The moon was full. Round, radiant, and cursed.
Its pale light poured over the city like quiet poison—too soft to scream, too bright to hide from. For the common people, it was just another moonlit night. Lovers held hands on bridges. Scholars wrote poems in candlelight. Thieves prowled. Nobles drank.
But for cultivators, for those who walked the threadbare edges of reality, this moon was wrong. It pulsed. It listened. And it whispered names not yet born.
The Limitless Sage stood atop a lonely bell tower, his white robes glowing silver in the moonlight, his long hair untied and fluttering like smoke caught in divine stillness. Behind him, Lian'er knelt, face pale, heart thudding like a drum wrapped in silk.
She had seen it too.
That... shadow on the moon.
It had teeth.
"Senior… what is that?"
The Sage didn't answer immediately. He raised his hand slowly, fingers tracing a circle in the air. The world blurred around them. Sound faded. Even the stars dimmed.
"A memory," he said finally, voice low and heavy. "A scar upon the moon… left by a god who couldn't die."
Lian'er shivered. Her mortal soul wasn't built to hold that kind of knowledge. But she didn't look away.
"Is it… watching us?"
The Sage didn't nod. He didn't need to.
Because the moment she asked the question, the moon blinked.
The shadow twisted—its outline rippling across the lunar surface like ink on water. One by one, the lights of the city began to dim. First torches. Then spirit lanterns. Then windows.
One by one, people began to sleep.
Not the peaceful kind.
The cursed kind.
Dreams twisted into knots. Memories rearranged themselves. Names disappeared from minds. Lovers forgot each other mid-embrace. Babies stopped crying. Elders stopped breathing.
The Silent Moon had begun its work.
And only one man in the entire realm remained standing with his eyes open.
The Limitless Sage.
He raised his sleeve, drew out a talisman made of star-thread and crow's blood, and flicked it into the air. It ignited silently, burning black with whispers in forgotten tongues.
The moon snarled.
Yes. Snarled.
And from it, a crack formed. Just a sliver. Just wide enough for something to slip through.
Lian'er collapsed, clutching her head, blood seeping from her ears. "I hear… it singing… gods… it's—"
The Sage touched her forehead lightly. She fell unconscious instantly, wrapped in layers of dreamless protection. He laid her down gently on the tower floor and turned toward the moon again.
Now… it was time.
He floated upward, robes billowing like clouds of judgment. As he rose, reality bent beneath his feet. Gravity wept. Laws hesitated. The wind dared not touch him.
His voice echoed, not just through the air—but through concepts.
"O cursed one, eater of names, ghost who crawled into heaven's eye—I banish thee to silence once more."
The crack screamed.
It was a voice made of static. A choir of unborn children. The echo of the first god who ever died. And from within it came the Beast of the Silent Moon.
It had no body.
It was the moon.
It was hunger.
It was made of regret and teeth and lullabies that made minds rot.
And yet… the Sage did not blink.
With two fingers, he cut open the space before him, pulling out a scroll bound in phoenix sinew and sealed with thunder. He broke the seal.
The clouds parted.
The stars held their breath.
And the spell began.
He spoke thirteen syllables. Each one summoned a world.
The first word: fire.
The second: frost.
The third: silence.
The twelfth: death.
The thirteenth… no one had heard before. Not even the gods.
And as he spoke it, the moon cracked in half.
The beast howled, voice folding mountains in on themselves.
But it could not reach him.
The scroll consumed itself, bursting into golden dust. The spell hung in the air, like a net made of time and sorrow.
The Sage raised his hand again.
"Sleep."
And the Beast of the Silent Moon obeyed.
With a final shriek that made oceans ripple across the world, the crack sealed itself. The moon stitched its own scar shut. And once again… it became a moon.
Just a moon.
Nothing more.
The Sage floated down, landing softly on the stone tower. Lian'er stirred, as if waking from the deepest sleep of her life.
"Senior… is it gone?"
He didn't answer.
He simply looked at the moon.
And whispered, too soft for her to hear:
"For now."
Because the truth was…
The moon was not cursed.
It was a prison.
And tonight… it remembered.