Prologue

The moon suspended heavily in the blue sky, its silvery reflection shimmering over the ancient stone altar in the middle of the sacred Moonveil forest. The air tensed with power, weighty with the scent of damp earth and jasmine. Shadows of tall iroko swayed as if whispering secrets long ignored. The Elders stood in silent circles, their hooded figures barely detectable in the strange glow of the lunar eclipse.

At the middle of the altar knelt a woman worn in a white cloak, her brown hair cascading over her trembling shoulders. Her piercing golden eyes, mixed with silver, held the fate of generations—eyes that premonited the veil of life, into the depths of fate itself. She was Jacqueline, the very first of her kind, chosen by the gods to hold the power of the Lunar Queen.

The humming sounds of what seemed to be the summoning of the Moon Goddess was the only thing that filled the already tensed air.

Jacqueline hands trembling at her flank. A fate she had never desired had come knocking at her door step. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she rested her eyes on the ground. "I never asked for this." She muttered.

"Fate isn't desired. It is a monument of its own placement." One of the Elders retorted.

A tremor passed through her as the event climbed to its climax. The shimmering moon, camouflaged in crimson, pulsed with an old force, beckoning to the call of the ritual. A gust of wind howled through the grove, carrying whispers—voices of her predecessors, voices of her premonited successors.

The Great Seer moved forward, his gnarled fingers raised to the heavens. "Jacqueline Rivera of the Silver Bloodline, do you accept the burden of the Luna Queen, the guardian of the preternatural world, the holder of fate?"

Jacqueline's breath caught in her throat for flick seconds. She had been chosen, but she had not been given a choice of decision. The power that runned through her veins was both divine and a gift. To oblige means to die to herself, to become an immortal, yet never truly a life of self decision.

"I accept," she whispered, her voice steady despite the storm raging deep inside of her.

A cold and unreadable smirk tugged at the lips of the Great Seer.

A bolt of silver light strode from the moon to the ancient stone, reflecting its beams at her chest with an eerie force. Jacqueline's body froze, her back arching as the magic wove itself through her spirit. Her bones as though in flames, her heart pounding violently against her rib cage with the celestial dance above. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the agony ceased.

Jacqueline gasped, her body sweaty and shaking. She felt it—the divine power, the wisdom, the undeniable truth that was no longer a mortal. She was a legend. A deity in flesh form.

The Great Seer's voice trembled with respect. "The Luna Queen has risen. All hail the Queen!"

The cacophonous sound that raised in the air showed their reverence and the consecrated power that she had just carried. "Hail. Hail. We hail the Great Lunar Queen of our world!"

Yet, as the voices of the gods faded, another whisper crawled through the darkness, a figure in dark cloak, carrying the environment of darkness as it looked like a shadow of itself, unbidden and filled with foreboding. "And what do you people think you are doing? You foolish and jobless old men." Tone laced in darkness.

"And don't you respect the presence of the Moon Goddess?" The Great Seer asked, pointing his staff towards the evil figure.

"Oh Spare me that or else I displace your head out of that filthy neck of yours!" It continued. "And you. You don't know the wrath you have brought on yourself. Your generation after you will pay for this." The dark figure's voice dripped blood as it closed the distance between it and Jacqueline. "But this is it. Since your so-called Moon Goddess has decided the fate of a long lasting war."

The light of the Luna Queen will burn bright, but dark shadows shall rise to turn it off. A time will arrive when her blood shall be given off once more, and in her return, the destiny of the preternatural world will be decided. The one who carries her essence shall move on a route of pain, love and war. She will rise, fall and awaken the wrath of those who dwell beyond.

The words slithered into Jacqueline's mind like creeping vines, tightening around her soul. A prophecy, forged in the hands of fate, unchangeable and absolute.

Far beyond the sacred grove, hidden in the abyss of time, a pair of unseen eyes will watch. A force older than the moon it

self stirring, waiting. Watching.

For the prophecy had been spoken, and fate had begun its course.