Chapter 8: The Child Who Watched

Chapter 8: The Child Who Watched

The Black Moon's whisper still coiled in Lux's bones when the Codex screamed.

A divine pressure crushed down like collapsing heavens. His fingers—so small, too soft for any of this—trembled around his mother's cooling wrist. The silver crescent earrings pulsed faintly, like dying stars choking on their last light.

He didn't understand what had gone wrong.

She was just supposed to be sick. Not…dead.

Then the Codex spoke—not in its usual lifeless text, but with a voice like glaciers splitting apart beneath ancient oceans.

"You have two paths to choose from."

His head swam.

What?

He could absorb the divinity—become something more. A godling. Moonlight coursing through his veins. Power enough to crush the a world.

But his soul… gone.The goddess would possess him.

She would wear him like a skin.

Or—he could choose the Codex to absorb the divinity to repair itself.

No glory. No fireworks.

Just a sliver of time… and secrets.

Lux's golden eyes flickered to his mother's corpse.

Why would a Sun Elf's divine fragment have divinity of the moon?

The Codex hissed like a snake caught in chains.

"The God-King made the Sun Elves, but—"

It choked, bound by some divine restriction.

"Choose. Now."

The footsteps outside grew louder. Closer. Cruel.

His fist closed around the truth.

The crescents shattered.

Moonlight surged into his hands, scalding and cold all at once. His heart convulsed. Time buckled.

And the world split open.

He was outside of himself—hovering just ahead of reality. A vision flashed.

His father's gauntlet—swinging toward his face.

A guard mishandling his mother's body, dagger slipping.

The tilt—yes, just enough to turn the blow into a graze, not a break.

It lasted less than two seconds.

But it was everything.

The vision vanished just as the door exploded inward.

Lord Dainar Obsidian entered the room like he owned the air.

He didn't look at the body. Didn't even blink. His eyes slid across the room and landed on Lux with disdain so sharp it could cut stone.

"Remove this body," he said, flicking blood off his boots like it was dust.

Lux clutched at his mother's sleeve.

He had to say something.

"P-Please," he whispered, forcing his voice to shake like a child's. "Burn her body so she can die with honor as a Sun elf."

Please… let her be whole in the next life.

Dainar didn't answer with words. Just a kick.

Pain erupted in Lux's chest. His ribs bent inward like snapped branches. He slid across the stone floor, jaw clenched, breathing shallow.

"Who taught this rat to speak?" Dainar spat. Then he smirked.

"Feed the corpse to the hawks."

A scream boiled in Lux's throat—but he swallowed it.

His eyes blazed.

Just one dagger. Just one chance.

Strike the jugular. Twist. Watch him drown in his own blood—

NO.

He crushed the thought.

Not. Yet.He knew he was far too weak.

The aviary smelled of metal and rot.

Lux stood still, even as the wolves with wings—giant hawks bred for war—descended on his mother's corpse.

He wanted to cry. He didn't. Couldn't.

He made himself watch.

First, they took her eyes. Ripped them from her skull. They'd been open. Still looking at him.

Next, they cracked her ribs like twigs, blood soaking into the straw beneath. Her organs spilled out like warm stew.

Last, they fought over her fingers. One bird snapped the whole hand into its beak and swallowed.

A guard gagged behind him.

Another laughed.

Lux didn't blink.

He committed their faces to memory.

One day, he promised silently, you'll scream for her like I couldn't.

Inside, something shifted.

His skin prickled. Bones hardened beneath bruised flesh. His pupils stretched thin, cat-like in the low light. Even his hair shimmered—just for a moment—brighter than before.

He turned and walked away.

Slow.

Calm.

Corpse-quiet.

Behind him, a femur snapped like a twig. He didn't flinch.

Even though he was only three years old.

They made him a slave.

Each day began before the sun rose. His hands, raw and bloody, scrubbed chamber pots filled with acid-rich waste. By morning meal, he was making food in the kitchen.

At noon, he cleaned the whipping posts. Blood soaked the wood. He studied it.

He learned how different people bled. How fast. How deep.

At dusk, he became a plaything.

Dainar's children kicked, punched, and stabbed him like it was sport.

They broke him again and again.

He healed by morning.

There were games.

The Salt Room. They threw him inside after floggings, let the brine do the rest. He screamed the first three times. After that, he bit his tongue and stared at the walls.

The Hawk Game. They tossed meat and made him fight the warbirds for it.

He bled.

He won.

He stole three feathers sharp enough to slit a man's throat.

The Mirror Test. They forced him to stare into his own eyes until madness crept in. Gold shimmered back at him—inhuman and wrong.

He practiced his future sight through the madness.

Time became a tool. A shield. A dagger.

The Codex said nothing for two years.

But it worked in silence.

Lux's skin dulled to a pale gold, hidden beneath layers of grime. His eyes stopped glowing unless he willed it. His nerves adapted. He became numb to pain.

He didn't feel pain anymore.

He registered it.

On the eve of his fifth birthday, the Codex spoke again.

"The five crescents are anchors," it whispered. "Each child who wears them is a vessel for her to possess. The Moonlit Dawn Goddess is reclaiming herself, piece by piece."

A vision burned through his skull:

Five children—spread across the Eternal Empire. Each with silver earrings.

A moonlit altar. Blood, ritual, screams.

Lux wanted to asked more questions but the Codex stopped answering him.

Footsteps outside. Heavy. Familiar.

He forced the glow from his eyes. Dimmed them to muddy brown.

The door opened.

Dainar's son, a boy twice his size grinned down at him like a beast smelling blood.

"Father says you'll be tested tomorrow," George said laughing. His boot slammed into Lux's stomach.

"Pray they don't find you Ashborn, rat."

Lux curled around the pain.

When the heir left, Lux wiped blood from his lips with the back of his hand.

The Codex pulsed in time with his heart.

Survive the Baptism.

Kill them all