Rejected by the Alpha, Chosen by the Moon

The firelight shimmered against her skin, catching the mark at her wrist, that sliver of silver, half-veiled beneath the flesh, pulsing faintly like moonlight held in a heartbeat.

She didn't shout her truth.

She didn't need the volume.

She was the truth.

And that was louder than anything Kael could summon.

From the shadowed alcove beneath the Nightbloom banner, a figure stirred.

Alpha Yavira rose.

Tall, severe, wrapped in layers of violet silk and black leather, she moved like a blade wrapped in perfume, beautiful, dangerous, and impossible to ignore.

Her eyes glinted from beneath her dark lashes, sharp as obsidian.

And when she spoke, her voice coiled through the air like velvet wound around wire:

"You speak the truth."

A pause. Weighted. Final.

"Then let truth judge you."

The chamber exhaled.

A hush swept the chamber as a figure robed in shadowed silver stepped forward, bearing the ceremonial blade cradled in both hands like a relic too sacred to touch.

It was ancient, slender, and cruelly elegant, its form deceptively delicate, like something designed to carve truth out of lies.

Though time had dulled its silver sheen, the runes along its edge still glimmered faintly, sigils etched in the language of the First Moon, each one pulsing like frost-kissed breath, alive with purpose.

They weren't just marks.

They were memory in metal.

Not carved by tools, but sung into being, by rites older than any bloodline seated beneath the banners.

The blade hummed.

Not with sound, but with weight, spiritual, ancestral, as if the very air in the chamber bent to its will.

Even the silverflame dimmed, its light shrinking in deference, its flickering tongue suddenly still.

The hall itself felt smaller. Sharper.

Time seemed to kneel.

Kael moved first, as tradition demanded.

He approached with a stillness that was almost serpentine, not reverent, but measured, the way one might approach a coiled viper.

He took the blade without flourish, as though its sacredness was beneath him.

He turned his hand.

Dragged the edge across his palm.

The skin parted without resistance, a clean, brutal slit, and blood welled up, thick and slow, dark as garnet in firelight.

He pressed his palm to the stone basin at the center of the summit table.

Not a vessel.

Not a bowl.

But an altar, its surface veined with threads of embedded silver that flared to life the moment his blood touched them.

The runes lit like lightning caught in stone, crawling outward in jagged, glowing patterns. The basin pulsed.

It had tasted Kael.

And now it waited.

Lyra stepped forward.

Her movements were quiet, unadorned, but carried the gravity of a tide that would not turn back.

She reached for the blade, no hesitation, no reverence, but her fingers curled around its hilt like it belonged there.

Like it had always been waiting for her.

She made no sound as the blade kissed her skin.

Her cut was precise, clean and shallow, but enough.

Her blood came bright, a red so rich it bordered on light, catching the fire's glow, refracting like rubies submerged in wine.

She pressed her palm beside his.

And in that moment, the bloods mingled.

They didn't just touch.

They coiled, like smoke curling through water, red and red, distinct yet now inseparable.

The basin hissed.

Not loud, but sharp, intimate. Like breath against cold stone.

The silver veins lit again, brighter this time, tracing new pathways, winding higher up the altar's spine.

The glow pulsed outward in a heartbeat of heat and something more.

The hall breathed.

And the summit scribe, draped in mooncloth robes and bearing a voice trained by centuries of echo, stepped forward.

His tone trembled, not with fear, but with the awe of the sacred.

"Oath bound. Trial set. At dawn, the Moons will witness."

The words sealed the air, ancient and final.

And in that instant, the moment crystallized, etched into memory, not just in blood or bone,

but in legacy.

This was no longer a challenge.

It was ritual.

It was history, unfolding beneath the banners of the old world, as something new rose quietly in its place.

That night, Lyra stood at the cliff's edge, a sentinel wrapped in shadow and moonlight.

The wind came hard and wild, lashing at her cloak like a restless spirit trying to carry her away, tugging its tattered hem as if demanding surrender.

Her hair whipped across her face, strands silvered by starlight. She didn't flinch. Didn't move. She stood like stone, a woman carved into the world by everything it had taken from her.

Below, the valleys stretched endless and black, threaded with rivers of silver where moonlight kissed cold water.

The peaks beyond loomed jagged and sharp, like the ribs of the world laid bare, watchful, unmoved, ancient.

Above, the stars spun slowly, caught in their eternal dance.

Each one a witness.

Each one a name lost to time.

All of them watching.

Ciran appeared beside her, his presence like the shift of shadow. No blade at his hip. No armor on his frame. But none was needed.

He said nothing at first. Only stood with her, two silhouettes on the precipice of legacy.

Then, softly, his voice nearly stolen by the wind:

"No blades," he murmured. "Just words."

Lyra didn't answer right away.

Her eyes remained on the horizon, where the curve of the earth shimmered with the distant promise of dawn.

A cold glow bleeding behind the mountains like frost burning at the edges of the world.

Then, under her breath, as if speaking to the stars:

"Good."

A pause. A breath sharpened by memory.

"Words built their kingdom…"

"…let's see if truth can tear it down."

Dawn.

There was no arena.

No banners.

No cheering crowds.

Only stone.

And the hush of judgment.

The inner sanctum of the summit had been stripped of all excess, laid bare in solemn reverence.

No adornment. No theatrics. Just clean stone floors, carved walls bearing the silent watch of ancestral runes, and the weight of what was to come.

There were no spectators here.

Only witnesses.

And at the center stood the Mirror of Essyn.

It wasn't just a tool, it was a prison. The first Luna had trapped her traitorous sister inside it, and her screams still echoed if you listened too long.

A monolith of pure obsidian, tall as a man and twice as wide, its surface swallowed light whole, a black so deep it felt alive.

Reflections twisted in its depths, not distorted, but unmasked, shown not as others saw you… but as you truly were.

The frame was forged of lunar silver. 

Its edge etched with curling spirals and tear-shaped glyphs, each one carved by hand a thousand years ago, and still weeping light.

Across the obsidian surface ran delicate veins of crystal, branching like frost on a midnight window.

They pulsed faintly, not bright, but rhythmic, as if the mirror breathed.

Slow.

Patient.

Eternal.

From high above, through a single slit in the ceiling, a shaft of pure moonlight fell.

Thin. Focused.

Not radiant, but honest.

It struck the heart of the mirror directly, and the obsidian drank it, shimmered, and began to stir.

This was not a mirror of vanity.

Not of beauty.

It was a mirror of essence.