Chapter Five
Luna awoke to pain. Not the sharp, immediate kind she had grown used to, but a dull ache that throbbed in every bone of her body. She was lying on cold earth, her blood dried into a second skin. The abandoned warehouse loomed around her, empty, silent—yet she knew she wasn't truly alone.
The man was there. He stood at the edge of the shadows, tall, faceless, cloaked in a darkness that did not belong to this world. His presence weighed on her like chains, yet somehow it also steadied her. "You chose life," he said, his voice echoing like a thousand whispers. Her throat burned as she whispered back, "Yes… I want to live."
"Then understand this." He crouched low, his unseen eyes piercing through her weakness. "The life you knew is gone. From this moment, you will walk a road carved in fire and blood. But if you endure, you will rise. You will no longer be the girl the world trampled—you will be the woman it fears."
Luna's lips trembled. Her heart was telling her to scream, I'm not strong enough. But another voice inside—small, fragile, yet burning—answered instead: "I will endure."
The man smiled, though his face was still a blur. He pressed a hand against her chest. A warmth, sharp and searing, rushed into her veins. It was not comfort. It was power—and pain. Luna gasped as her vision blurred.
"Your suffering is not over," he whispered. "It has only transformed. But remember this moment, girl: you asked for life. And life will demand everything from you."
And then he was gone. Only the silence remained.
Luna dragged herself upright, her body screaming against her. Her hands trembled as she touched her wounds, now sealed with faint scars. Her blood was still on the ground, but she was breathing. She was alive. Against all odds, she was alive.
For a moment, she allowed herself to cry. Not the broken sobs of a victim, but the raw, unsteady tears of someone who had stared death in the face and spat in its eye.
Then she rose. Her legs were unsteady, her body weak, but something inside her had shifted. She was no longer the same Luna who left her mother's home in search of freedom. That Luna was dead. The one who remained was something else entirely.
The night air bit into her skin as she stepped outside. The streets of Hastings City stretched ahead, alive with dangers she could not yet see. She had no home. No money. No one to trust.
But she had chosen.
She had chosen to live.
And that choice would be her weapon