest, and again the wave burst forth like a heartbeat amplified into violence.
Shadows tore from his body, screaming as they evaporated into nothing. The man collapsed, lifeless, eyes dim.
Silence.
The villagers huddled, staring at me. They didn't thank me. They didn't speak. They only stared, eyes wide with the same fear I had seen before.
I staggered back, chest heaving. My hands shook, smoke curling faintly from my fingertips. The whispers in my head were loud now, triumphant.
And I understood.
I hadn't just killed that thing.
I had "become" part of it.
Night fell completely. The moon rose, silver and full, though in my eyes it glowed red. Always red.
I wandered until my body collapsed against a wall, my breath shallow, my limbs heavy. The city was quieter now, as if it too held its breath.
I clutched my knees, pressing my forehead against them.
"I'm not a hero," I whispered. "I'm not even a son anymore. I'm just… cursed."
But even as I said it, I felt the truth clawing deeper.
This was only the beginning.
The eclipse hadn't finished with me yet.
And Lunareth…
Lunareth would drown in shadows before it was done.