The Awakening of Shadows
On the Moon Isle, Lunaria lay unconscious for nearly a month after Sari discovered her. She was housed in Sari's modest hut, a resting place sanctioned by Chieftain Lesley herself. The news rippled through the tribe like wildfire—a stranger with snow-pale skin and elfin ears, features alien to the sun-kissed Lunarians. Crowds gathered daily outside Sari's door, their curiosity a silent hum beneath the bamboo groves.
Two moons later, Lunaria awoke.
It was the dead of night, a pitch-black void unbroken by stars or the moon's silver gaze. For the first time in her immortal existence, she knew true darkness. On the lunar kingdoms, light was eternal, a constant companion woven into the very air. Here, blindness gnawed at her. Trembling, she groped the air, her hands brushing rough-hewn walls, a straw mat, the chill of clay bowls. Panic clawed her throat. She tried to summon her light—the celestial glow that once bent kingdoms to her will—but nothing answered. Her power, drained to a flicker, had abandoned her.
"Brother…?" she whispered in the ancient tongue of Luna, her voice frayed with a gnawing terror. "Where… where are you? I'm… I'm afraid…"
The words hung in the dark, unanswered.
The Descent into Wonder,
She groped blindly, seeking an exit, her fingers tracing the contours of walls she could not see. For twenty agonizing minutes, she mapped the darkness in her mind—until her palms met cool night air. Stepping outside, she froze.
Above her stretched a sky she had never witnessed: a tapestry of moonlight and constellations, stars flickering like shattered diamonds scattered across velvet. Her breath caught. On the moon, the heavens were static, bathed in perpetual silver. But this… this was chaos and poetry. Alive.
"Where… am I?" she murmured, her voice trembling. "I've circled the lunar plains a hundred times. Why have I never seen this?"
Drawn by reckless wonder, she lay down on the earth—only to sink instantly into cold, viscous muck. Thick, clinging mud seeped into her robes, its earthy stench foreign and pungent. She jerked upright, staring at her soiled hands.
"What… is this?"
No lunar soil, this. No sterile dust. It was primal. Alive. Her mind reeled. She did not yet know—could not fathom—that she was no longer on the moon. That the ground beneath her was Earth, a realm of rot and rebirth, where even dirt held secrets.
The Veil of Tongues,
As Lunaria stared at the mud clinging to her hands, a voice cut through the night—soft, tentative.
"You're awake…?"
She turned. A woman stood silhouetted against the moonlight, her features obscured by shadows. Sari. The name floated into Lunaria's mind, though she did not know it yet. The woman stepped closer, her brow furrowed. "Are you hurt?"
Lunaria opened her mouth, but no sound came. The words were alien, jagged. On the moon, languages had been threads of light, understood by all. Here, they were chaos.
"Huh…?" Sari tilted her head, her confusion mirroring Lunaria's own.
A cold realization prickled Lunaria's spine. The sky. The mud. This stranger. Fragments snapped into place, Earth. Panic surged, but she clamped it down. Mortals could not know what she was. With a silent plea, she scraped together the dregs of her power—a faint pulse in her veins—and pressed it into her mind.
Understand, Adapt.
The world sharpened. Sari's next words, once gibberish, now pierced her like shards of glass.
"Hello…? Can you hear me?"
Lunaria forced a smile, fragile as cracked ice. "Apologies. My thoughts… are tangled."
Sari exhaled, relief softening her face. "You *spoke*. I feared you'd never wake."
"What… happened to me?"
The story spilled out: the rice field, three days unconscious, the two months Sari had nursed her with compresses and whispered prayers. Stranger still—the uproar among the Lunarians. Pilgrims gathering outside her hut, rumors of a "moon-touched" woman who defied death, surviving without food or water.
"They think you're a sign," Sari said, her voice hushed. "From the goddess."
Lunaria's chest tightened." A sign?" She was a relic, a fallen queen. But she buried the truth beneath a veneer of calm. "And you? What do you think?"
Sari hesitated. "I think… you're lost."
The words hung between them, truer than either knew.