The night was silent in a way no other night had ever been.

  It was as if even the sky itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to be born.

  There was no wind. The birds had fallen mute.

  And the moon...

  The moon had grown unusually large, pinned at the center of the heavens like a silver sentinel.

  Elara Veyne awoke within that silence.

  She was drenched in sweat, cold droplets clinging to her forehead. Her chest heaved with shallow breaths, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as if she had seen a ghost.

  The dream had been the same again.

  There, in the stone clearing bathed in moonlight, the man had stood — as always.

  She could never quite see his face, but his voice...

  His voice had been seared into her mind:

  "The time has come. Awaken."

  As Elara pushed herself upright, she noticed something:

  Her left wrist was burning.

  The pain dulled after a few seconds, but in its place came something else — a pulsing light, thrumming just beneath her skin.

  The crescent-shaped birthmark had always been there.

  But tonight... tonight something had changed.

  When she caught her reflection in the mirror, she saw a faint shimmer dancing in her pupils — a thread of light, fragile and trembling.

  It felt as though something — or someone — had begun to share her gaze from within.

  "Who am I?" she whispered into the darkness.

  There was no answer.

  Yet the silence inside her no longer felt like peace — it was the charged stillness before a storm.

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  With heavy steps, Elara moved to the window.

  Her room, perched in the attic of a stone house in the city's old quarter, usually stayed tightly shuttered through the night. But tonight... the curtains were open.

  Had she opened them?

  Or had the wind...?

  But there was no wind.

  If there had been, the curtains would have danced. Now, they simply hung still, revealing the open window.

  And outside, the moon...

  The moon sliced the sky like a sharpened silver blade.

  It was massive, almost surreal.

  For a moment, Elara placed her fingertips on the windowsill and felt a subtle vibration — like the heartbeat of the earth, of the stones, of the universe itself.

  As the moonlight flooded into the room, a shadow stirred against the wall.

  But Elara was alone.

  Wasn’t she?

  Slowly, she closed the window.

  It was then that she heard it — a sound so faint it was barely more than a breath.

  Someone whispered her name:

  "Elara."

  She closed her eyes and drew a deep, trembling breath.

  Fear? Yes.

  But there was something else as well —

  Something achingly familiar, like the echo of a memory she had never lived, a whisper from an unborn past.

  That night, though she closed her eyes again, sleep did not come easily.

  And yet, the dream returned.

  This time, the man stood closer.

  Moonlight tangled in his hair, and his gaze was locked onto hers.

  His face remained cloaked in shadow, but his eyes shone through:

  A deep night-blue, burning with a cold, unearthly fire.

  "You are not alone.

  The seal within you is awakening.

  Your past has abandoned you, but I have not.

  I am the one who calls you, Elara Veyne."

  And then —

  The sky unraveled.

  The ground gave way.

  The dream tore itself apart.

  When she woke, there was a strange taste in her mouth:

  Ash.

  And on her wrist —

  Not just a glow, but a mark, seared into her skin.

  No longer a flickering light — but a deep, crimson scar, shaped like a crescent.

  Permanent.