Chapter Text

Prologue: On a Summer Evening…

On a summer evening, that’s already too short;

A little wyrm cries out its desperate song…

Begging to be reborn...

The Darkmoon curled up close to their legs, shaking with the pain and the cold. Why was it so cold? Why did it hurt so much? They lacked a voice to cry out anymore; did they ever have one? What kind of voice was it? What kind of person were they, to be punished with pain and cold like this, to no longer be able to move. Long had they dreamed of someone; who was it? A figure in white, holding aloft a scythe, proclaiming it was time for them to come home…

Home? What was a ‘home’?

‘A cold and dreary place’, came a fragmented reply, ‘a place of echoes and broken promises.’

Whose promises were broken? Their own, or someone else’s? Perhaps it was both. Perhaps it was neither. With another painful shudder, the Darkmoon curled up closer into themself. They knew nothing now but three things: the cold, the pain, and their title: the Darkmoon. They didn’t know if they were ever anything else. The creatures at their legs might have known once, but now they were useless weight, long since dead.

Were they also dead? That brought back that cold pain, that unbearable pain. Something in their chest burned at the thought; a horrible but empowered fire that screamed for them to stand, to fight, to win, and reclaim what was lost…

But fight what? Win over what? More than anything, the Darkmoon couldn’t remember what had been lost. A name, perhaps, but that had long since fled their mind. Was this what the eternity of Death was? They didn’t want to die. There were still things that they wanted, but what were those things? They strained what remained of their soul, bending it towards answering that question.

They wanted to see that dark moon again. To walk… somewhere, cold but lordly. Where was it they longed to walk? A place very close to their soul… Anorthil? No, that wasn’t it… It was a place they once knew very well, perhaps, and maybe they would again know it in time. A place that, despite the chill, was always warming to them. Perhaps even accepting.

Who walked beside them down that thoroughfare? A maid, most certainly. Her face was a haze of fabric and Dark, but something about that made that strange fire in their chest burn all the more. Before they knew it, they were weeping again. Soundless sobs wracked their body. They could do nothing but chase the ghosts of their own soul, fragmented and consumed.

They were weak. They were naught but a Darkmoon, which based on what pieces of their soul they kept a hold on told them, meant nothing good. It was a symbol of.. An emotion they couldn’t place. A cold knife in their chest, running through their soul; sensations that made them feel smaller. Ever and anon they felt smaller, and smaller. Soon they would be so small none would be able to find them. Perhaps they’d drown in their own tears, falling with less and less frequency but always a torrent when they arrived.

So long had they fought with their desires, to shrink and die and know nothing ever again but also to stand and proclaim their own existence, that they lost track of all kinds of things. Before they knew it, the fear had numbed and the pain had faded. They were the Darkmoon, hanging in a black abyss. Perhaps there was never anything more. An isolated existence sounded hauntingly familiar. Could other see them dying in a beautiful sky? The final pieces of a Darkmoon to never rise again…

‘I want not to die,’ they thought, curling ever tighter around themself, clutching with all their might at their pallid skin, ‘I want to live. I want to see again, to walk and to speak. Won’t someone hear these prayers and grant me sanctuary?’

Across time, across dimensions, and across the rays of another moon, this one full and magnificent, an augur of strength and royalty, their prayers were heard. A mother left heartbroken, curled up into a ball not unlike the one the Darkmoon made of themselves, lifted her head at the silent words.

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻

“Milady?” came the voice of one of her attendants. 

Renalla returned to the world with a strange sense of determination. It had been many years since she felt it, this assurance in a course of action. Her moon had spoken to her, weaving together assurances that now was the time to move. Away fell the years of melancholy. Her beloved’s amber egg would soon come to usefulness, and bring a wholly chipped lunar child to her. Though she held her daughter in the highest levels of affection, she could not let a fellow chosen of the moon suffer. The Lands Between would simply have to abide another child of the moons.

“Hear thee not those mournful cries, sweetling?” The queen of the full moon asked. The attendants shared a glance that did not go unnoticed by their queen. She knew well the melancholia she was known for. Yet this was not a cry of her own delusions. Nay, this was the cry of a small wyrm, searching for succor and protection. Her moon had delivered to her a message, a mission. She would not turn her head from it, simply face it and adhere to it as all must.

“N…no, milady. The only thing to be heard is the cries of a cuckoo.”

“I hear those, too. They augur a rebirth, think so I. I must depart, then, for the Moongazing pool. Thee and thine shouldst join me, I think, for mine children are away.”

Renalla stood from her vanity without any other words, her attendants scrambling to ensure she was properly dressed. She strode down the halls of her family’s manor with authority unmatched even by the Golden Queen. The attendants attempted to dissuade her from this course of action, claiming anything from illness to the lateness of the day, but she was determined. Signs such as these were not to be ignored for’ a few days more’, when her children would return from their demanded visit in Leyndell. Come what may, they would have to be content with witnessing the aftermath.

“Milady, is this truly wise? Perhaps we should at least send for your sister?”

“I knoweth well mine reputation, Ricard, yet this I shall not shirk from. Standeth well aside, so I may bring in a suckling for rebirth.”

She stepped well into the gazing pool, which none assembled dare follow her into. Her long, black robes trailed on the shallow pool, which gazed up at the thinnest dark moon she had seen in a long time. An augur of the end of things, it is true, but also a promise of new beginnings. It was to this moon her beloved daughter had been born. Perhaps this stranger was also the chosen of a moon. In time she would learn. Drawing up her magic, she cradled the amber egg as one would a child, and recited for it the poem she had learned long ago, a call for those who sought rebirth and new life.

“On a summer evening, that’s already too short;

A little cuckoo returns with its own sweet song…

Beckoning to rebirth another…”

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻

The call was heard by those sensitive to the movement of such energies across the Lands Between. From sorcerers to demigods, from fingers sacred and profane, all knew something had shifted. A profane flame rejoiced that another of Fire had found its way to the Lands Between, and a holy mother shuddered at the thought that its progenitor had finally returned its attention to the lands it had been exiled to. A single soul gazed at the other they shared it with: a piece had been moved, or possibly summoned onto the board. Yet who would they serve in the end: the heretic or the consort? More than anyone, of course, the Carian royal family felt the shift, leagues away though they were in the Golden Order’s capital.

The Starscourge simply missed a thrust from his own serpentine friend. The Praetor jotted a quick note about it as he studied the nature of the gods. The youngest, a Darkmoon Witch, simply gave a nod to her Shadow. The Halfwolf would know the truth of it, and return to the witch. It was the simplest thing…

Yet why did the Golden Prodigy give his own sly smile, as if it was something he had expected to happen?