Elena's body had barely hit the ground when the moons wept.
Not with rain, nor fire, nor falling stars.
But with silence.
A silence so heavy it cracked the clouds.
The battlefield stood frozen. Thousands watched, swords slack in hand, breaths held, as if the world itself had recoiled. Even the Moonless halted mid-strike. They tilted their heads, sniffing at the air like hounds confused by the absence of a scent they had always known.
She had been light. A compass. The last tether to something whole.
Now, she was gone.
Jonas stood motionless beside her, hands trembling. Blood soaked the dirt around her chest, black and silver in the eclipse-glow. Her eyes stared skyward, no longer seeing. Her lips still parted as if she had tried to say one last thing, but the breath had died before the sound.
His hands reached for her without thought, cradling her head, drawing her close. He whispered her name once.
Once.
That was all he could manage before the wind changed.
The Hollowbrand on his chest lit up in searing white. His entire body arched as the moonlight that once danced through him now howled. It didn't shine—it screamed.
And then… it broke.
A ring of force exploded outward from Jonas's chest, hurling Auron backward across the field like a ragdoll. The blast crushed the soil, cracked stone, and shattered the already fractured ruins around them. The sky trembled. Even the Gate flickered.
And the moons—
They bled.
Silver streaks dripped across their surfaces like ink in water. The light turned raw. Wild. The eclipse held its grip, but now the energy within it pulsed erratically, like something sacred had been wounded.
Jonas rose slowly.
He did not speak.
His eyes had changed.
Not color—depth.
As if he were no longer looking at the world, but through it.
The Moonless stepped back.
Elric watched, stunned, swords in hand but too afraid to move.
Elias dropped to one knee, not in reverence but by instinct. "He's changed," he whispered.
Auron pulled himself from the rubble, blood on his lip, confusion cracking through his composure for the first time. "What… have you done?"
Jonas did not answer.
He turned to face the gate. It was pulsing now. It recognized him. Not as a threat. But as kin.
Then came the voice.
It echoed from the Gate itself—low, ancient, and female. The same one Jonas had heard in the memory realm.
"Now you remember."
The sky deepened. Time slowed.
The battlefield vanished into a haze of light and shadow.
And Jonas was alone.
He stood in a vast, empty realm, no longer bound to space or sound. Across from him stood the woman again. The First Moon's Memory. Her face wore sadness now, not mystery.
"You grieve," she said.
"I loved her," Jonas said. His voice cracked.
"And love," she murmured, "is the most dangerous weapon of all."
He shook his head. "This wasn't the plan. I wasn't meant to become…"
He couldn't finish.
She stepped forward. "You haven't become anything. You've simply removed the veil."
"The Gate opened through me."
"Yes," she said. "Because it was always inside you."
He turned away. "Then I'm a curse."
"No." Her voice turned sharp. "You are the balance the Pact tried to avoid. The Gate was never meant to imprison monsters. It was meant to divide memory—to keep the truth and the lie from merging."
Jonas clenched his fists. "Why me?"
She touched his shoulder.
And in a flash, he saw himself—
At birth, marked by moonlight.
As a child, he howled at stars his father said didn't exist.
As a teenager, I felt pulses in stone that no one else noticed.
As a warrior, bearing pain that no blade caused.
"You were chosen by forgetting," she said. "Because you never stopped remembering."
The vision snapped.
He was back in the battlefield again.
And Elena was still dead.
The Moonless had begun to cry—not tears, but an eerie howl, rising in waves. It wasn't rage. It was grief. Somehow, they too mourned her. She had been one of the last to fight for the ancient balance—a voice they had once followed before they were broken.
Now, that voice was gone.
Jonas stepped over her body, drawing the Hollowbrand into full bloom. The air around him burned cold. The moon dimmed.
"I'm ending this," he said.
"To what end?" Auron shouted from across the chaos. "You'll kill them all? Become what they feared? A gatekeeper who seals the truth away forever?"
"No," Jonas said.
"I'll do worse."
He raised his hand.
And the Gate obeyed.
It shrank—not shut, but compressed—into a sphere of light and stone, floating in the air before him.
He turned to the Moonless. They watched him silently.
"I can give you peace," Jonas said, his voice steady. "But I cannot undo what made you."
They didn't move.
He opened his palm.
The sphere pulsed.
And the Moonless… knelt.
Every single one.
Even Auron faltered, staring in disbelief as the once-unruly shadows obeyed the one thing they'd once hunted.
Elric approached slowly. "Is this it? Is it over?"
Jonas didn't answer.
He walked to Auron.
The traitor prince looked up at him, kneeling but not defeated. "You're not the boy I left behind."
"No," Jonas said. "I'm not."
He raised his palm again.
Auron braced for the kill.
But instead, Jonas stepped back.
"Live with it," Jonas said. "Let the memory rot you."
He turned his back.
And that's when it happened.
The eclipse cracked.
The moons—all three—began to shift out of alignment.
And with them, something beneath the Gate stirred again.
Not Moonless.
Not beast.
Something older.
Jonas felt it before anyone else—a hum in his blood, a soundless vibration in his teeth, like the world was holding its breath.
Elias staggered back. "Jonas—"
"I know," he said. "I feel it."
From deep beneath the battlefield, the stone trembled.
Then shattered.
And rising from below was a column of bone, crowned in flame, draped in moonlight—and chained to it all, a c
reature larger than anything they had faced before.
It didn't belong to the Moonless.
It didn't answer to the moons.
It looked at Jonas—
And spoke.
"Gatekeeper. I have waited long enough."