Chapter 12- The seasons without Luna

(The time Luna was lost to the darkness, told through Danny's eyes)

---

They said she was gone.

Not dead - something far worse.

The night the sky cracked open and swallowed the moon, the world shifted. The stars dimmed. The forests stilled. Even the rivers forgot how to sing. Shadows grew teeth and hunted the edges of light. In Moonhaven, the Queen locked herself away. They said she wept until dawn refused to rise, her tears turning the palace floors to glass.

And through it all, a single truth whispered across the land -Luna, the Moonborn, their light and their hope, had fallen into darkness.

But I couldn't believe it.

Not her.

I had seen the fire in her - the way she stood between life and ruin, unflinching, even when the world turned its blade against her. I had seen her fight for the broken, the forgotten, the ones like me. No curse could erase that. No darkness could unmake her.

Still, I was a stranger here - a man from another world, another sky. Every look from the courtiers reminded me of that fact. They stared as if I were an echo that had lingered too long.

Only three refused to turn away.

Jack - her oldest friend. He wore grief like armor and humor like a sword, laughing too loud, too often, as if to drown out the silence she left behind.
Flahera - strategist, scholar, and the quiet voice of reason. Her mind never slept; her eyes missed nothing.And Ravensha - Luna's shadow. Her blade. Her vow. She spoke rarely, and when she did, her words were carved in stone.

They found me one night in the ruins of the old moon chapel, where her name still echoed in the dust.

Ravensha stepped forward, her face half-hidden by her hood. "If you still believe she can be saved," she said, her voice a low tide, "then we'll make you strong enough to reach her."

So I stayed.

While the kingdom mourned, I trained.Days bled into nights. The moon never returned, but I rose with the sun and fell with the stars. I learned to wield the light she'd left behind - fragile, dangerous, alive.

Every scar became a promise.Every breath, a vow.

Because belief, I discovered, is a weapon.And mine was forged in her name.

---

Summer - The Trial

Days blurred into heat and pain.

Jack handled my swordsmanship. He taught through mockery and bruises.

"Again,Outsider," he'd say, tossing me a wooden blade. "You swing like a poet. Try hitting me this time."

And I would. Again. And again. Until my hands bled and my lungs burned.

Flahera trained my mind. Strategy, runes, the logic of battle.

"Strength without thought is suicide," she told me. "If you ever face her again, remember - she'll fight like the moon itself. Cold. Bright. Unforgiving."

Ravensha taught me silence - the art of stillness, the language of wind and shadow.

"Magic is born from patience," she said. "Feel the world before you touch it."

And in the quiet of those long nights, I did.

I began to sense the rhythm of this realm - the pulse of Moonhaven, the hum of starlight beneath the soil.

Thane, the court mage, had once said that magic resists outsiders. But I wasn't trying to control it. I was just... listening.

By midsummer, light finally answered me. A flicker in my palm - pale and trembling, but alive.

Jack laughed. "Would you look at that? The human candle finally caught a spark."

I smiled through the sweat. "It's a start."

---

Autumn - The Echo

Rumors came first.

Whispers carried on wind and fear - of a pale general leading the Warlock's army. A woman cloaked in shadow and moonlight. Eyes silver as frost. Hair white as fallen snow.

Luna.

Her name spread like a wound reopening.

Flahera was the first to find proof. She read the courier's report in silence until her hands began to tremble. The parchment slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the floor like ash."She's alive," she whispered, her voice breaking around the word. "But she's not herself."

Ravensha said nothing. She only rose from her chair and left the room.When she returned hours later, her sword was sharpened - and her eyes were red.

No one spoke after that.No one needed to.

Because we all knew what the words refused to say - that Luna's soul was being consumed, piece by piece. That whatever light remained in her was fading with every breath she took under his command.

And if I waited too long, there might be nothing left to save.

So I trained.

Harder. Longer. Until my body forgot what it meant to rest. Until pain became prayer and exhaustion became faith. I pushed past the point of breaking, again and again, because every moment of hesitation was another second she was slipping further away.

Days bled into nights. Nights bled into nothing.

My muscles screamed, my lungs burned, my vision dimmed - but I didn't stop. Couldn't.

Because every strike, every spell, every breath I forced into my body carried the same truth:

The darkness was taking her.And I would not let it win.

--

They call her the Moonfallen.General. Destroyer. His chosen.

The title drips like poison from their tongues - reverent, fearful, final.

And every time I hear it, something inside me cracks a little more.
Because once, she was their light.Once, she was mine.

My heart breaks on the sound of her name.

---

The storm never ends here. It howls through the valley like it's alive - like it remembers.

I've spent months chasing ghosts through the ashes of Moonhaven, following whispers of her name carried on the wind. Luna.

Every path ends the same: silence, smoke, ruin.

Until tonight.

Through the storm, I see her.

At first, I think it's another illusion - another cruel trick of the dark. But then the lightning splits the sky, and there she stands.

Not the Luna I remember.

She stands beside the Warlock, her silhouette sharp against the storm. Her hair blazes white beneath the lightning, a halo turned to fire. Her armor gleams with the same silver light that once belonged to her mother's crown - twisted now, corrupted, beautiful in its ruin.

And her eyes...

They were once sunrise and mercy.

Now they hold only the cold reflection of the moon.

---

We meet by the river - the same place where she used to laugh, where her reflection once danced like starlight across the surface.

Now the water lies still. Cold.A sheet of glass beneath a colorless sky.

She stands alone at the edge, motionless, her cloak rippling in the wind. The moonlight paints her in silver and shadow, armor gleaming like ice. She looks almost otherworldly - a ghost carved from light and sorrow.

"Luna?"

Her name leaves me in a whisper, more prayer than call. It trembles on the air between us.

She turns.

For one heartbeat - one fragile, breaking heartbeat - I see her. The girl who once smiled in defiance of the dark, who found beauty in a world that had forgotten how.

Then the moment shatters.

"I'm not who I was," she says, and her voice is a blade - beautiful, sharp, unyielding. "Run, Danny. Run far. Don't look back. Go home... to your world. Where you belong."

But I can't.

I take a step closer, close enough to feel her magic humming in the air - a pulse beneath the silence, hot and alive, brushing against my skin. It's the same light that once held me, now twisted by shadow.

"I don't know what he's done to you," I whisper, "but I'm going to save you. I swear it."

Her eyes flicker - silver through the darkness, light through smoke.

And for the briefest moment... she looks like she might believe me.

---

When dawn breaks, I stand at the gates of Moonhaven - or what remains of it.

The air hangs heavy with the scent of ash and iron. Ruins stretch before me, bathed in pale firelight, the city's once-silver towers now nothing but bones reaching toward a dying sky. The wind carries echoes - faint, broken - the laughter that once filled these streets, the bells that once sang her name.

Now, only silence.And the slow, inevitable drum of war.

Across the valley, the horizon burns.An army - vast, merciless - glitters beneath the rising sun, their armor catching the light like a thousand blades. Fire runs along their ranks, reflected in the black glass of the earth. The ground trembles beneath their march.

And at their head... rides her.

Luna.

The Moonfallen.

Her armor gleams with the shimmer of frost and shadow, silver laced with darkness. Her cloak flows behind her like living smoke. She moves with the poise of something divine - or damned. The Warlock rides beside her, his eyes pale and patient, like a god studying his own creation.

The sky turns white with light.The world holds its breath.

I should run.
I should hide.But my heart betrays me first.

"LUNA!"

Her name rips from my chest like a prayer - raw, broken, defiant.

And for one eternal moment, everything stops.The wind dies. The soldiers falter. Even the flames seem to bend toward the sound.

Then the sky cracks open.

Light. Fire. Shattered glass and thunder.

The world explodes.

---

The battle is madness.

Steel shrieks. The sky burns.Light pours from the heavens like blood.

I move through it in fragments - flashes of silver and flame, screams swallowed by thunder. The world has narrowed to sound and motion, to the pulse in my throat and the taste of smoke on my tongue. Shadows fall beneath my blade, faceless and endless, but none of them matter. None of them are her.

And then I see her.

She stands in the heart of the chaos like a goddess of death, her cloak a living storm. The ground bends beneath her. Magic coils in the air - cold, electric, alive. Her eyes catch the light, unearthly and distant. She looks carved from the same moonlight that once loved her.

Then she turns.

And suddenly, it's only us.

The noise fades. The storm stills. Even time seems to hesitate.

I raise my sword.She raises her hand.

The world snaps.

Power collides - blinding, furious, divine. The ground fractures, light and shadow spilling across the battlefield. I push forward through the burning wind, reach for her, and my fingers find her wrist.

Not to strike.
Not to kill.
To stop her.To remember her.

Her eyes blaze - silver, furious, alive. "Let go," she spits. "This world has to die."

Her voice shakes the air. It's hers, and not hers. A whisper of the Warlock behind every word.

I tighten my grip. "No." My voice is rough, torn from somewhere deeper than fear. "This is your home."

For a heartbeat, she hesitates. The power around her flickers, stuttering like a dying flame.

"Why should I care?" she breathes - but there's a tremor beneath the steel.

Because I do. Because I always have.

A laugh escapes me - broken, breathless. The kind that feels like bleeding. "I made my choice a long time ago, Luna. I was never leaving."

I step closer, her pulse a storm beneath my fingers.

"I want to stay," I whisper. "With you."

Her breath catches - a sound too human for the monster she's become. The light in her eyes fractures, silver pushing through shadow, desperate and defiant.

For a heartbeat - a single, trembling heartbeat - the world forgets the war.

The clash of steel fades. The fire stills. Even the air seems to wait, suspended between ruin and redemption.

And in that stillness, the battlefield falls away.

For one impossible second, there is sunlight.
Rivers.Laughter.

The ghost of a world that once was - of the girl who once stood beneath the moon and dared to dream.

Color rushes back into her face, washing away the pallor of darkness. The wind softens. The light bends. And I see her - truly see her - not the weapon, not the legend, but the soul beneath it all.

The storm breaks.

The Moonfallen is gone.

And Luna...Luna is home.

The dawn glows faintly at the edge of the ruin, fragile as breath.

And for the first time in what feels like lifetimes, I believe - if only for this moment -that light can return.