Luna did not scream.
She went silent.
The kind of silence that came before storms tore cities apart. The kind that made prey animals freeze, instinct screaming that something apex had just woken up.
Silver light poured from her eyes like liquid starlight, her veins glowing beneath her skin like molten threads of power traced beneath parchment. The chamber shook violently, stone screaming as ancient magic woke fully for the first time in centuries, and woke hungry.
The air itself began to crack.
The Devourer paused mid-lunge.
It tilted its massive, many-eyed head, studying her with the focused intensity of a predator recognizing its own kind. Its mouth curved into something that might have been a smile if smiles could carry centuries of malice.
**Yes,** it whispered inside her mind, voice thick with hunger and perverse delight. **You finally listen. You finally understand what you are.**
"No," Luna said softly.
Her voice echoed unnaturally, layered with something older than her seventeen years. Something that remembered when the world was young and magic ran wild and untamed through everything.
"I'm not listening," she continued, each word deliberate. Each word is a choice. "I'm choosing."
The distinction mattered.
Everything hung on it.
She turned away from the Devourer, an act of defiance that sent a ripple of shock through the chamber, and ran to Kael's side. He lay crumpled against the stone wall like a puppet with cut strings, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth in a thin crimson line, his chest barely moving. Each breath looked like it cost him everything.
"Kael," she whispered, dropping to her knees hard enough to bruise.
She pressed her hands to his chest, feeling the faint, irregular flutter of his heartbeat beneath her palms. He was warm. Still alive.
Barely.
The word echoed in her mind like a death knell.
The Devourer growled, chains rattling as it dragged itself closer, leaving gouges in the ancient stone. The sound of its movement was wet and grinding, like something that shouldn't exist forcing itself into reality.
Hurry, it urged, almost gentle. Almost kind. *Take what you are owed. Take what they denied you. Power enough to remake everything.
Luna clenched her teeth, her jaw aching with the effort. "Shut up."
The First Moonbound cried out from where she hung suspended, her voice raw with pain and warning. "Luna, don't channel it directly! The Devourer's power will mark him, change him, make him something he's not!"
"I don't care," Luna said, and meant it with a ferocity that surprised even her. Tears streamed down her face, hot and fast. "I won't lose him. Not for balance. Not for the world. Not for anything."
She closed her eyes and reached inward, past the rage, past the fear, past the seductive whisper of the Devourer's power.
She reached for something simpler.
For love.
For the way Kael looked at her like she mattered before the world decided she was dangerous. For the way he stood beside her when it would have been safer, smarter to step back. For the way he'd thrown himself between her and death without hesitation, without regret.
For the way he'd chosen her when no one else did.
The silver light shifted.
It softened, losing its hard edges, its hunger.
It flowed.
Power surged through her hands and into Kael's chest, but it wasn't the Devourer's power, not entirely. It was hers. It was theirs. It was the magic that lived in the space between heartbeats, in the moment when someone chooses another person over everything else.
Kael's body arched sharply, his back leaving the ground as he gasped. Air rushed violently back into his lungs with a sound like drowning in reverse.
He coughed, choking, chest heaving. His eyes flew open, amber shot through with threads of silver that hadn't been there before.
"Luna," he rasped, her name like a prayer.
Relief hit her so hard she sobbed, the sound ugly and broken and real.
But the Devourer *screamed*.
NO. NO. NO.
The sound didn't just shatter stone, it shattered reality. Cracks spread through the air itself like a mirror breaking, showing glimpses of the void beneath.
The chains snapped all at once, every single one exploding into fragments of light and shadow.
The First Moonbound cried out as the restraints tore away, taking pieces of her flesh with them. Her body collapsed forward, blood pooling beneath her as the Devourer surged fully free for the first time in a thousand years.
The chamber began to collapse in earnest.
Stone pillars cracked and fell like felled trees. The ceiling split with sounds like thunder, debris raining down in chunks large enough to kill. The floor buckled and heaved beneath them.
Kael forced himself upright, his movements still unsteady, and grabbed Luna's arm hard enough to bruise. "We have to go. *Now*."
"There's no exit," she shouted over the roar of destruction. "The gate is sealed behind us!"
The Devourer loomed over them, towering, its massive form blocking what little light remained. Its shadow fell across them like a burial shroud. Its many mouths opened at once, revealing throats that went down forever.
Then I will leave through you, it said, almost conversational. I will wear your skin and walk among them again.
Its presence slammed into Luna's chest like a battering ram.
She screamed as something tried to push past her soul, squirming and clawing like a thousand insects beneath her skin. It felt like being turned inside out, like having her identity scraped away layer by layer.
Kael wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her tight against his chest, grounding her. "Fight it. Don't let it in. Luna, "stay with me."
"I'm trying!" she cried, her voice breaking into something animal.
The First Moonbound staggered to her feet, blood running from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. She looked like she was dying, and she was, had been dying for centuries, finally being allowed to finish the job.
"Luna, listen to me," she shouted, her voice carrying despite the chaos. "It can't fully take you unless you *accept* it. Unless you invite it in. That's the rule. That's always been the rule."
"I won't," Luna sobbed, feeling it pressing harder, finding the cracks in her resolve.
The Devourer laughed, the sound vibrating through her bones.
**You already have. You chose love over balance. You chose chaos over order. You chose one life over thousands. You are already mine.**
"No," Luna said, shaking so violently her teeth chattered. "I chose *people*. There's a difference."
And the ruins *answered* her.
Not with destruction.
With *opening*.
The chamber split down the middle with a sound like the world exhaling, revealing a spiral of pure silver light leading upward. It spun and twisted, defying gravity and geometry, a staircase made of moonlight and hope.
An escape.
A choice offered freely.
Kael stared, his amber-and-silver eyes wide. "You did that?"
Luna shook her head, equally stunned. "I didn't command it. I didn't even ask."
The First Moonbound smiled weakly, blood staining her teeth. "You didn't have to. That's the secret the council never learned. Power doesn't serve those who command it. It answers those who belong, who are part of the world, not above it."
The Devourer roared in fury, a sound that made reality itself flinch.
It lunged again, faster this time, learning.
"Go!" the First Moonbound screamed, her voice breaking. "If it follows, I will bind it again. I will hold it here."
Luna's heart broke cleanly in two. "You'll die."
The woman met her gaze calmly, centuries of pain compressed into a single look of peace. "I've been dying for centuries, child. Let me finally do it with *purpose*."
Kael dragged Luna toward the light as the Devourer slammed into the floor behind them hard enough to create a crater. The spiral shook violently, pieces of it dissolving into sparks.
They climbed.
Faster.
Harder.
Hand over hand, feet slipping on steps made of light.
The Devourer followed, its shadow tearing up the walls like liquid darkness, climbing after them in defiance of physics, screaming Luna's name with all its mouths at once.
LUNA. LUNA. LUNA.
The light narrowed with each step, squeezing tighter.
Luna felt it clawing at her back, inches away.
Felt its breath if it could be called breath, hot and rotting against her neck.
Felt it *winning*.
The First Moonbound's voice echoed one last time, already fading, already becoming a memory.
"Luna, remember this—power doesn't listen to commands or threats. Power listens to *truth*."
The light exploded outward like a star going supernova.
Luna and Kael were thrown forward, weightless for a horrible moment
and slammed onto a cold stone as fresh air hit their lungs like a slap.
They were back above ground.
In the heart of the council city.
Luna's vision swam as she tried to orient herself. The grand plaza. The council tower looming overhead. The perfectly ordered streets radiating outward like spokes on a wheel.
Sirens wailed, the sound cutting through the evening air. Magical barriers flared to life across the city, shimmering walls of force springing up between districts. Hundreds of eyes—council members, guards, civilians—turned toward them in perfect synchronization.
Horror rippled across every face.
Kael groaned, trying to stand on shaking legs.
Luna pushed herself up on trembling arms just as a wave of pure darkness burst from the ground behind them, erupting like a geyser of shadow and teeth and *hunger*.
The plaza cracked in half, perfectly ordered stones shattering into chaos.
The Devourer was coming through.
Rising into the world like a nightmare made flesh.
And this time
It wasn't chained.
It was free.
And it was starving.