The first wound was carved in the sky.
It opened like a mouth, black and jagged, bleeding light where no light should dwell. From it poured creatures of hunger and smoke, born from hatred older than stone. Demons, the priests called them, though no word was enough. They were shadows made flesh, fire given will.
The first cities fell in silence. Walls of cedar and clay crumbled beneath claw and flame. Kings fled, crowns abandoned in the dust. Mothers drowned their infants rather than see them carried screaming into the dark. Entire rivers boiled red with blood.
In those years, the world learned to fear the moon. For whenever its face swelled red, the wound yawned wider, and more of the abyss came spilling through.
But humanity did not die.
The gods answered with fire and steel. To chosen champions they gave moonforged blades—silver bright, impossible to break. Each sword bore a fragment of the seal, a shard of the sky's own scar. With them, the champions carved a path through the chaos. They cut down the creatures that devoured their villages. They pushed the shadows back to the rift, stone by stone, prayer by prayer, until at last the wound closed.
It did not vanish. The seal was not whole.
But the bleeding stopped. The night grew quiet. Humanity breathed again.
And yet, the wound never slept.
Every century, without fail, the moon bled again. The air turned sharp with ash, the tides stilled, beasts went mad in the forests, and people locked their doors against the red sky. Always, when the crimson glare returned, the wound stirred. Always, it whispered.
The strongest heard it first—warlords, kings, scholars in their high towers. A voice like honey laced with ash, promising power, promising eternity, promising dominion if only the seal were broken again. Few resisted. Most fell. Wars erupted each time the blood moon rose, and each time humanity's champions rose to meet them.
But prophecy does not rest forever.
When the crimson child is born, the moon's judgment will descend.He will walk between shadow and flame.From his hand shall fall ruin and salvation alike.The seal will break, and the world shall bleed its first dawn.
No priest could say when, or where, or how. Yet all agreed on one truth: when the blood moon swelled and the child's first cry rang beneath it, the age of waiting would end.
Kings outlawed the prophecy. Anyone who spoke it aloud was whipped, silenced, or burned. But words do not obey laws. They spread like sparks carried on the wind. Farmers whispered them while tilling their fields. Soldiers repeated them around campfires. Mothers rocked their children to sleep with lullabies laced in warning.
The prophecy lived in shadows, waiting.
So when the red moon swelled once more above the capital of Tsukigahara, fear spread faster than fire.
Priests locked themselves in the Moon Shrine, burning incense until the smoke curled thick as mist. They muttered blessings until their tongues cracked, their eyes bloodshot, their robes reeking of ash. Every bell in the temple was rung until the sound rattled the bones of the city. Yet the air only grew heavier, and the night grew redder.
Above the shrine, clouds twisted like coils of rope, tightening around the moon until it pulsed like a beating heart. The lacquered gates shone pale in the glow, and the banners whipped in the wind as though alive.
In the shadows of the courtyard, whispers spread. Not of prayers, but of dread.
A child is to be born tonight.
The high priest stood at the altar, hands trembling over a basin of water that would not stay still. Ripples spread across its surface though no hand touched it. His voice cracked as he tried to steady the chant, but the words drowned beneath the sound of a cry—faint at first, but growing louder.
The first cry of a newborn.
And above, the moon flared crimson.