Story 1157: Ritual Under the Pale Moon

The moon rose pale and thin over the valley of Gallows Reach, casting no warmth, only silver suspicion. The villagers knew to stay indoors on such nights. The kind of moon that drew blood from stone and stirred memories better left buried.

In a crumbling chapel swallowed by ivy, a ritual was being prepared.

Not by priests, but by the Hollow Sisterhood—four women cloaked in tattered veils, their mouths stitched shut with crow-feathers and twine. They moved in silence, drawing sigils into the dirt with sharpened bone, surrounding the ancient altar that pulsed with a dim, sickly light.

Tonight, they would call down the Pale One.

Not a god. Not a demon. Something older.

Elsbeth Varrow was only seventeen, a foundling girl raised by the local midwife. She’d lived her life on the edge of fear and forest, always hearing stories of the Sisterhood, but never daring to believe them.

Until they came for her.