The first thing Yue Lian noticed was the cold.
Not the sharp kind that bit at skin — no, this was deeper. It sank into her bones, into her breath, into her blood, as if the world had been drained of heat long ago. When her eyes flickered open, they met only darkness and a sliver of fractured light from somewhere above, filtered through hanging beams and dust.
She coughed.
The sound was wet. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, coated in something thick and metallic. She rolled onto her side, groaning, and spat.
Blood.
Not dried. Fresh. Her own.
Her fingers scraped over tiny needles on the floor. Glass. Dozens of sharp-edged fragments were embedded in her palms now, glinting faintly like stars fallen into ash. She flinched and sat up too quickly — the motion lit her spine with pain.
Where…?
Where was she?
Her heartbeat stuttered, racing in a blind panic. She squinted upward. The ceiling — or what remained of it — gaped open to the moon. A perfect circle of pale light framed by black, broken beams. Around her, marble columns lay like corpses. Lanterns flickered and hissed in the rubble, most extinguished. One lay still burning near her feet, casting a low golden halo.
She shifted, and something warm slid between her legs.
She looked down.
A silk robe — cream-colored, unfamiliar, and torn — clung to her thighs. Beneath it, her skin was mottled with bruises. She parted the folds and saw blood. Thick. Viscous. Red and silver.
Her breath hitched. She tasted iron again, this time mixed with bile.
Where were her clothes?
Why couldn't she remember?
Her eyes fell to a shard of mirror near her hand. Not whole — a curve of glass no larger than her palm, jagged at the edges. She picked it up. In the flickering light, her reflection stared back at her: wide eyes, black hair tangled with blood, a gash across her cheekbone. Her lips were split. Her pupils dilated.
That wasn't her face.
That was someone else.
Or… a version of her that shouldn't exist.
She heard something then.
A soft sound — the shift of something heavy moving nearby. Behind the collapsed archway.
Not wind. Not stone.
Breath.
Someone… breathing.
Her body froze.
The breath wasn't hers.
It was too measured. Too steady.
It came in slow, cold pulses, like an animal tasting the air before the pounce.
Yue stiffened, her legs half-numb under her. Her hand, still wrapped around the broken shard of mirror, tightened until the glass cut deeper. Blood slid down her wrist—silent, thin. She didn't flinch. She couldn't afford to.
Beyond the archway, rubble shifted again.
A footstep.
Not the clumsy scuff of debris collapsing. This was careful. Deliberate.
A bare sole pressing on stone.
Yue's throat tightened. She scanned her surroundings in frantic silence. There — a broken lantern shaft, maybe brass or wood. Splintered, but still long enough to swing. She dragged herself toward it, barely breathing, grabbing it with her uncut hand.
Another step.
Closer.
The hairs on her arms lifted.
Whatever it was, it wasn't searching blindly. It knew exactly where she was.
Her eyes flicked toward the edge of a marble pillar, where light from the cracked ceiling caught faint movement — just a flicker. Something tall. Not animal. Not cloaked.
She dared a whisper:
"Who's there?"
No answer. Only a breath drawn in, sharp and soft, as if inhaling her voice.
Then—
A whisper.
Not in her ears. Inside her skull.
"Lian…"
She stumbled back, heart jackhammering.
"Lian…"
No one was there. But she felt it — in the air, in the floor, in her lungs. The sound coiled around her ribs like a ribbon of smoke.
She backed toward the nearest slab of fallen column, ducking behind it. Pressed her back against the cold stone. The mirror shard trembled in her grip. The robe clung wetly to her calves.
Glass cracked again. Not far now.
She felt it before she saw it — the shift in pressure, like someone taller than her standing just behind that corner. Watching. Waiting.
Yue's breath hitched.
She pressed the shard close to her chest like a talisman. The cut on her hand bled freely now, leaving slick red crescents on the mirror's edge.
The moonlight shifted.
For a split second, she saw him.
Only a glimpse —
A pale figure stepping through hanging silk like water, black hair loose around a sharp jaw, eyes glowing faintly gold. Not fully real. Not fully there.
And then he was gone.
Gone—
But the whisper lingered.
"You called me."
"You called me."
The voice vanished like breath in winter.
Yue lurched to her feet, staggering back across the glass-strewn floor. Her fingers curled around the broken lantern shaft, but her arms felt too thin, too weak—like bones filled with smoke.
Then it hit her.
A sudden spike of heat, stabbing from inside her lower belly. Her knees buckled.
She collapsed forward, her hands splaying in blood and dust.
A second wave crashed through her — not external, not a wound.
Something inside her twisted, like a thread pulled tight around fire.
"Wh—" she gasped, clutching her stomach. Her palm pressed just below her navel. It felt… too warm. Too wrong.
Then it pulsed.
A heartbeat. Not hers.
Her eyes blew wide. Her breath caught. The pain built like a storm, crawling up her spine and pooling at the base of her skull.
She turned to vomit.
Silver laced the blood that hit the stone.
Not natural. Not possible.
Shaking, she pulled the torn robe aside. Her abdomen—faintly curved, but not bloated—was streaked with thin cuts and smeared blood. Beneath the skin, she saw a glow.
Faint. Barely visible.
But there.
A soft, pulsing light, like moonlight trapped beneath flesh.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no—"
Her vision blurred. A memory slammed into her:
Hands on her hips, warm breath at her throat. A voice growling against her skin, low and reverent—
"You'll carry me. You'll remember nothing but me."
She recoiled. Her back hit the ruined pillar with a dry thud. The robe fell open as she pressed her hand against her stomach.
The glow pulsed again. Responsive. Alive.
You're pregnant.
You're pregnant with something not human.
Her fingers clawed at her own skin, as if she could dig it out. But even as panic surged, the heat in her womb turned protective—almost… comforting.
She stilled. Frozen in contradiction.
Behind her, the sound of footsteps returned. Closer. No longer hiding.
And the voice — the same voice, deeper now — said softly:
"It's begun."
"It's begun."
The words echoed too clearly in the stone chamber. Not shouted. Not spoken to her. Just… stated.
Yue turned her head slowly, limbs heavy as if the blood in her veins had thickened. She crawled backward, robe dragging through silver-streaked dust, until her shoulder struck a marble lion head — cracked, decapitated, half-buried in rubble.
She looked down.
And froze.
On the side of her neck, just above her collarbone, something glowed faintly in the reflection of the nearby flame. Not a bruise. Not dried blood.
A symbol.
She scraped at it with her fingers, panic and disbelief warring behind her eyes.
The skin was raised, etched deep. A crescent moon, encircling an unbroken circle — ancient in design, the edges burned black as if branded. The skin pulsed faintly with her heartbeat. No—with another's.
"Get it off," she whispered, her fingers clawing harder, drawing new blood.
She gritted her teeth, biting back a scream as she scratched deeper. The mark didn't fade. Didn't scab. It bled like a wound, but felt like a seal.
"You shouldn't touch that," said the voice again.
It came from above this time.
Yue's breath caught in her throat. She lifted her head, slowly, like prey forced to watch the descending claw.
There, in the breach of the ruined ceiling, framed by firelight and falling ash—
He stood.
Barefoot. Blood-stained. Eyes like burning gold. His skin was pale but sun-scarred, his black hair tangled at his shoulders. His robe was half-open across his chest, where silver veins pulsed like lightning just beneath the surface.
His presence was wrong. He didn't belong to the world she knew.
He didn't belong to anything human.
Her grip tightened on the broken lamp handle.
He stepped down onto the rubble, one foot after another, glass crunching beneath him like ice. His gaze never left her.
The mark on her neck burned hotter.
He tilted his head, slightly.
"Don't remember me?" he asked, as if amused.
Yue didn't answer. She just raised the broken shaft, holding it like a blade.
He stopped five steps away. Raised his hands—not in surrender, but in patience.
"I branded you because you called," he said softly. "Now I've come. That's the law."
"Get away from me," she croaked, throat raw. "I don't know who you are."
A flicker of something crossed his expression—hurt? amusement? hunger?
"No," he said. "You don't. But your body does."
Then he stepped forward again.
Yue lunged, swinging the lantern shaft.
It struck his temple with a solid crack—and snapped in half.
He didn't flinch.
He caught the broken end before it hit the ground, looking at her with something darker than anger.
"You've always been glass," he murmured. "Sharp. Fragile. Beautiful when shattered."
Yue staggered back, broken wood dropping from her hands.
He stood there, framed in dying firelight and hanging dust, as if he belonged to the ruin — or had caused it.
"Who are you?" she rasped. "What did you do to me?"
The man's golden eyes flicked to the blood on her hands. Then her neck. Then lower—
Not lewd. Not soft.
Claiming.
"I didn't do anything," he said. "You let me in."
"You're lying."
"You don't remember," he replied. "That's different."
Her jaw clenched.
The mark on her neck pulsed again. It hummed, like something with a heartbeat. And when he took a step closer, it burned like a fresh wound.
He looked down at the half-smashed lantern rod beside his feet, then back at her. His lips curled in the faintest smile.
"You never were very graceful."
"I'll scream."
"You already did."
She swallowed.
He wasn't teasing. Not really. His voice was calm, almost reverent. Like he was talking to a relic. Something precious, already broken and pieced back together.
Then he said her name.
Low.
Deliberate.
"Lian."
The sound of it made her knees wobble.
It wasn't how strangers said her name. It was how someone says it after whispering it into skin. After tasting it.
"You—" she choked, and hated the way her voice broke. "What are you?"
He studied her for a moment.
Not as prey. Not as lover.
As a thing he already owned.
"I'm the one you chose," he said. "When the moon bled. When the sky fell. When you cried and clawed and said—"
"Stop."
But he didn't.
He took one step closer. She backed away, nearly stumbling on the broken floor. Her body screamed to run, but her legs refused.
He didn't chase her.
He only said, "You carry my heir. I've come to claim you."
That broke the trance.
Yue turned and ran.
Past fallen columns. Over broken marble. Her bare feet cut, tore, bled. She didn't stop. The moon spun above, blurred and doubled through tears and panic.
Behind her, the beast-man did not follow.
Not in body.
But his voice came again. Quiet. Final.
"Run, little moon. But the mark stays.
The court will smell you by dawn."
Yue ran until the shadows blurred and her lungs turned to glass.
She didn't know where she was going — only that she had to put space between herself and that voice. That man. That thing with golden eyes who spoke like a memory and moved like a storm waiting for a scream.
The ruined palace around her was a maze of cracked marble and collapsed silk canopies, stone lions half-swallowed by ivy, shattered lanterns flickering with dying embers. Once a place of decadence. Now a tomb.
Her bare feet slipped across wet tile. She stumbled, caught herself on a rusted brazier, and kept running. Blood painted a trail behind her. Her pulse drummed against her ears. The brand on her neck throbbed with every step, like a chain she couldn't see.
Get it off. Tear it out. Wake up.
She ducked under a fallen beam, slipped through a broken mosaic window, and found herself in what might've once been a garden — though now it was a grave.
Twisted statues lay cracked in the dirt. Thorn vines climbed up dead trees. The moon above stretched pale across the sky, full and high, casting long shadows that warped with every movement.
Yue collapsed beside a dry fountain.
She pressed her hand to her stomach.
The warmth was still there. Alive. Pulsing.
Whatever grew inside her—whatever he had left in her—was not weak. It throbbed with strange certainty. A power her body didn't understand, but couldn't reject.
Her throat tightened.
A sob broke free. Not loud. Not weak. Just… torn.
"Why me?" she whispered, to the dust, the moon, the corpse of the sky.
No one answered.
But the mark on her neck warmed—almost gently.
And then everything tilted.
The stars spun. The moon shattered into four.
She tried to sit up, but her limbs gave out. Her breath caught.
The last thing Yue saw was the cracked moon above her…
fractured like a mirror,
like her mind,
like her skin.
Then the dark swallowed her whole.