Luna hunkered down. Three long, agonizing days.
She spent those hours plastered to the tiny window, watching the Sump's narrow passages. Counting the heavy thump of City Guard patrols. Listening to the click-clack of Mother's loom and the wet rattle of Father's cough.
The Hedge Witch's charm rested against her skin, cold and firm. It pulsed with a faint heat whenever her Sight threatened to activate.
It was doing something. The auras of the passersby were muted, easier to dismiss. But they didn't vanish. The Sight was woven into her blood like the obsidian veins in the crater's bedrock. You couldn't excise the core of what you were.
On the fourth morning, Luna made a decision.
If the Temple intended to hunt her down for a magic she didn't comprehend, she needed to comprehend it first. She needed to know if the Sight was the only sleeping ability in her veins or if there was something far greater.
Something potent enough to make her worth keeping alive.
The Black-Quarry opened well before dawn, at the lowest ebb of the false sun's glow. Luna knew the schedule because her father had endured it for two decades.
She also knew the location of the reject pile.
The quarry was a festering wound in the basin of the crater. Veins of pure obsidian ran through the stone in black ribbons. Sun-Stones—crystallized pockets of concentrated blood-magic—pulsed with faint light even when dormant.
The flawed ones were hauled off to the reject heap to be crushed.
Luna intended to steal a reject. Not for value. But because a flawed Sun-Stone was inherently unpredictable, and if she was going to commit an act of illicit magic, it was safer to use trash.
She waited for the shift change. She slipped through a gap in the rusted fence near the drainage channel, keeping low. Moving like a shadow.
The reject pile lay ignored in a forgotten corner.
Luna crouched beside it, activating her Sight.
Most of the stones were dead. But a handful still clung to a faint internal glow.
She reached for one that pulsed with a dim, sickly yellow-green.
Her hand closed around it.
The stone felt instantly warm. Alive. Humming with a terrible, contained potential.
Luna tucked it into her tunic and bolted.
She couldn't go home. Instead, she headed for the old watchtower.
Kayo and Nia were absent. Good. No witnesses.
Luna climbed to the tower's highest point and pulled out the Sun-Stone.
In the dim light, it appeared sickly. Her Sight showed her something worse—a tangled knot of clashing resonance, magic eating itself from the inside out.
Flawed. Dying. Perfect.
She had zero idea what she was doing. No training. Only the Witch's warning: You're reading blood-magic signatures.
But blood-magic required blood.
She found a shard of broken obsidian on the floor. Razor-edged. Black.
She held it against her palm.
Hesitation. This was stupid. The consequences could be catastrophic.
Father's wet cough echoed in her memory. Harvested. Drained.
Luna pressed the obsidian edge into her palm.
The cut was meant to be a prick. But her hand slipped, and the glass bit deep. Blood welled up, hot and viscous, running across her life-line.
"Damn it," she hissed.
She pressed her bleeding palm against the Sun-Stone.
The stone ignited.
Not red. Not the comforting copper-gold of the sun.
Violet.
A dazzling, impossible violet light flooded the tower, painting the stone walls in hues that should not exist. Luna felt the magic surge up her arm like a lightning strike. Something deep in her chest answered the stone's frequency with a resonance so intense it made her teeth ache.
The Sun-Stone's glow intensified. The cracks in its surface widened.
It shattered.
The explosion was a crystalline scream. Fragments of broken crystal scattered across the floor, each piece glowing a faint violet before fading.
Luna sat frozen, her palm bleeding, staring at the destruction.
Her blood had done that.
It hadn't just activated the stone. It had overloaded it. She had poured such a sudden torrent of magic into the flawed crystal that it had violently exploded.
Slowly, Luna looked down at her palm.
The cut was deep. But surrounding the wound, her skin was... glowing. A faint, persistent violet light pulsed beneath the surface, tracing her veins.
Wrong.
This was fundamentally wrong.
Blood-glass glowed red. Sun-Stones glowed gold.
Violet was an anomaly.
Luna wrapped her hand in a strip of cloth torn from her tunic. The fabric soaked through immediately, but she kept the pressure on.
The violet light receded slowly. Reluctantly.
She picked up a shard of the Sun-Stone. Inert. Dead.
I killed it with my blood.
The Temple extracted red magic. They knew red. But violet?
It meant she was either worthless to them—or valuable beyond measure.
Luna pressed her wrapped hand against her chest. One-two-three.
She needed to conceal this. The charm suppressed the Sight, but this violet flare was something else entirely.
She collected the shards, wrapping them in the cloth. Evidence.
She climbed down from the tower. The Sump's morning was in full swing. No one spared her a second glance.
But she felt changed.
She felt the violet light sleeping in her veins. She felt the cut on her palm burning, beginning to scar, and knew this mark would never fade.
She was nearly home when she spotted them.
Two Temple Guards, standing right outside her family's dwelling. White-and-gold uniforms.
Luna pressed herself flat against the wall, melting into the shadows.
Mother was in the doorway. Talking to them. She looked eerily calm.
One of the Guards held a blood-collection crystal. Testing.
Luna watched Mother extend her arm. Watched the Guard prick her finger. Watched the drop of blood hit the crystal.
It glowed a predictable, normal red.
The Guard nodded. Made a mark on his scroll. Moved on.
Luna released a breath.
They had tested Mother. Not her. Yet.
She waited until they disappeared before slipping inside.
Mother was at her loom, hands shaking. She looked up when Luna entered. She saw the wrapped palm. She saw the fear.
"What in the Void did you do?" Mother asked.
"I learned something," Luna choked out.
"Luna—"
"I'm different. My blood is different. It glows violet. I shattered a Sun-Stone just by touching it." The words tumbled out. "If they test me, they'll know. They'll see it."
Mother crossed the room and pulled Luna into a fierce embrace.
"You are my daughter," she said into Luna's hair. "That is the only thing that matters. You are alive, and you are smart, and you will not let them catch you."
"They were right here."
"I know. They're running a sweep. They will come back." Mother pulled back, gripping Luna's shoulders. "The charm helps. But Luna—you cannot experiment anymore. You cannot practice. You cannot do anything that might make your magic flare. Do you understand?"
Luna nodded.
Mother looked at the bandage. "Show me."
Luna unwrapped her hand. The cut was a clean, deep line across her palm. Angry and red.
Mother sucked in a breath. "This will leave a scar."
"I know."
"Good." Mother's voice was hard. "Let it. Let it be a reminder that magic carries a cost." She rewrapped the hand tenderly. "No more stones. You hide here. You survive. When they come, you let them test you, and you pray the charm holds."
"Yes, Mother," Luna whispered.
But she was lying.
Because the violet light was still humming beneath her skin, hungry.
Because the scar forming on her palm felt less like a warning and more like a promise.
She had touched magic—her magic, alien and wrong—and now that she knew it was there, she could never unknow it.
She could no longer pretend she was just a normal girl.
Luna would remember that moment. The instant her blood answered a dying crystal with a brilliant, impossible light.
She would remember that she was different. Wrong. Powerful.
And someday—perhaps not today, but someday—she would unlock the meaning of that power.
What it was capable of.
And who it could save.