The black glass shattered into infinite fragments.
Each shard reflected a different version of Luna.
One crowned in silver and shadow.
One kneeling beside Kael's lifeless body.
One standing above a burning world.
One ordinary girl crying in a school hallway.
One monster with eyes like collapsed stars.
Luna clutched her head as the visions tore through her mind.
"Stop!" she screamed.
The other Luna stood calmly in the chaos, untouched by the breaking reality.
"You asked for the truth," she said softly. "This is what truth looks like when it is no longer filtered by fear."
Luna's voice trembled. "You said I have to choose."
"Yes," the other Luna replied, stepping closer.
The shards froze midair.
The scene of Kael bound by chains sharpened painfully.
His body was on his knees, blood running down his arms as Watchers stood around him, their hands glowing with binding magic.
Kael lifted his head.
Their eyes met through the vision.
"Luna," he mouthed.
Her heart ripped open.
"Don't," she whispered.
The other Luna tilted her head. "If you pull him out, the Primordial will finish waking. The Devourer will walk freely. The world will burn."
She raised her hand.
Another vision appeared.
Cities collapsing under unnatural moons.
Wolves turning on humans.
Magic devouring itself.
Rhea lying lifeless among ruins.
Her father screamed her name as the sky fell.
Luna shook violently. "You're lying."
"I am you," the other Luna said calmly. "I don't lie. I remember."
The Devourer's voice echoed faintly from far away.
She speaks fragments of truth.
Luna looked up sharply. "Fragments?"
"Yes," the other Luna said before it could answer. "Truth without context is the most effective weapon."
She stepped closer again, and the glass beneath her feet cracked with each footfall.
"You want to save him," she whispered.
Luna's tears fell freely now. "Yes."
"You want to save everyone," the other Luna continued.
"Yes," Luna cried.
The other Luna's eyes softened with something that looked almost like pity.
"That's why you will fail," she said gently. "Because you still believe love is stronger than inevitability."
The visions began to merge.
Kael's chains tightened.
The burning cities moved closer.
The Primordial's presence pressed heavier against reality.
The other Luna extended her hand.
"Make the choice," she said.
Luna stared at her hand, shaking.
Her mind screamed.
Her heart screamed.
Her soul screamed.
She thought of Kael's laugh.
Of Rhea's stubborn loyalty.
Of her father's tired smile.
Of the girl she used to be before destiny shattered her life.
"I refuse," Luna whispered.
The other Luna blinked.
For the first time, she looked surprised.
"I refuse to choose," Luna said louder.
The other Luna's expression darkened.
"There is always a choice," she said coldly.
"No," Luna replied, lifting her head despite the terror in her chest. "You're giving me your choices. The ones you made. The ones that trapped you here in the first place."
She took a step forward, and the glass beneath her feet didn't crack.
It bloomed.
Silver light spread from where she stood.
"I'm not you," Luna said firmly. "I never was."
The other Luna's eyes widened. "That's not—"
"You're not my future," Luna interrupted. "You're my fear. The voice that tells me I have to be perfect or lose everything. The voice that says love makes me weak."
The Devourer's voice surged suddenly, closer now.
Interesting.
"But that voice is wrong," Luna continued, her own power beginning to wake—not the Devourer's darkness, not the Primordial's void, but something that was purely hers. "Because the strongest thing I've ever done wasn't binding the Devourer. It wasn't resisting the Primordial."
She stepped closer to her mirror image.
"It was letting Kael in when every instinct told me to push him away."
The other Luna stared at her.
"Then show me," she said quietly. "Show me this impossible third path."
The shards of reality began to collapse inward.
The visions twisted violently.
The Primordial's voice thundered from beyond.
Decide.
Luna didn't hesitate.
She stepped forward.
She grabbed Luna's other hand.
And pulled her into herself.
The world exploded.
Pain beyond description tore through Luna's body as two versions of herself tried to occupy the same space. She screamed, but the sound had no outlet—she was folding inward, collapsing, merging.
Stop! the Devourer roared. You'll destroy yourself!
"Maybe," Luna gasped. "Or maybe I'll finally become whole."
The other Luna fought against the pull, eyes wide with something that looked like terror.
"You don't understand what you're doing!" she shouted.
"I understand perfectly," Luna said through gritted teeth. "You're the part of me that gave up. That accepted the binary. That chose power over connection."
She pulled harder.
"And I'm taking you back."
The other Luna's form began to dissolve, breaking apart into silver light.
"If you do this," she warned, voice fracturing, "you won't be the same. You'll carry all of it. Every choice. Every consequence. Every version of yourself that ever was or could be."
"Good," Luna said.
And she pulled.
The merger completed.
Luna's consciousness shattered into a million pieces—
And reformed.
When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the space between.
She was back in her body.
In the chamber.
Falling.
The small hand made of moonlight still gripped her ankle, dragging her toward the city of bones below.
But something had changed.
Luna wasn't just herself anymore.
She was also the girl who'd given up.
The warrior who'd chosen power.
The corpse who'd chosen peace.
The monster who'd chosen hunger.
All of them.
She looked down at the child on the throne, the First Moonbound, and understood something she hadn't before.
The child wasn't offering Luna her place.
She was offering Luna the choice to break the cycle entirely.
And Luna finally knew how.
She stopped fighting the pull.
Instead, she embraced it.
"Let go!" Kael screamed from above, his voice raw with desperation.
But Luna shook her head.
"Trust me," she called back.
And she let herself fall.
The city of bones rushed up to meet her.
The child on the throne stood, eyes wide.
"You're not fighting it," she breathed.
"No," Luna said as she plummeted. "I'm ending it."
She crashed into the throne room with enough force to crack the frozen light beneath it.
The child stumbled backward.
The army of skeletal selves surged forward.
And Luna stood, every version of herself she'd absorbed burning inside her like stars.
"You want to die," she said to the child. "But you can't. Not while you're anchoring the Primordial."
The child nodded, tears streaming. "That's why I need—"
"You need someone to take your place," Luna finished. "But that won't solve anything. It'll just continue the cycle."
She stepped forward.
"So instead, I'm going to do something no version of you ever tried."
The child's voice was barely a whisper. "What?"
Luna smiled—and it was gentle, despite everything.
"I'm going to set you free."
She reached into her chest.
Into the mark.
Into the binding itself.
And she grabbed the thread connecting the First Moonbound to the Primordial.
Not to sever it.
Not to transfer it.
To share it.
The child's eyes went wide. "That's impossible. The binding can only have one anchor—"
"Wrong," Luna said, and her voice echoed with all the versions of herself speaking in harmony. "It can only have one anchor if you're trying to control it alone."
She pulled the child forward.
"But I'm not alone anymore."
The Devourer's voice cracked through her mind.
Luna, if you distribute the binding across multiple anchors, you'll create a resonance cascade. It could—
"I know," Luna said aloud. "It could kill us both. Or it could finally balance the equation."
She looked at the child.
"Your choice," she said softly. "Die alone carrying the weight of the world, or risk living by sharing it."
The child stared at her.
At the hand extended in offering.
At the impossible gamble Luna was proposing.
Behind them, the formless shadow—the thing even older than the Primordial—moved closer.
The city of bones began to collapse.
The army of dead selves screamed in voices that hadn't worked in millennia.
And the Primordial's eye opened fully overhead, finally understanding what Luna was attempting.
No, it thundered. This was not the agreement. This was not the design.
"Good," Luna said, still holding out her hand to the child. "Because your design was broken from the start."
The child looked at Luna's hand.
Then at the approaching shadow.
Then back at Luna.
"If this works," she whispered, "what happens to us?"
Luna's smile turned sad.
"I don't know. But we'll find out together."
The child took her hand.
The moment their fingers touched, the world screamed.
The binding split.
The thread connecting them to the Primordial fractured into two strands—thinner, but shared.
The resonance cascade began.
Power erupted from both of them, silver and black intertwining, creating something that had never existed before.
A shared anchor.
A distributed binding.
A partnership where there had only ever been slavery.
The Primordial roared in fury and fear.
Because Luna had just proven something no one had ever considered:
The binding didn't have to be a chain.
It could be a choice.
The child gasped as half the weight she'd carried for millennia lifted from her shoulders.
Luna staggered as half that same weight settled onto hers.
But it was bearable.
Because it was shared.
The formless shadow paused, as if confused.
The army of bones stopped advancing.
And in the chamber far above, Kael felt the chains around him suddenly weaken.
The Watchers stared in shock as their binding magic unraveled.
Maeven's voice cracked. "What is she doing?"
The Arbiter appeared in the doorway, mask tilted slightly.
She is rewriting the rules, it said, and for the first time, there was something like respect in its voice.
Back in the city of bones, Luna and the child stood together, hands clasped, power flowing between them in perfect equilibrium.
"It's working," the child breathed.
"Not yet," Luna said.
Because the formless shadow had started moving again.
And this time, it wasn't confused.
It was angry.
The thing that even the Primordial feared had just realized that its prey had evolved beyond its reach.
And it would not allow that.
The shadow surged forward.
Luna pushed the child behind her.
"If we survive this," she said, not looking back, "I'm going to need you to tell me everything. Every choice you made. Every mistake. Every—"
The shadow struck.
Not at Luna.
At the binding itself.
At the thread connecting them to the Primordial.
And Luna realized, with sudden horrifying clarity, what it was trying to do.
It wasn't trying to kill them.
It was trying to complete them.
To force the merger Luna had been resisting.
To turn her into the Primordial's perfect vessel by destroying every trace of humanity left.
"No!" Luna screamed.
But the shadow wrapped around the binding thread.
And began to pull.
Luna felt herself being dragged toward something vast.
Toward the Primordial itself.
Toward union.
Toward obliteration of self.
The child grabbed her other hand, anchoring her.
"Fight it!" she shouted.
But Luna could feel it.
The pull was too strong.
The shadow is too ancient.
She was going to lose.
And then—
A hand grabbed her shoulder from behind.
Warm.
Solid.
Humans.
"You're not doing this alone."
Luna's eyes flew open.
Kael stood behind her, having somehow crossed an impossible distance to reach her.
Blood ran down his face from a dozen wounds.
His clothes were torn.
But his grip was iron.
"Kael," she gasped. "You can't be here. The binding will—"
"I don't care," he said fiercely.
And before Luna could stop him, he placed his other hand directly on the binding thread.
The one connecting her to the Primordial.
The one the shadow was using to drag her toward oblivion.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The binding shrieked.
Because Kael wasn't Moonbound.
It wasn't magical.
Wasn't supposed to be able to touch the thread at all.
But he was touching it anyway.
And his absolute, stubborn, human refusal to let go was creating interference in the pull.
The shadow recoiled.
The Primordial's voice cracked with genuine shock.
Impossible.
Kael smiled through the pain.
"You keep using that word," he said.
And he held on tighter.
The binding began to change.
Not breaking.
Not transferring.
Expanding.
Luna felt it—a third anchor forming.
Not magical.
Not chosen.
Born entirely from will and love and desperate, foolish courage.
"Kael," she whispered, tears streaming. "What did you do?"
He met her eyes.
"What I always do," he said softly. "I chose you."
The binding solidified.
Three anchors now.
Luna. The child. Kael.
Connected by threads of silver, shadow, and something that glowed like sunrise.
The shadow screamed—a sound that had no voice but shook reality itself.
And then it did something none of them expected.
It laughed.
Not cruel.
Delighted.
Finally, it said in a voice older than language. Something new.
And it bowed.
Not to the Primordial.
Not to the Devourer.
To them.
You have created what should not exist, it said. A binding built on choice instead of slavery. On love instead of fear. On partnership instead of domination.
It began to fade.
I will watch, it said. To see if it holds.
The shadow vanished.
The city of bones stopped collapsing.
The army of dead selves knelt.
And the Primordial's eye, for the first time in existence
Blinked with uncertainty.
Luna, Kael, and the child stood together, connected by threads of impossible light.
Luna looked up.
At the Primordial watching from above.
At the Arbiter observing from the chamber.
At the Devourer coiled inside her, finally, blessedly quiet.
"We're not done," she said to all of them.
The child squeezed her hand.
Kael's grip on her shoulder never wavered.
"But we're not alone either," Luna finished.
The Primordial was silent for a long moment.
Then:
Very well, it said. You have bought time.
Use it wisely.
The eye began to close.
Because when I open again.
The chamber began to reassemble around them, pulling them back to reality.
I will test whether your new binding can truly hold.
The world snapped back.
Luna gasped, falling to her knees in the actual chamber, Kael catching her.
The child appeared beside them—no longer a vision, but real, solid, standing in their world for the first time in millennia.
She looked down at her hands in wonder.
"I'm... here," she whispered.
Rhea stumbled forward, blade forgotten. "What in the—"
The Arbiter's voice cut through.
The Moonbound has created a paradox, it announced to the assembled Watchers. Observation will continue.
Maeven approached slowly, eyes wide. "Luna... what did you just do?"
Luna looked up at her father, who stared at her with tears streaming down his face.
She looked at Kael, who still held her like he'd never let go.
She looked at the child—the First Moonbound—who was staring around the chamber with the wonder of someone seeing the world fresh.
And she felt the binding thrumming inside her.
Still present.
Still powerful.
But no longer a chain.
A choice she was making every second to maintain it.
"I broke the game," Luna said quietly.
And then she smiled.
"And I made a new one."
The mark on her chest pulsed once.
Not with pain.
With life.
But the Devourer's voice whispered one final warning:
They will come for you now. All of them. Because you've proven that the old rules can be changed.
And power never forgives those who show it can be different.
Luna's smile didn't fade.
"Let them come," she said.
Kael's hand found hers.
The child stepped closer.
And for the first time since her binding began.
Luna felt ready.
The chamber doors burst open.
A messenger stumbled in, face pale with terror.
"The Hollow Veil," they gasped. "It's not just opening anymore."
Everyone turned.
"It's calling. And every creature that was ever bound to it is answering."
They pointed at Luna.
"And they're all asking for the Moonbound who broke the chain."
Luna's heart sank.
Because she understood now.
She hadn't just freed herself.
She'd sent a signal to every imprisoned thing in existence.
That escape was possible.
The Arbiter's voice was cold.
The second test begins now.
And in the distance, beyond the city, beyond the mountains.
The sky split open.
Not with portals.
With gates.
Dozens of them.
And from each one, something ancient began to emerge.
All of them coming for the girl who'd proven that chains were just choices you hadn't refused yet.
Kael pulled Luna closer.
The child raised her hands, magic sparking.
And Luna looked at the approaching storm with eyes that held every version of herself she'd ever been.
"Then let's show them," she said softly, "what happens when the Moonbound stops running."
"And starts fighting back."