Prologue: The Moon Bleeds

The Blood Moon hung low over the world, its eerie crimson glow washing the land in shades of shadow and fire. It was not the soft radiance of a harvest moon, nor the gentle light of a celestial guardian. No, this was something ancient, something wrong—a wound in the sky that bled its cursed illumination upon the earth below.

High upon a jagged cliff, where the winds howled through broken spires, the ancient monastery stood as it had for centuries, its stone walls weathered by time and burdened by duty. The monks within had dedicated their lives to the veil—a barrier as thin as gossamer yet strong enough to keep the horrors of the beyond at bay. For generations, they had whispered prayers into the cold air, performed sacred rituals beneath flickering candlelight, and sealed cracks in the fabric of reality with their own blood.

But tonight, none of it would be enough.

Brother Tomas pressed his hands against the monastery’s frost-covered balcony, staring into the distance where the sky itself seemed to tremble. The veil was breaking. He could see the fractures forming—shimmering distortions rippling like water over an unseen barrier, as if something vast and terrible was pushing from the other side. Every few moments, the air would shudder, sending out a low, resonant hum that vibrated through the stone beneath his feet.

He had studied the ancient prophecies, deciphered their cryptic warnings. The Blood Moon had always been an omen of catastrophe, a celestial harbinger of death. But the texts had never said when it would return—only that when it did, it would mark the beginning of the end.

The whispers had started days ago, faint at first—hollow murmurs in the dead of night, echoing through empty corridors. But now, they had grown bolder. They crept through the monastery, curling like smoke beneath doorways, threading through the minds of the monks, unraveling their sanity thread by thread.

From the halls below, distant cries broke the silence. Something was stirring within the monastery.

Tomas turned sharply, gripping the pendant around his neck—a relic passed down through generations, its faint silver glow now dimming as the darkness pressed in. He knew the others had felt it too. The Keeper had appeared in the grand chamber earlier that evening, its form flickering like a candle caught in a gale. It had spoken in riddles, its voice stretched thin with strain.

"The veil weakens. The Master stirs. The price must be paid."

“He was the first, the one who failed,” the Keeper had whispered. “Now he would break what he once swore to protect.”

No one had dared ask what price. They all knew that power—true power—always demanded sacrifice.

Tomas hurried down the stone steps, his boots echoing in the cavernous halls. Monks stood in the great chamber, their faces pale, their hands trembling over sacred texts and broken wards. At the center of the room, where the ancient sigils of protection had once burned bright, the magic was unraveling.

A jagged scar had appeared in the air itself, a vertical tear pulsing with inky darkness. On the other side, things moved.

The Nythrall.

He had only read of them in the monastery’s most forbidden tomes—creatures forged from shadow and hunger, spirits made flesh, cursed to exist in the realm beyond. They were never meant to cross into this world, never meant to taste the air of the living. And yet, as he watched, clawed fingers scraped against the thin remnants of the veil, curling around the edges of the rupture, stretching it wider.

A monstrous form loomed beyond the tear, its skeletal frame wrapped in undulating black mist, its hollow eyes burning with a malevolent hunger. Behind it, a lesser shadow slithered — not yet risen, but ancient. It would be the hand where the Master could not reach. The Voidbringer. But it was not the most terrifying thing in that abyss.

No.

Deeper in the dark, something far worse stirred.

A presence. A force that did not simply hunger—but commanded.

The monks fell to their knees, clutching their heads as a wave of unseen pressure rippled through the chamber. The candles flickered wildly before snuffing out completely, leaving only the pulsing glow of the Blood Moon filtering through the stained-glass windows, now shattered from the force pressing against reality itself.

Then, a voice.

Deep. Resonant. Unnatural.

"The time has come."

The True Master had awakened.

The monastery trembled, its foundations quaking as stone cracked and dust rained from the vaulted ceiling. From the abyss, a pulse of dark energy surged forth, slamming into the weakened veil. The rupture widened.

Tomas staggered back, his breath ragged, his mind screaming for a solution. The Prooemium Arcanum—the ancient text that held the last secrets of the veil—contained an answer, but its final passage had been lost. Its final fragment spoke of the Sigillum Nocturnum, lost to time, built to seal the rift with light’s own breath. This missing fragment could hold the key to salvation, or doom them all.

Somewhere beyond the monastery, miles away, a woman gasped awake in the dead of night.

Lira.

The infection in her blood burned like liquid fire. The bite of the Nythrall had changed her—was still changing her. Her dreams had been filled with visions of the Blood Moon, of the shadows creeping through the world, of a voice whispering her name from the darkness.

And now, she felt something more.

A connection. A pull toward the abyss.

Auren had told her the bite would scar her soul. Evan had begged her to resist it. But something deeper than either pulled her forward.

Her fingers trembled as she traced the mark on her arm, the faint glow beneath her skin pulsing in time with the energy surging through the veil.

She had feared she was losing herself.

Now, she wasn’t sure if she had ever been herself to begin with.

Back in the monastery, Tomas turned toward the grand chamber’s entrance, his face set with grim determination. The veil was failing. The Blood Moon had risen.

And the war for the mortal realm had begun. The Blood Moon had risen, and with it, the end of light as they knew it.

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