Silver light exploded from Luna's chest.
Not outward like an attack, but inward—a collapsing star pulling everything toward its dying core. The claw froze midair, inches from her face, its shadow stretching across the chamber walls like grasping fingers.
Luna screamed.
Not in fear.
In agony.
It felt like her soul was being filleted open, layer by layer, like something ancient and ravenous inside her was clawing its way to consciousness. The runes carved into the floor flared white, then black, then silver again, spinning faster and faster until they blurred into a single bleeding color.
Her skin cracked along invisible seams, light leaking through.
Kael wrapped his arms around her from behind, anchoring her convulsing body against his chest. His voice cracked with desperation. "Luna! Look at me. Stay with me."
She tried.
But her vision shattered like dropped glass.
The chamber fractured into a thousand overlapping moments. She saw the past bleeding into the present, time collapsing into itself like a broken mirror. She saw the First Moonbound standing whole and unchained, her hands raised in defiance as the sky tore open above her. She saw the council screaming as reality split, their faces twisted in horror and guilt. She saw chains being forged from fear and law and blood—so much blood—binding something that should never have been bound.
And beneath it all, threading through every vision like a parasite through flesh…
*Hunger.*
A voice not spoken with sound, but with *need*, clawed into the soft meat of Luna's mind.
**You are the key. You have always been the key.**
Her breath came in ragged gasps. "Kael… it's inside my head. It's *talking* to me."
"I know," he said, his grip tightening until it almost hurt. "Don't listen. Don't let it in."
But it was already in. It had always been in.
The Devourer's form began to rise from the pit like something birthed from a nightmare. It was not a single shape, but an abomination of shapes—bone and shadow and endless mouths layered over each other in impossible geometries, held together by ancient magic and bottomless rage. Its presence alone made the air taste like copper and decay.
The chains burned as they strained, cutting deep grooves into the stone, smoking where they touched flesh.
The First Moonbound cried out, her body arching as one of the chains *snapped*.
The sound was like a spine breaking.
"No!" she shouted, blood trickling from her nose. "They bound it to me—to us—to every Moonbound who came after. If it breaks free—"
The chamber lurched violently, throwing them against the wall.
Another chain shattered, the pieces dissolving into ash before they hit the ground.
The Devourer *roared*, a sound so deep and primal it didn't just rattle Luna's bones—it vibrated in her marrow, in the hollow spaces between her cells. The sound of something that had been starving for a thousand years finally sensing food.
Kael hauled Luna backward, step by stumbling step. "We need to move. *Now*."
"But my father," Luna sobbed, her voice breaking. "If I leave, if the bond"
"Your father is already dead," Kael said brutally. "We can mourn him later. Right now, I need you to *survive*."
The First Moonbound locked eyes with her, and in that gaze Luna saw centuries of suffering compressed into a single moment. "Listen to me," the woman said urgently, each word costing her. "The council lied. Your father was never the anchor."
Luna's heart stopped. "What?"
"*You are*," the woman continued, her voice cracking. "Your guilt. Your fear. Your desperate need to fix what you think you broke. *That* is what feeds the bond. That is what keeps it chained—and what will set it free."
The Devourer laughed inside Luna's head, a sound like grinding bones.
**Yes. Yes. Stay. Break. Feed me. Become.**
Luna clutched her chest, feeling something squirm beneath her ribs. "Then how do I stop it?"
The First Moonbound's voice softened, becoming almost tender. "By choosing love over balance. By accepting that some things cannot be fixed—only forgiven."
A third chain snapped with a sound like a gunshot.
The Devourer surged upward, its massive form finally clearing the pit's edge. Hundreds of eyes—some human, some animal, some nothing found in nature fixed on Luna with terrible recognition. With *hunger*. With something worse than hunger.
*Ownership.*
Kael growled, his body rippling as he shifted partially, claws extending like knives. His eyes burned amber. "If it touches her—"
"It already has," the First Moonbound whispered, tears cutting tracks through the blood on her face. "Through her bloodline. Through her magic. Through every choice the council made to protect themselves instead of us."
The ground beneath Luna's feet cracked in a perfect spiral.
Power flooded her veins wild, unfiltered, *wrong* unlike anything she had felt before. It tasted like iron and starlight and the space between heartbeats. The ruins responded instantly, ancient stones bending toward her like kneeling supplicants, like worshippers recognizing their god.
Luna realized the terrible truth all at once, the knowledge hitting her like a fist to the solar plexus.
The Devourer was not just sealed by the Moonbound.
It was *bound to them*.
Woven into their bloodline like a genetic curse. Fed by their power. Sustained by their guilt.
She was not its prison.
She was its *host*.
The Devourer lunged, faster than something that size should move.
Time slowed to a crawl, each second stretching like taffy.
Luna saw Kael's eyes widen. Saw his body moving before his mind finished the thought. Saw him make the choice that would break her.
He shoved Luna aside with everything he had, his body replacing hers in the Devourer's path.
Taking the blow meant for her.
The shadow slammed into him like a freight train, lifting him off his feet and hurling him across the chamber. His body hit the far wall with a sickening crack, the sound of bones breaking, of flesh tearing, before collapsing to the ground in a broken heap.
Unmoving.
"*KAEL!*" Luna's scream tore from her throat, raw and animal.
Something inside her didn't just snap.
It *shattered*.
Every wall she'd built. Every control she'd learned. Every fear that had kept her power leashed and docile.
Gone.
The silver light turned blinding, nuclear, turning the chamber into a solar flare.
The Devourer recoiled, its many mouths opening in something between a hiss and a laugh. Recognition flashed across its inhuman features.
**There you are.**
The First Moonbound cried out, her voice barely audible over the roar of power. "Luna, stop! If you unleash it fully—if you let it merge with you—there will be nothing left! Not of you, not of him, not of anyone!"
But Luna didn't hear the rest.
All she could see was Kael's chest, still and silent where it should be rising.
All she could feel was the power tearing through her like a wildfire, begging to be released, *demanding* to burn everything to ash.
Her eyes blazed pure silver as she lifted her trembling hands, her skin cracking to reveal light beneath. The runes on the floor spun faster, creating a vortex of energy with her at its center.
Around her, reality began to *bend*.
And the Devourer, ancient, starving, patient and smiled with all of its mouths at once.
Because it knew what Luna didn't yet.
That power born from grief is the most dangerous kind.
That love could break the world just as easily as hate.
That she was about to make the same choice every Moonbound before her.
The choice that had damned them all.
Luna's fingers curled into fists, power crackling between them like caged lightning.
The chamber held its breath.
And somewhere in the darkness, Kael's heart beat once.
Twice.
Then stopped.