The two wooden cups sat on the steel floor, the water within them perfectly still. The Last Monk's serene smile was a mask over an impossible choice. Luna's gaze moved from the cup promising an easy pass, to the cup offering ignorant bliss, and finally to the Monk's waiting eyes.
Her form, flickering with the fatigue of twelve soul-deep battles, felt thin and brittle. The temptation was a physical ache. The cup on the right whispered of peace. Of an end to the burning in her mind, the hollowness in her spirit. She could go home. She could forget the Void Devourers, the Council's cold judgment, the weight of a galaxy on her small shoulders. She could just be Scarlett and Alexander's daughter again.
The memory of that—of being just a daughter—was so sweet it was a pain all its own.
The Monk watched her, patient as a stone.
"This isn't a test of resilience," Luna said, her voice raspy in the perfect quiet. "It's a test of temptation."
