The hissing sound is the only thing in the world. It's a sound of violent unmaking, the sound of a fundamental law of nature being rewritten. My hand is steady against the iron, a channel for a power I don't understand and cannot control. It pours from me, through me, an effortless, silent river of silver energy, and its target is the dead, rusted metal of the trap.
The rust doesn't just flake away; it un-makes itself, dissolving into nothingness. The solid iron transforms into a cascade of fine, black dust, like sand slipping through an hourglass where time moves impossibly fast. The entire mechanism, from the brutal serrated jaws to the thick spring, corrodes into powder and trickles away into the mud, leaving nothing behind but a dark, ugly stain on the earth. The process takes less than ten seconds. It feels as easy as breathing.
I pull my hand back, my palm tingling with a strange, residual warmth. My fingers are still glowing faintly, as if they've been dipped in moonlight. I stare at them, my mind a blank canvas of shock. What was that? I didn't push. I didn't concentrate. I simply… touched it.
Freed from its prison, the Moon-Fox scrambles back, its initial terror giving way to a wary, intelligent curiosity. It doesn't flee. It stands a few feet away, its head cocked, its sapphire eyes fixed on me. It looks from my glowing hand to my face, then down at its own leg. The limb is mangled and bloody, but it is free. A low, soft chuffing sound escapes its throat—not a snarl, but a sound of acknowledgment.
Slowly, cautiously, it takes a step towards me. And another. My heart is a frantic hammer against my ribs, but I force myself to remain still, to kneel in the mud and make myself small. This creature is made of myth and magic, and I am... I don't know what I am.
The Moon-Fox closes the distance until it is right in front of me. Its magnificent, star-dusted fur seems to shimmer with a light of its own. It lowers its head and gently, with a reverence that seems impossible for a wild animal, nudges its soft nose against my outstretched, tingling hand. It's a gesture of profound, undeniable gratitude. It holds the touch for a heartbeat, its sapphire eyes meeting mine, and in their depths, I don't see an animal. I see an ancient, knowing intelligence.
Then, as silently as it appeared, it turns and vanishes. It doesn't run; it seems to melt into the light and shadows of the forest, leaving me alone in the clearing, my heart pounding with a mixture of awe and bewilderment.
My gaze falls to the ground where the magnificent creature stood. Lying in the mud, pulsing with the same soft, silver light as my hand, is a single, perfect petal. It's not from any flower I recognize. It seems to be woven from solidified moonlight, translucent and cool to the touch. The gift the Moon-Fox left behind.
My hand reaches for it automatically. The moment my fingertips brush its smooth, cool surface, the world turns inside out.
It is not a voice that speaks. It is not a vision that plays before my eyes. It is… knowledge. Raw and unfiltered, poured directly into my soul. It bypasses my mind entirely, a flood of pure, instinctual understanding that my conscious brain can only struggle to comprehend.
It is the scent of crushed silver-leaf and night-blooming herbs, the sharp tang of salt and tides.
It is the feeling of the earth's energy thrumming beneath my feet, a deep, slow pulse that I can now feel as clearly as my own heartbeat.
It is a sudden, absolute understanding of the tides, not as a force that moves the ocean, but as the very breath of the Moon, a rhythmic pull I can now feel in my own blood.
Flashes of imagery, fragmented and ancient, course through me: women with silver hair drawing down the moon into their hands; symbols being carved into stone with glowing fingers; the deep, cellular knowledge of cycles, of endings and beginnings, of a power not of fang and claw, but of will and water and starlight.
And with that flood comes the central, earth-shattering truth. The answer to the question that has haunted me my entire life.
Why am I wolfless?
The truth is so simple, so immense, that I almost laugh. I am not empty. I was never a void. I am full. I have always been full. So full of this other, older power that there was never any room for a wolf's spirit to take root. My blood doesn't yearn for the hunt; it yearns for the high tide. My soul doesn't howl; it sings to the moon.
The blood that runs through my veins is not the blood of a failed shifter. It is the blood of a lunar witch.
A flaw, Damien's voice echoes in my memory. A genetic dead end.
The irony is a sharp, bitter taste in my mouth. He, in his arrogance and his terror of weakness, saw a vacuum. He couldn't comprehend that he was staring at a power so far beyond his own understanding that his senses could only register it as an absence of what he knew. He was a man staring at the midnight sky, complaining about the lack of sunlight, blind to the power of the stars. He wasn't just wrong. He was a fool.
The strength that flows into me with this realization is more profound than any physical healing. It's a healing of the soul. The gaping wound of his rejection, the source of all my pain and shame, suddenly feels… small. It's no longer the defining event of my life. It was just a misdiagnosis from an ignorant doctor. My condition was never a sickness.
I get to my feet, my movements no longer shaky. A new purpose, cold and clear and terrifying, begins to crystallize within me. I need to see. I need to confirm it for myself.
I stumble through the clearing, my eyes scanning the ground until I find what I'm looking for—a small pool of clear rainwater that has gathered in the hollow of a large, moss-covered rock. It is a makeshift mirror, reflecting the grey sky and the canopy of leaves above.
My heart pounds as I lean over it. I brace myself for the sight of the broken, half-starved, mud-streaked girl I know I am. And she is there, her hair a tangled mess, her dress in tatters, her face smudged with dirt.
But there is something else. My eyes are different. There is a light in them, a faint, silvery depth that was never there before. And my scar…
I stare at the reflection of the mark he left me. For the first time, I see it not as a brand of his rejection, but as a conduit. The jagged lines, once an angry red and then a pale white, now hold a faint, ethereal silver glow. The moonlight from the storm didn't just heal the wound; it awakened it. It awakened me.
He marked me as worthless... but the Moon marked me for Her own.