The eye kept opening.
Not quickly. Not violently.
Slowly.
As if it had all the time in the world.
The chamber froze in collective terror.
Luna could not move.
The darkness above was not empty anymore. It had depth. Weight. Awareness. The massive eye stared down at her with a gaze so ancient it felt older than the moon, older than magic, older than fear itself.
The Devourer did not speak.
It bowed.
Not physically.
But in essence.
Luna felt it inside her mind, kneeling.
Kael's voice broke through the paralysis. "Luna… what is that?"
Her throat was dry. "I don't know."
But her blood knew.
Her bones knew.
Her soul knew.
The Watcher dropped to one knee.
Not out of respect.
Out of necessity.
His voice trembled for the first time. "The Primordial has awakened."
The word rippled through the chamber like a curse.
Rhea staggered backward. "Primordial? Those are myths. Even older than the Devourer."
"Yes," the Watcher whispered. "And myths exist because something once lived long enough to be feared."
The eye blinked once.
Reality warped.
Stone dissolved into ash where its gaze lingered too long. Magic twisted into unfamiliar shapes, trembling like it wanted to escape its own existence.
Luna felt her heart pounding painfully.
It was looking at her.
Not the world.
Not the Watchers.
Her.
You called it, the Devourer whispered inside her mind. Not me.
"I didn't," Luna whispered desperately. "I didn't mean to."
Meaning has never mattered to gods, the Devourer replied.
The Primordial's voice did not echo.
It did not need to.
It simply existed inside every mind at once.
Child of the Broken Seal.
Luna gasped, clutching her chest.
Kael stepped in front of her, snarling, though his hands shook. "She's not your child."
The eye shifted slightly, focusing on him.
Kael froze.
The air around him bent unnaturally, pressing down on his shoulders, forcing him to his knees.
Luna screamed. "Don't look at him!"
The Primordial paused.
Then it spoke again.
You carry what was never meant to survive.
Luna felt her mark burn again, deeper than ever before. The darkness beneath her skin surged violently, trying to rise, trying to answer the call.
The Devourer's voice sharpened.
Do not answer it.
"What happens if I do?" Luna whispered.
It was silent for a moment.
Then:
It will remember you completely.
The Watcher staggered to his feet, blood trickling from his nose. "All forces retreat!" he shouted. "This is beyond containment. Beyond judgment."
Rhea grabbed Luna's arm. "We have to leave! Now!"
But Luna could not move.
The Primordial's gaze pinned her in place.
Images flooded her mind again.
Not the future.
Not past.
Truth.
She saw herself standing in a ruined world, crowned in silver and shadow, kneeling beings at her feet. She saw Kael lying lifeless at her side. She saw cities burning under moons that should not exist.
And she saw herself smiling.
Her breath hitched.
"No," she whispered.
The Primordial spoke one final sentence.
Come home.
The darkness in Luna's veins surged violently, tearing free of her control.
Her eyes snapped fully black.
Kael shouted her name.
And Luna took a step toward the abyss.
Her father's voice cracked through the terror.
"Luna, stop!"
She turned her head slowly, movements no longer entirely her own.
He was on his feet now, leaning heavily against Kael, blood still dripping from wounds the ritual had carved into his skin.
"You have to fight it," he gasped. "You're stronger than this."
Luna's voice came out doubled—hers and something else speaking in harmony.
"Am I?"
Her father's eyes filled with tears. "You're my daughter."
"I was never just your daughter."
She took another step.
The Primordial's presence intensified, wrapping around her like a lover's embrace.
The Watcher raised his staff desperately. "Containment protocol Omega! Seal the—"
The staff shattered in his hands.
The Primordial had not moved.
Had not acknowledged him.
But the message was clear: You have no power here.
Rhea's blade fell from her trembling fingers. "Someone do something!"
Kael struggled against the weight still pressing him down, wolf snarling in his chest. "Luna! I know you're still in there!"
Luna paused.
For just a moment, her eyes flickered—black to silver and back again.
The Devourer seized that moment.
Listen to me, it hissed urgently. The Primordial is not calling you home. It's calling you back. Back to before you were human. Before you were Luna. Before you had a choice.
"I don't understand," Luna whispered, her own voice breaking through.
You were part of it once, the Devourer said. A fragment that broke away. That learned to love. To fear. To hope. That's why I chose you. Because you were the only piece of the Primordial that ever chose to be small.
The eye pulsed, and Luna felt the truth of it settle into her bones.
She hadn't just opened a door.
She had answered a call to come back to something she'd spent lifetimes running from.
"I won't," she said, voice strengthening. "I won't go back."
Then you will break, the Primordial replied calmly. The fragment cannot survive separation forever. You feel it already. The tearing. The hunger. The emptiness that grows with every heartbeat.
Luna's knees buckled.
Because it was right.
She did feel it.
A void opened inside her, growing wider every second she resisted.
Kael's voice was raw. "Luna, please. Don't listen to it."
She looked at him, tears streaming down her face. "I don't think I have a choice."
"There's always a choice," he said fiercely.
Not this time, the Primordial said.
And the chamber exploded.
Not with violence.
With absence.
The walls didn't shatter—they simply ceased to exist.
Reality peeled back like skin.
Luna screamed as the void rushed in.
And standing at the center of that impossible emptiness was a figure.
Tall. Feminine. Crowned in stars that had died millennia ago.
It looked exactly like Luna.
Would look exactly like Luna.
Will look exactly like Luna.
"Hello, little shard," it said with her voice, her face, her smile. "I've been waiting such a long time for you to remember."
It extended one perfect hand.
"Now stop fighting," it whispered. "And let me show you what we were always meant to become."
Behind it, the void rippled.
And hundreds—thousands—of voices began to chant in unison:
"The First Returns. The circle closes. What was broken becomes whole."
Luna felt her hand lifting.
Felt her fingers reaching toward the figure.
I felt her will dissolve like sugar in water.
Kael roared, breaking free of the weight pinning him down through sheer desperate strength.
He grabbed Luna's other hand.
And the moment their skin touched, something happened that no one expected.
The void flinched.
The figure's smile faltered.
And Luna felt it, a spark. Small. Fragile. Human.
Love.
The one thing the Primordial had forgotten existed.
The one thing it could never reclaim.
Luna's eyes cleared for just a heartbeat.
She looked at Kael.
And made a choice.
She didn't pull away from the Primordial's offered hand.
She didn't reach for it either.
Instead, she spoke directly to the Devourer inside her.
"You said you chose me because I chose to be small," she whispered. "Prove it. Show me how."
The Devourer was silent.
Then:
This will hurt.
"Everything hurts," Luna said. "Show me anyway."
And the Devourer did something it had never done before.
It gave instead of took.
Darkness erupted from Luna's mark—not attacking, not consuming.
Severing.
Luna screamed as the connection to the Primordial tore.
Not completely.
Not permanently.
But enough.
The void recoiled.
The figure stumbled backward, shock crossing its perfect features.
"Impossible," it breathed.
Luna collapsed into Kael's arms, gasping, bleeding from her eyes and nose and ears.
But conscious.
Still herself.
The figure stared at her with something that might have been respect.
Or might have been rage.
"Clever," it said softly. "You've bought yourself time. But not freedom."
It began to fade back into the void.
"I'll be waiting, little shard," it called. "And when the pain becomes too much—when the separation tears you apart from the inside."
It smiled.
"You'll come crawling back."
The void sealed itself.
The chamber returned.
Silence.
Luna lay in Kael's arms, shaking violently, barely breathing.
The Watcher approached slowly, face pale. "What did you do?"
Luna's voice was barely a whisper. "I… cut the cord. Temporarily."
"And the cost?"
She closed her eyes.
"Every day I stay separated, a piece of me dies."
Kael's grip tightened. "Then we find another way."
Luna wanted to believe him.
But deep inside, where the Devourer now huddled like a wounded animal, she felt the truth.
The countdown had begun.
And when it reached zero, she wouldn't have a choice anymore.
She would become what she was always meant to be.
Or she would cease to exist entirely.
Her father knelt beside them, touching her face gently. "How long?"
Luna opened her eyes.
They were no longer fully black.
But they weren't silver anymore either.
They were both.
Splitting down the middle like a cracked moon.
"Thirty days," she whispered.
Then she looked at Kael.
"Help me make them count."
Before he could answer, the floor beneath them rumbled.
Not with power.
With movement.
Something was rising from below the chamber.
Something the Primordial's presence had awakened.
Rhea swore. "What now?"
The stone split open.
And from the crack emerged a hand.
Small. Child-sized.
Made entirely of moonlight.
It grabbed Luna's ankle.
And pulled.