The plaza erupted into chaos.
Not the organized chaos of emergency protocols, but the primal, animal chaos of people realizing the monsters were real after all.
Council guards shouted orders that no one could hear over the screaming. Witches raised shields too late, their protective barriers shattering like sugar glass against the wave of darkness. Humans ran in every direction at once, trampling each other as the ground split beneath their feet, perfectly ordered stones exploding into shrapnel.
Luna staggered upright, her legs shaking so badly she nearly collapsed, her ears ringing from the roar of collapsing magic and breaking reality.
The Devourer tore through the plaza like a cancer metastasizing, its massive form forcing itself into the open world one grotesque inch at a time. It was larger here, unbound by the chamber's confines, large enough to swallow buildings. Ancient runes burned across its surface like brands, some snapping and dissolving as it broke free of the last ethereal restraints, others sinking deeper into its flesh as if trying to hold it together.
The sky darkened overhead.
Not with clouds.
With fear.
A palpable, supernatural dread that pressed down on everything like a physical weight. Birds fell from the sky mid-flight. Dogs howled in the distance. Every magical detection ward in the city screamed at once, a discordant symphony of alarms.
Kael grabbed Luna's hand, his grip tight enough to hurt, anchoring her. "We can't fight that. Not here. Not surrounded by civilians."
"I know," she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from the horror rising before her. "This is exactly what they were afraid of. This is why they built their cages."
And she'd torn them all down.
The Devourer lifted its massive head, its many eyes, some human, some animal, some that belonged to nothing that should exist, scanning the city with terrible intelligence. When they locked onto Luna, every single one of them, the creature went utterly still.
Mine.
Its voice thundered through her mind like a detonation, shaking her thoughts apart, making her nose bleed.
Luna pressed her hands to her temples, trying to hold herself together. "Get out of my head."
I was never in your head, child. I am your head. I am what they cut away and called it healing.
The council chamber doors burst open with enough force to crack the marble.
Maeven emerged, flanked by two dozen armed enforcers and senior witches in full regalia, their hands already glowing with prepared spells. Her composed mask, the one that never slipped, that had survived centuries of political maneuvering -- finally cracked when she saw the Devourer fully manifested in her perfect city.
Her face went the color of an old bone.
"What have you done?" Maeven screamed, her voice breaking on the last word.
Rhea appeared at Luna's side, seeming to materialize from the chaos itself, blood streaking her temple from a gash above her eyebrow. She looked at the Devourer, then at Maeven, and laughed—a bitter, vindicated sound.
"She didn't do this," Rhea spat. "You did. All of you. Centuries ago."
Maeven ignored her, her hand shooting out to point at Luna like a weapon. "Contain her! Restrain her! Now!"
The guards surged forward in formation, well-trained, and efficient.
The Devourer moved faster than anything that size should move.
A single massive limb, somewhere between an arm and a tentacle, covered in mouths that whispered in dead languages, swept through the plaza like a scythe through wheat. Guards went flying, their bodies ragdoll-limp, armor crumpling like foil. The sickening crack of impact echoed across the square.
Screams echoed as bodies hit stones, and didn't get up.
Blood pooled in the cracks between perfect stones.
Kael shifted fully this time, his transformation violent and complete. His wolf form towered, nearly eight feet at the shoulder, fur silver-tipped and bristling with rage. He placed himself directly in front of Luna, teeth bared, every muscle coiled to strike.
He growled low, a sound that came from somewhere deeper than his chest—from his soul, filled with warning and despair and absolute commitment.
Luna's heart pounded so hard it hurt, each beat like a fist against her ribs. "Kael, no. Don't—"
He didn't look back.
Couldn't afford to take his eyes off the threat.
The Devourer leaned closer, its massive head tilting with something disturbingly like curiosity. It studied Kael the way a scientist might study an interesting specimen.
Protective, it mused, almost amused. Willing to die for her. How deliciously predictable. How beautifully tragic.
It struck without warning.
Kael leapt to meet it, claws extended, a snarl tearing from his throat. His claws found purchase in shadow and bone, tearing through the Devourer's flesh—if it could be called flesh. Black ichor sprayed across white stone.
The impact shook the plaza like an earthquake, shockwaves blasting outward in concentric circles, shattering windows in buildings a hundred yards away.
Luna screamed his name as he was hurled backward, his massive body skidding across stone hard enough to leave gouges, barely managing to keep his feet under him. Blood matted his silver fur.
Rhea grabbed Luna's arm, her fingers digging in. "You're the only one it's responding to. You're the only one it wants. You have to do something."
Luna shook her head wildly, panic rising like bile in her throat. "I don't know how to stop it without unleashing everything inside me—without becoming it."
"Then become it!" Rhea shouted. "If that's what it takes—"
"Use the limiter!" Maeven's voice cut through the chaos like a blade.
A witch rushed forward, young and terrified, holding the shimmering collar in trembling hands. The same device that had nearly killed Luna before. The same chains, just prettier.
Luna recoiled as if it were a snake. "No!"
"Do it!" Maeven screamed, her composure completely shattered now, her face twisted with terror and fury. "Or everyone dies! Every person in this plaza, this city—their blood will be on your hands!"
The Devourer laughed, a sound like mountains breaking apart, like glaciers calving into the sea.
Yes. Yes. Put on the chain. Make yourself small again. Let me in fully when you're too weak to fight. Let me wear you like a glove.
Luna's chest burned as the silver mark flared violently, spreading like lightning across her skin, creeping up her neck, down her arms.
She saw it then.
Really saw it.
The truth that had been hidden beneath layers of propaganda and careful history.
The Devourer was not just destruction.
It was an imbalance given form.
Born from centuries of suppression, fear, and stolen voices. Born from power denied, from magic locked away, from people told they were too dangerous to exist. Born from the council's choice to control rather than trust, to cage rather than guide.
Born from their fear of what freedom looked like.
"If I leash myself," Luna said hoarsely, her voice carrying despite the chaos, "you'll never stop creating monsters like this. You'll just keep caging and suppressing and controlling until something worse breaks free."
Maeven's eyes flashed with something between fury and desperation. "This is bigger than you. Bigger than your pride. People are dying"
"No," Luna said quietly, with absolute certainty. "It's exactly about me. About every person you've ever chained because you were afraid of what they might do. This is the bill coming due."
She stepped forward, toward the Devourer rather than away.
Kael shifted back to human form, the transformation painful and incomplete, blood running down his side from deep gouges. "Luna, whatever you're thinking"
"I know," she whispered, tears falling freely now, cutting tracks through the dust on her face. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He reached for her. "Then don't"
"I have to."
She reached inward again.
Not for power this time.
For truth.
The silver light surged outward like a flood breaking a dam, washing over the plaza in a wave that made everyone freeze mid-motion. Even the Devourer hesitated, its form flickering like a bad signal, uncertain for the first time.
"What are you doing?" Maeven demanded, her voice shaking with something that might have been fear. "What are you?"
Luna looked straight at the councilor, and Maeven actually stepped back from what she saw in those silver-burning eyes.
"I'm ending the lie," Luna said simply.
The ground beneath the plaza cracked open again, but this time the breaking wasn't violent.
It was deliberate.
Purposeful.
A massive sigil rose from the stone like something surfacing from deep water, ancient and unmistakable and true. It spanned the entire plaza, intricate beyond comprehension, glowing with light that didn't just illuminate but revealed.
The Moonbound Seal.
The original one.
The one that had existed before the council broke it and rewrote history.
Every council member went pale simultaneously, a wave of recognition and horror rippling through them.
Maeven's lips moved soundlessly before she managed to whisper, "That seal was destroyed. We destroyed it. We watched it shatter."
Luna met her gaze, her eyes glowing with power that was hers and not hers, borrowed and inherited and earned all at once.
"No," she said, her voice layered with echoes of every Moonbound who'd come before. "It was hidden. Buried. Waiting for someone willing to use it."
The Devourer screamed as the sigil flared to life, light and shadow tearing at each other in a visible war, reality itself straining at the seams where they met.
Luna felt herself lifting off the ground, her body burning from the inside out, every nerve ending on fire, her vision fading at the edges as power consumed her.
Kael reached for her desperately, terror naked on his face. "Luna!"
His fingers brushed hers, so close, not close enough.
She looked back at him one last time, memorizing his face, his eyes, the way he looked at her like she was worth dying for.
Her lips trembled as she forced out the words.
"If I don't come back," she whispered, barely audible over the roar of magic, "remember that I chose you. Remember that it mattered."
"No," Kael lunged for her.
The sigil snapped shut like a steel trap.
The light swallowed Luna whole, pulling her down, down, down into something that wasn't space or time but the space between them,
and the Devourer lunged straight after her with a roar of triumph and rage, diving into the light like a predator following prey into the deep.
The plaza went silent.
The seal pulsed once.
Twice.
Then vanished, taking Luna and the Devourer with it.
Leaving only scorched stone and the echo of a scream that might have been hers, or might have been its, or might have been both at once, indistinguishable.
Kael collapsed to his knees where she'd been standing, his hand still reaching for empty air, blood dripping from his wounds onto stone that no longer held any trace of her.
And overhead, the sky began to crack.