Chapter 50 – The Moon that Waits
Beyond the stars men pray to…
Beyond the thrones of angels and the tombs of old gods…
There lies a wound in the sky.
And at its heart, she waits.
Abylay.
The Goddess of the Moon.
Once the softest light in the heavens—gentle, luminous, revered for her healing grace and quiet wisdom.
Now remembered by a darker name.
Esmeray.
The wrath of the moon.
The divine fury of the forgotten.
She had not started as such.
She had once been kindness itself, weeping at the edge of eternity, searching through the ashes of a ruined world for the one soul that mattered more than creation.
Her beloved.
Her Demon King.
Her Sirius.
But grief does not stay pure forever. Not when the heavens lie. Not when even gods betray.
For 20,000 years, she hunted across realms, through time, myth, and starlight—tearing down constellations for clues, burning temples that once worshiped her silence.
She begged.
She bled.
She broke.
Until all that was left was wrath wrapped in silk.
Her soul began to splinter—threads of light unraveling at the edges, fraying with every failed attempt to reach the one who had been sealed away by none other than his own brother.
Anubis.
The God of Death.
The coward who couldn't kill him.
The traitor who locked Sirius in a prison beyond space and time—eternal, black, and silent.
But Sirius was not forgotten.
She would not allow it.
And when even her soul could no longer bear the cost, her divine parents—the Sun God, Ra, and Cyra, Queen of the Ran—intervened.
They had watched her burn for too long. Watched their daughter—once the most radiant of all the heavens—fade into silence.
And so, in defiance of celestial law, they made a choice:
To take the soul of the Demon King, and cast it into the world of men.
A rebirth.
A chance.
Not as a god, not as a king—but as a child.
And as Sirius Jaya Katz opened his eyes in the mortal world, far from the divine battlegrounds, he remembered everything.
His power, however, lay dormant.
But his love—his longing—remained untouched.
Now, eighteen years later, on a quiet night beneath a very human sky, that boy—now a man—stood at the window of a grand estate, staring up at the moon.
Not in wonder.
Not in prayer.
But with memory.
With longing.
He could feel her.
Even now.
Even across eternity.
Even as she hid herself away.
In a realm untouched by time, on a shattered throne of celestial bone, Esmeray knelt before a lake of silver mist, her long hair drifting into the water like moonlight made flesh.
She was not whole.
Not yet.
Her strength—once capable of moving tides and shaking stars—was still gathering.
Meditation had become survival.
Stillness, her final rebellion.
She no longer screamed.
But the silence was sharp as glass.
She had watched him be reborn.
She had felt the first breath he drew as a child in a crib not made for kings.
She had seen the paintings.
The way he still remembered her face.
The scarf still folded on his bed.
The hundreds of letters written but never sent.
And she had wept.
Not as Esmeray.
But as Abylay.
The woman who loved him before gods had names.
A ripple stirred the lake.
Her fingers, frail with exhaustion but elegant as always, brushed the water's surface.
And from it rose an image—
A young man, standing alone at a window.
His eyes cold to the world.
But soft for one thing only: the moon.
Her.
In the mortal world, Sirius did not move.
He stood in his chambers, bathed in silver light, unmoving as a statue. The candle had long burned out, but he had not noticed.
He did not sleep.
He could not.
Because tonight…
Tonight felt closer.
The pull in his chest had grown stronger. A quiet hum beneath the ribs. A whisper not quite reaching his ears.
He leaned against the glass, fingers brushing the cold pane, and closed his eyes.
And far above, in a place no mortal could reach, a voice echoed back—
Soft, but real.
"I will come to you… when I am whole."
The lake began to glow. The threads of Abylay's soul—torn and scattered—started to knit themselves back together.
Not because of time.
But because of him.
Because he remembered.
Because he had not forgotten what the gods tried to erase.
Because love, when forged in hell and blessed by the moon, does not die.
Not in twenty years.
Not in twenty thousand.
And so, she stayed there.
Still.
Healing.
Waiting.
And in the mortal world, the Demon King—reborn as Sirius von Ross—opened his eyes to the moon and whispered:
"I'm still here."