The wind carried the scent of rain and burning cedar as it swept through the valley, rattling loose shutters and stirring dust from the village paths. Elara Voss stood barefoot on the cool wooden floor of her small bedroom, her fingertips pressed to the windowpane as she peered outside. The sky, painted in shades of indigo and smoke, felt wrong, too still, too heavy, as if holding its breath.
She knew storms. She knew strange weather, sudden shifts, and the occasional eerie hush that descended before rainfall. But this silence was different. It vibrated. It pulsed. It felt like something ancient was waiting.
"Elara!" her grandmother's voice called from downstairs. "Come help with the lanterns before the power cuts again!"
"Yes, Gran!" she called back, though her gaze remained locked skyward.
For hours, a faint crimson tint had been gathering in the clouds so faint at first she thought it was just the sunset lingering. But now, as day dissolved into night, the light did not fade. It deepened. Thickened. A growing stain in the heavens.
A blood moon wasn't rare. They appeared every few years, giving the sky a coppery glow. People took pictures, lovers walked hand in hand, and children pointed in awe.
But this… whatever this was… felt like the world turning inside out.
A whisper glided along her skin.
Not a voice. A feeling.
He's coming.
Elara spun around, heart thudding. Her room was empty, the air still. Yet the sensation remained, a lingering tremor beneath her ribs. She pressed a hand to her chest, willing her pulse to steady.
You're imagining things, she told herself. You're overtired.
"Elara!" her grandmother shouted again.
She forced herself away from the window and hurried downstairs, her dark curls bouncing wildly around her shoulders. The cottage was warm and cluttered, filled with herbs, books, and old trinkets collected by her grandmother, Ida Voss, who always seemed to know too much about strange things and never enough about practical ones like paying bills on time.
Gran stood in the kitchen, lighting a lantern, her silver hair tied in a messy knot. "Power's flickering across the village," she muttered. "Storm's coming. You feel it?"
Elara hesitated. "Something like that."
Gran gave her a sideways, sharp look, knowing, but said nothing. She just handed Elara a lantern and motioned for her to light more.
Elara lit them one by one. Flames flickered to life, dancing like tiny, restless spirits.
A crack of thunder shook the walls.
Gran sighed. "I suppose we should brace for a long night."
Elara nodded, though her mind was drifting again to the window, to the crimson cloud that seemed to expand like a slow-blooming wound.
A sudden jolt of energy surged through her chest so sharply that she gasped. The lantern nearly slipped from her hands.
"Elara?" her grandmother asked, concern lacing her voice.
"I'm fine," she answered quickly. "Just static shock."
But it wasn't static. It was something deeper, something that hummed under the skin like an unseen current.
Then came the scream.
It sliced through the night high, terrified, unmistakably human.
Elara and Gran froze.
Another scream followed, this one closer.
"Elara, stay inside," Gran commanded, grabbing a walking stick. "I'll see what's happening."
"No!" Elara seized her grandmother's arm. "You're not going out there alone!"
Gran gave her a stern look. "I'm not letting you run toward danger."
"Well, I'm not letting you run toward it either."
Before either could argue again, another noise echoed this one deeper, guttural, not at all human. It rattled the windows. The candles shivered.
Something was outside.
Something alive.
Gran's grip tightened on her stick, her expression shifting from annoyance to cold fear.
"Elara," she whispered, "go get the pendant."
Elara's blood chilled. "Gran, no. We don't even know if. "
"Now."
The pendant.
She had never touched it. Never worn it. Never even fully understood why her grandmother guarded it like a sacred relic. But she knew one thing:
Gran only told her to get the pendant when something was very, very wrong.
She raced upstairs, her feet pounding the wooden steps. Her hands trembled as she reached under her bed and pulled out a small carved box covered in symbols Elara could never decipher. The box felt warm in her hands, like a living heartbeat thumped inside it.
For a moment, she hesitated.
She didn't want to open it.
Didn't want to feel what she always feared she might feel.
But another monstrous roar shook the house.
She flung open the lid.
The pendant lay inside, black as obsidian, shaped like a crescent moon. It seemed harmless until she touched it.
A flash of crimson light burst from the stone, swallowing her vision. Her knees buckled as images flooded her mind, chaotic, violent, overwhelming.
A crimson moon is bleeding across the sky.
Armies collapsing in pools of shadow.
A man standing alone in darkness, silver eyes glowing with ancient power.
And her.
Standing beside him.
Wearing a crown of light and blood.
"Elara!" her grandmother called. "Come, now!"
Elara shoved the pendant around her neck, chest heaving. The moment the metal touched her skin, the world sharpened, her senses heightened. Every distant sound became clear: the rustle of leaves, the pounding of footsteps, the whisper of wings cutting through the air.
She bolted downstairs.
"Gran, I.."
Her words evaporated the moment she reached the bottom step.
Their front door hung open, splintered at the edges. A cold wind howled through the broken frame. Shadows moved outside, large, fast, predatory.
Her grandmother was nowhere in sight.
"Gran?" Elara whispered.
No answer.
Only the eerie sound of something heavy has been dragged across dirt.
"Gran!"
She snatched a lantern and ran outside, ignoring the thunderous pounding of her own heart. The sky was brighter than before. The red glow was now unmistakable, staining the clouds like a spreading disease.
Elara moved toward the sound, gripping the lantern so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Then she saw it.
Her grandmother stood at the edge of the path, her body turned rigid, her eyes wide with terror. She was facing something tall, hunched, and wrong.
A creature.
It looked like a wolf twisted inside out, its limbs elongated, its fur matted with shadows that rippled like smoke. Its eyes burned white, empty of anything resembling life. Its teeth dripped black saliva that hissed when it hit the ground.
Elara froze.
Gran whispered without turning, "Elara, go back inside."
"No," Elara whispered, trembling.
The creature snapped its head toward her, nostrils flaring. A snarl ripped through its throat.
It lunged.
Elara screamed.
The pendant around her neck blazed with sudden, scorching heat. A shockwave exploded from her chest, invisible but powerful, slamming into the beast and sending it flying backward into a tree. The tree cracked in half under the impact.
Silence.
Elara stared at her glowing pendant, horror and awe swirling within her.
Her grandmother's breath hitched. "You activated it… Gods help us…"
"What was that thing?" Elara whispered, shaking.
Gran didn't answer.
Because someone else did.
A voice, smooth as silk and cold as winter.
"A Shadowbeast."
Elara spun around.
A man stood at the edge of the path, half hidden in the crimson haze. Tall, impossibly tall, with broad shoulders and a posture that radiated command. His coat was made of black leather and obsidian plates that glinted beneath the red glow, and his long dark hair fluttered in the wind.
But it was his eyes that froze her breath in her lungs.
Silver.
Sharp.
Inhuman.
The same eyes from her vision.
Her grandmother stumbled backward. "You…"
The man stepped forward, gaze fixed on Elara. "You used the pendant. That means the prophecy has begun."
Elara's mouth went dry. "What prophecy? Who are you?"
The man's expression darkened. "I am Lord Kaelen Draven. Prince of the Nightborne. Protector of the realms." His eyes narrowed. "And you, Elara Voss… are no longer safe."
Gran moved protectively between them. "Stay away from her."
Kaelen didn't even look at her grandmother. His attention was entirely, dangerously on Elara. "The Blood Moon has awakened. And with it, your power. Morgath's creatures will come in waves now. The moment they sensed you, the hunt began."
"The hunt?" Elara whispered.
"For the Queen."
Her pulse stumbled. "I'm not a queen."
"Not yet." Kaelen stepped closer, his voice low, almost reverent. "But the Blood Moon has chosen. And whether you accept it or not, your destiny is already written."
The sky rumbled overhead. The crimson glow intensified, bathing everything in violent red.
Kaelen lifted his gaze to the bleeding moon.
"It begins tonight," he whispered.
Then his eyes locked on Elara again, filled with an intensity that made her chest tighten.
"You are the Queen of the Blood Moon. And every monster in existence will kill to claim your power."
Elara's heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst.
Behind her, another roar echoed in the darkness.
Then another.
And another.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Kaelen extended his hand, gloved, pale, steady, commanding. "Come with me if you want to live."
Elara stared at him at the shadows gathering behind him, at her trembling grandmother, at the glowing pendant burning against her skin, at the blood-red sky.
Her life in the village
Her simple, quiet existence
Everything shattered in one night.
"Elara," her grandmother whispered. "Go."
So Elara reached out
And placed her hand in the vampire prince's.
The moment their skin touched, the world pulsed.
The Blood Moon flared.
And destiny, ancient and patient, finally took its first breath.