The morning air shimmered like a half-forgotten dream. I barely finished my toast before a figure in silver-trimmed robes stepped behind me. He didn't speak my name—he whispered it, like it already belonged to someone else.
"Selene. Come."
I rose without thinking.
Aerie's voice curled in my head like smoke.
Stay sharp.
We walked through corridors where sound didn't echo. Cold stone swallowed it whole. Lights glowed faintly, not from torches—but from the walls themselves, as if the academy breathed moonlight.
We reached a black arch carved with shifting lunar runes.
"Only Moonborn may enter," he said.
The moment I stepped through, the world changed.
The chamber opened like a hidden lung in the earth. Circular. Vaulted. Stars glimmered above in an impossible sky. The walls pulsed faintly with magic.
Seven crescent-shaped desks. Six already filled.
My feet moved before my mind caught up.
I passed them—other Moonborn. And they were strange.
One hovered above the floor, cloaked in stillness. Another's fingertips sparked blue even through thick gloves. A third's shadow moved against the light, slow and backward.
Not one of them smiled.
I sat.
Then I saw him.
Caleb.
But not.
His face. His eyes. That same tilt of his head when he was listening. But older, colder. Weighted.
He stared through me, not at me.
Something inside me fractured.
I hadn't told him. Not goodbye. Not where I was going. Not even that I wasn't normal anymore.
I hadn't even thought of him until now.
How could I forget?
Aerie's voice sliced in.
They're listening. Shield your mind. Close the door.
I stiffened. My thoughts, my fear—they weren't private?
I looked around, and for the first time, I noticed the stillness. The quiet between everyone. It wasn't silence. It was... listening.
He swept in like a blade through mist. Robes glinting. Hood down. Pale. Not old—but timeless. His voice curved around the room.
"You are Moonborn. Not one of the many. One of the rare."
He didn't pause at me. Didn't call on me.
There were others.
A girl with glassy skin didn't blink. A boy with fogged eyes whispered something, and the lights dimmed. The air around him thickened like stormclouds.
"Each of you bears the mark. Prove it."
One by one, they revealed glowing sigils. Silver runes, curved and flickering—on wrists, necks, behind ears.
Marks of the Moon.
I pulled up my sleeve.
Nothing.
No light. No shimmer.
Only bare skin and a thundering pulse.
The instructor looked past me, uninterested.
Why don't I have one?
"Abilities define the Moonborn," he said. "They awaken in you. Or they destroy you."
The girl beside me breathed in and floated. Her feet left the floor. Her eyes turned pure white.
The boy in gloves released a breath, and frost laced the desk.
The quiet girl in the corner whispered, and shadows coiled at her feet like dogs.
I felt nothing.
Except heat.
A hum, low and growing.
Beneath my skin.
Behind my ribs.
Aerie didn't speak.
He watcClass ended like the snap of a thread. No bell. Just silence, then motion.
I stood to leave—but he blocked me.
"Selene," he said.
His voice was Caleb's. But wrong. Like a song slightly out of key.
"Do I know you?" I asked.
He tilted his head.
"In some rooms, you know me. In others, you never left home."
A beat of silence.
"Some versions of you burn brighter. Some... don't burn at all."
I didn't understand. I couldn't breathe.
He stepped closer.
"They'll tell you you're one of them. That they're helping you. But they don't understand what you are. Not really."
He turned to go.
"Wait," I said. "What's your name?"
He paused.
Then whispered something I didn't catch. Or maybe it wasn't meant for me at all.
He vanished into the corridor. The door shut behind him.
And then—
Pain.
Sharp. Hot.
I gasped, clutching my chest.
Something blazed just beneath my collarbone. Not cold.
Fire.
I yanked down the edge of my tunic.
Just for a second—
A flare of orange light. A mark not made by moonlight.
A burn.
My burn.
Then it vanished.
I looked up. No one saw. Or they pretended not to.
But Aerie? He growled low in my bones.
You're not marked by the moon, he whispered. You're something older.
And I wasn't sure if that was a warning—or a promise.