Chapter One - The Healer of Hollow Creek
1321 Words
—Aurelia—
They only knock on my door when something is dying. Tonight, it was a child.
The wind carried them to my doorstep—sodden boots thudding against the wooden planks of my porch, the hush of breathless urgency before the knock. I heard them long before I saw them. Hollow Creek might’ve cast me out, but when fever takes a little one, even fear of a cursed girl is softer than a coffin lid.
I didn’t ask questions. I never do.
The boy’s skin burned beneath my fingers, sweat soaking through the folds of his threadbare shirt. His mother, pale as bone ash, hovered near the table where I lay him. Her eyes never quite met mine—not until they flicked, as they always did, to the mark on my collarbone. A pale crescent. Faint, but sharp as a scythe.
She crossed herself.
“Will he die?” she whispered.
I didn’t answer. Not yet. Instead, I ground poppy seeds and feverroot into a bitter paste, crushed with a splash of moonwater I’d saved for emergencies like this. My hands worked while my thoughts drifted toward the sky outside, the way the wind had shifted just before they came.
The blood moon is coming.
I could feel it beneath my skin. Like a song hummed too low to hear but impossible to ignore.
The child whimpered in fevered sleep, and I stroked his hair back gently. “Drink this,” I whispered, guiding the mixture to his lips. He choked once, then settled. The tremors eased.
“It’s done,” I said, standing. “He’ll sleep through the night. Keep him warm, and if he stirs, boil ginger root in milk.”
The mother reached for her coin purse. I raised a hand.
“I don’t need silver.”
She looked at me as if I’d asked for her soul instead. “But… why?”
Because it was a child. Because he reminded me of my brother. Because I know what it’s like to burn on the inside and have no one come.
Because no one ever saved me.
“Go,” I said, softer this time. “Take him home.”
They left in silence. Only when their figures had vanished into the trees did I lean against the doorframe and exhale.
The forest sighed with me. Night had settled thick and velvet around Hollow Creek. Lanterns flickered like fireflies across the village below. Smoke curled from chimney stacks, and distant laughter rose from the tavern—but none of it reached me. I existed on the fringe, neither ghost nor neighbor. A thing people only remember when death is near.
The moon rose slowly and swollen over the ridge. Red as blood, full as prophecy.
And I knew—before the howls even started—that something had shifted.
The animals felt it first. My raven, perched on the beam above the door, gave a low, grating caw. The hound at my feet growled deep in his throat, ears pinned back.
I stepped out onto the porch and looked up.
There she was. The Blood Moon. Hung in the sky like an omen, bleeding light across the trees.
I clutched the edge of my shawl tightly around my shoulders. The mark on my collarbone burned cold.
The last time the moon bled like this, my mother disappeared.
The village had called it a sacrifice. I’d called it abandonment.
Now, twenty years later, the moon had come to collect again.
—Kaelen— The Bound Spirit
The moon bled again tonight.
I felt it before I saw it—before the red glow stained the sky, before the wolves howled my name in twisted worship. I felt it in the way the earth groaned beneath my feet, in the way the wind hissed through the blackened trees like a curse being whispered back.
She was angry. Or grieving. Perhaps both.
And so was I.
I stood at the edge of the spirit border, where the veil thinned and the scent of the mortal realm clawed at my throat. Smoke, pine, rain... and something else. Something sharp, floral, and maddeningly alive.
Her. The new Luna.
I didn’t know her name yet. I didn’t want to. Names had power. Names made it real.
But the bond had already begun to stir.
I could feel her heartbeat—not clearly, not yet—but like the echo of a drum across distant hills. A steady, stubborn rhythm refusing to break. That alone set her apart from the others.
The others had wept. Pleaded. Broken like reeds in the storm.
She would break too. They all did.
I turned from the veil and descended the stone steps into my domain—the Hollow Spire, once a temple of balance, now a ruin carved into the bones of the forest. Vines strangled the pillars. Moonlight never touched the ground here.
A place forgotten by gods and mortals alike.
Just as I preferred it.
My claws scraped the stone as I moved, not out of necessity, but habit. I could change my shape if I wished—become the man I once was. The guardian, the silver-eyed warden of dusk. But that man died a century ago.
Now I wore the beast’s skin because it fit. Because it reminded me of what love costs.
The last Luna taught me that.
Seren.
Her name was the last I ever said aloud.
She had sworn herself to me, hand upon moonstone, eyes filled with tears and hope. A blood oath. A sacred bond. And then she betrayed it.
She shattered the moonstone dagger, tried to flee, and when the bond collapsed... so did I. Not into death. I was not granted that mercy. No, I became this. A creature shaped by grief and fury. A spirit of balance made into a thing of hunger and ruin.
The Moon cursed me to remain until a new Luna was found. Until the bond was reforged.
I had torn every candidate to pieces since.
Until now.
This one… she was different. The moon itself whispered her soul into mine.
She was not chosen by accident.
And I hated her for it.
I sank to my knees before the shattered altar of my former self. Bone and moss decorated its edges now. Offerings from beasts that still remembered who I used to be. I touched the altar’s cold surface and closed my eyes.
In the darkness, her heartbeat thundered again.
I saw flashes. Her hands pressed to a child’s forehead. The curve of her mouth as she whispered comfort. A mother’s fear. A flickering lantern. The shimmer of a crescent moon birthmark on her pale collarbone, glowing faintly in the moonlight like a brand.
Moonborn.
And still, she stayed gentle.
Foolish girl.
You don’t know what awaits you.
I rose as the Blood Moon crested fully in the sky above, spilling red light through the veil.
The bond called to me—pulling, tightening, tethering soul to soul across realms.
Soon, she would be taken.
Soon, they would bring her to the capital and dress her in silver, speak lies about duty and honor and legacy. Soon, they would force her to kneel before a beast.
And I would be there, waiting.
Not as her salvation.
But as her reckoning.
Still… something in me stirred, watching her from across the veil. The way she stood alone, shawl clutched tight, chin lifted even when the villagers turned their backs.
Defiant. Unbroken.
It reminded me of—
No. That path leads to ruin.
I turned from the vision before I could feel anything more. The moonlight burned as it passed through me. My breath came ragged through bared teeth. The curse pulsed under my skin, aching for the girl I had not yet met.
The next Luna has been marked.
And the time for mercy has long since passed.
- Writer
