Chapter 7: Midnight Messengers
The manor had gone still.
Wind whispered through the forest beyond Caelora Manor's walls, brushing the towering pine trees with rustling silence. A velvet-blue night stretched over the sky, littered with scattered stars, while inside, the household rested in sleep.
Except for Luna.
She sat at the edge of her bed, the silvery moonlight pouring in through her window, spilling across the floor like a quiet tide. Her cane leaned against the bedside table, untouched. She no longer needed it, but it was part of the mask.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. Something fluttered at the balcony doors.
Luna rose silently and crossed the room. Her bare feet padded softly against the carpet as she drew the door open. A bird—a slender messenger falcon with a violet ribbon around its leg—perched atop the railing. It blinked once at her and extended its leg.
Her breath caught.
"Already...?"
With care, she unfastened the scroll and unrolled it. A brief message, written in a precise, feminine hand.
"Your request is ready, my lady. -V."
Luna pressed the paper to her lips, heart beating faster.
It had begun.
The first thread of truth, perhaps. A lead to Varric Thorne—the vanished apothecary who had once claimed to have a cure for her blindness. The very same man who, in the original story, had handed Serion the potion that would make Luna the perfect vessel for a devil.
Not this time.
She would find him. And she would learn the truth. Because if someone had manipulated Serion—if someone had preyed upon his desperation and used Luna as a tool—then she would tear them down, brick by brick.
Luna folded the message and slipped it into her nightstand, careful to hide it beneath the false drawer lining. She stood for a moment, hand resting on the wood, mind racing.
It was starting.
Across the manor, in the east wing, Serion Caelora sat alone in his study.
Candlelight flickered across papers strewn across the desk—ledgers, reports, and half-written letters. His cravat was loosened, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, and shadows etched deep into his face.
He hadn't slept. Not properly. Not since she'd asked to go out.
Since she'd smiled.
Gods, when was the last time Luna had smiled like that? It had struck him like a dagger—gentle, beautiful, painful.
He had failed her once.
He would not do so again.
A soft tapping came from the tall window.
He blinked.
A second falcon.
Serion stood, his boots silent against the carpeted floor, and approached. The bird bore no color, no insignia. But it had a scroll.
Cautiously, he took it.
The moment the scroll was in his hands, the falcon lifted its wings and vanished into the night, disappearing beyond the manor's silhouette.
Serion unfurled the parchment.
A short, cryptic message lay within:
"I have something you are looking for. Come to the Hollow Crossroads, three days from now."
He stared at it.
No name. No seal. No request for coin.
Just the Hollow Crossroads.
Three days.
His breath came shallow. His hands gripped the paper tighter. That place... it was a desolate stretch of land near the old ruins by the west wood, a place where no merchants or nobles ventured. A place avoided in whispered stories.
"What is this..." he murmured.
But he already knew.
The cure.
Something in him stirred—a cautious, wounded hope. It clawed up from the hollow place in his chest where guilt had lived for years. For too long, he'd tried to silence it.
The accident.
He remembered it with a vividness that never faded. The sound of the carriage breaking apart. The horses' screaming. His parents' blood on the road. Luna's cries.
His own voice, trembling and raw, as he pulled her small, shaking body from the wreckage.
She had screamed for him, clutched at him. And when her eyes failed to open, when she called his name again and again with that blind panic—
He had sworn, in that moment, he would find a way to fix it.
He was barely a man then. But he had taken the title of Marquis, raised her, kept her safe. And when someone offered a cure, he had believed them.
But the cure was always a lie.
Would it be real this time ?
Or someone is trying to manipulate him again?
Or...
Was this the answer?
Luna wanted to live. She had said it to him. She wanted to smile, to walk beyond the walls. To breathe air that didn't carry grief and regret.
He had seen her joy returning, like the first bloom of spring after a bitter winter.
And he would not let it fade again.
He folded the letter tightly and tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat.
Three days.
He would ride to the Hollow Crossroads alone.
He would meet whoever had sent this message.
If it was another trap, he would face it.
If it was hope, he would take it.
But above all else—
He would do it for her.
His little sister.
The only light left in his world.
Across the manor, Luna sat quietly by her window, her thoughts far from the stars.
She didn't know yet that her brother had received a message, too.
Didn't know the gears were shifting again.
But she could feel it.
Something in the air had changed. The night held its breath. A game of shadows was beginning.
And soon—
The devil's web would start to unravel.