>The bag lay open before her like a wound in the earth.
Luna's crimson eyes—now faded with age and years of carefully constructed numbness—stared down at her trembling hands. Blood. So much blood coating her wrinkled palms, seeping between her fingers like accusations made flesh.
"Mother, the Emperor told us we should bring this head here," her son's voice rang with pride, his black hair catching the afternoon light. "He said this beast killed our grandfather. That he was the savage who destroyed our family."
Her daughter nodded eagerly, red hair gleaming as she wiped her blade clean. "We finally got justice for what he did to you, Mother. For what he took from us."
They were smiling. Her babies—now grown, now killers—were smiling at her with such innocent satisfaction.
Luna's breath came in sharp, broken gasps as her gaze fell to the bag. Inside, those familiar features she had tried so hard to forget. The scar across his face. The black hair, now matted with blood. Silver eyes that threatened the Empire had gone dull.
Javrian.
Her Javrian.
"No." The word escaped her lips as barely a whisper, her bloody hands shaking so violently she could barely hold them steady. "Ahhhhh, No, no, NO!"
The scream tore from her throat like a living thing, raw and primal, echoing off the stone walls of their manor.
Her knees buckled, and she collapsed beside the bag, her aged body trembling as twenty years of buried grief came crashing down at once.
Her children stepped back, confusion replacing their proud smiles.
"Mother?" her daughter's voice wavered. "What's wrong? We brought you justice—"
"Uwaaaah... M-my JAVRIAN, AH, NO NO, WHAT YOU BOTH DID!!!!" Luna's voice cracked like breaking glass, tears streaming down her face as she stared at the severed head of the only man she ever loved, who protected her and her children for all these years from harm... had been killed by her own children.
"No—! How can you..." Luna's tears streamed relentlessly as she held that head without looking at her children could just curse herself, "I-I shouldn't have brought you both into this life! I should have died that day! YOU BOTH ARE THE WORST MISTAKE I HAD! MY JAVRIAN...."
<
"JAVRIAN!—haah... haah..."
Luna lurched upright in her bed, her body convulsing as if struck by lightning. Cold sweat poured down her face, soaking through her nightgown as her heart hammered against her ribs with brutal force.
Her hands—these young, unmarked hands—shook violently as she clutched at the silk sheets, trying to anchor herself to reality. But the trembling only intensified, spreading through her entire frame like a fever.
"Am I... am I poisoned?" she gasped, voice hoarse and broken.
The dream had been too real. Too vivid. The weight of that severed head in her aged hands, the blood between her fingers, her children's proud faces as they presented her with—
Luna tried to stand, desperate to escape the suffocating weight of the vision, but her legs gave out completely.
"Urgh! S-Sally—" She collapsed back onto the mattress, gasping for air and the name of Sally that wouldn't come.
That's when she felt it.
Wetness on her trembling hands.
She stared down in confusion at the clear droplets falling steadily onto her palms, each one catching the moonlight filtering through her window.
Tears?
"Why..." she whispered, lifting a shaking hand to her face.
Her cheeks were soaked. The tears wouldn't stop coming, no matter how hard she tried to will them away.
She pressed both palms against her eyes, trying to hide from this inexplicable weakness that had seized her.
'I don't cry. I don't feel. I'm numb. I'm supposed to be numb.'
But the tears kept falling.
Desperate for answers, Luna forced herself to look toward the ornate mirror across her chambers. The reflection that stared back made her breath catch.
Her own face—young, beautiful, unmarked by the years that had existed only in that terrible dream—was streaked with silver tracks of moisture. Her crimson eyes, usually so carefully empty, blazed with raw emotion she couldn't contain.
She looked... broken. Vulnerable. Human.
The nightmare clung to her consciousness with terrifying clarity. Not the hazy fragments of a normal dream, but something that felt like a window into an inevitable future.
Suddenly, a sharp surge of agony shot through her skull like a lightning bolt.
"Ahh—!" Luna's hands flew to her head, fingers clawing at her scalp as the pain lanced through her mind with surgical precision.
Images flashed behind her eyes—glimpses of a life unlived, choices unmade, a future that could be her destiny.
"No... not again," she whispered through gritted teeth, her entire body curling in on itself as waves of pain crashed over her.
She started another vision...
> The battlefield stretched endlessly before her, a canvas painted in crimson and ash.
The acrid stench of smoke and death filled the air, but Luna walked through it all as if in a dream—or perhaps a nightmare from which she could never wake.
Her feet moved mechanically across the blood-soaked earth, stepping over fallen soldiers whose names she would never know, whose families would never see them return home.
The great Imperial banners lay trampled and torn, their golden eagles now nothing more than scraps of fabric soaking in the mud.
But Luna saw none of it.
Her hollow crimson eyes were fixed on two forms in the distance—one massive and still, the other small and broken beside it.
No.
The word formed in her mind, but her lips couldn't speak it. Her throat had closed completely, as if her body was rejecting the reality her eyes were showing her.
The wolf was enormous even in death, silver fur matted with blood that gleamed dark in the dying light.
Those familiar silver eyes—her daughter's eyes—stared sightlessly at the sky, dulled by the finality that only death could bring.
And beside the wolf...
"My babies..."
The scream that tore from Luna's throat was inhuman, primal—the sound of a mother's heart being ripped from her chest and shattered against stone.
She collapsed to her knees between them, her hands hovering over their still forms, afraid to touch, afraid to make it real.
Her daughter's red fur was soft beneath her trembling fingers, still warm but growing cold with each passing moment.
The boy—her son—lay crumpled like a discarded doll, his young face peaceful despite the blood that pooled beneath his head.
"No, no, no..." Luna whispered, the words falling like drops of poison from her lips. "Not you. Not my children. Please, not—"
A weak cough interrupted her denial.
Her son's eyes fluttered open—those silver eyes so like his father's, but filled with pain she had never wanted him to know.
"M-Mother..."
"Shh, don't speak," Luna choked out, pressing her hands against the wound in his chest that she could see was far beyond healing. "Save your strength. I'll—I'll find help, I'll—"
"Forgive us, Mother." His voice was barely a whisper, each word costing him precious breath he didn't have to spare. "We didn't know... we didn't know he was our father."
The words hit Luna like physical blows.
Father.
Javrian, who had died a few months ago at her baby's hand because he didn't want to hurt his children, who didn't even know the man they were trying to kill was their father.
Her family. Her entire world. All of them lying dead because of choices made twenty years ago by people too broken to see any other path.
"But you don't have to fear, Mother." Her son's voice grew weaker, but somehow more urgent. "We took our revenge. We killed the emperor. The one who... who made you choose. The one who turned us into weapons."
Luna's vision blurred as tears she thought had dried up years ago began falling like rain. "I never wanted revenge," she whispered. "I only ever wanted you to be happy. To be free."
Her son's hand found hers, broken fingers wrapping around her own with what little strength remained. "I know, Mother. But we... we weren't made for happiness, were we?"
The question broke something fundamental inside Luna's chest.
"We were made for war. For killing. For destroying everything we touched." His silver eyes held hers with devastating clarity. "Just like him. Just like Father."
"No," Luna said fiercely, squeezing his hand. "You were made from love. You were—"
"I hope you knew how evil we would become, Mother."
The words stopped her cold. Her son's gaze had turned distant, philosophical, as if he were discussing the weather instead of his own damnation.
"So you don't have to give us birth. I just hope you had a choice... or at least knew the future... so you could kill us before we were born."
"Don't say that." Luna's voice cracked completely. "Don't you dare say that. You were the only good things in my life. The only—"
But his eyes had already closed.
His hand went limp in hers. <
And Luna was alone in her bedroom, seated with trembling hands on her temple as the room filled with the tears she had numbed or thought would never come after what happened a month ago.
Tears awaited her decision to live a life away from the world that threatened to ruin her family, as she mourned her future, with grief pouring out all her pain, her hand naturally placed on her belly.
"Hic.... sob... ahh... my babies.... my Javrian..."