Twelve Moons

Death did not taste like blood; it tasted of decay from within.

Ixara knelt at the edge of the Oakhaven stream, her fingers sinking into water that had once been clear as glass, now turned murky gray like the ash left behind after a wildfire. She cupped a handful of water in her palm. A thick, fishy film clung to her skin, devoid of the cool, vital essence that had sustained the Ahtelan tribe for hundreds of generations. All around her, the canopies of ancient, thousand-year-old Sylvan trees—giant behemoths that had once stretched lush as far as the eye could see—were shedding showers of brittle, withered leaves that crumbled into dust before even hitting the ground.

Corvane Island was dying. Not by the day, but by the hour.

Only three dawns had passed since the Night of the Blood Moon—the night the Aurelith meteorite, the "Heart of the Great Forest," was stolen from its sacred stone dais atop the northern peak. Without the silent yet powerful pulse of the relic, the island’s lifeblood had been severed. Black roots shriveled, birds plummeted from the sky in flocks like stones stripped of life, and the salty sea breeze now hung heavy with the stench of rotting kelp washed ashore.

"Look at this, Great High Priestess!"

A voice roared from behind, shattering the rustle of falling leaves. Ixara stood up and slowly turned around. Daro was striding toward her, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were stark white. The warrior paint across his chest was cracked with sweat and grime. Behind him, dozens of Ahtelan villagers gathered, their eyes burning with fear, panic, and—most bitter of all—accusation.

"Mother Earth is rotting beneath our feet," Daro barked, pointing his bronze-tipped spear straight at her chest, the spearhead trembling with fury. "The sacred glades have turned into toxic swamps. The natural springs have dried up. And you—the one blessed by the gods with eyes that see through the mists of time—where were you when the thief stepped onto the dais?"

"Daro," Ixara kept her voice even, though her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "I was at the dais that night. I inhaled the ashbloom smoke until my lungs tore with pain."

"And what did you see?" An elder of the Council stepped forward, his wooden staff thumping hard against the cracked earth. "You saw foolish pipe dreams of gentle rains and sweet winds! You didn't see the masked intruder! You didn't see the monster ship with black sails anchoring off our shore! You were completely blind on the very night your tribe needed your eyes the most!"

The accusation crashed down like heavy slabs of stone. Ixara closed her eyes, trying to keep the surging tide of guilt from consuming her. They were right. That night, shrouded in thick ashbloom smoke under the blood moon, she had seen only a gray void and two hazy, fragmented visions: a child laughing amidst consuming flames, and the towering silhouette of a man in a black coat standing on a ship's deck. She had thought it was a distant omen, a metaphor for things far down the line. She had never imagined that the man in black had already slipped through the forest, stepped onto the sacred stone steps, and stolen the tribe's very life force right under her nose.

"Your carelessness handed the Heart to the devil," Daro stepped closer, the tip of his spear inches from her throat. "The Council has the right to strip you of your sacred feather cloak, Ixara. A High Priestess who cannot foresee ruin is a High Priestess unfit to serve."

"Enough!"

A low, frail, yet commanding voice echoed from a distance. The crowd parted automatically, clearing a path for Oma Teyra. The tribal matriarch leaned heavily on a gnarled root staff, her gait uneven. The deep lines on her face resembled fissures in a dry riverbed, yet her milky, clouded eyes were sharp as a hawk's.

"Anger will not make the streams run clear again, Daro," Oma Teyra said evenly, coming to a halt beside Ixara. "And blaming this girl will not bring the Aurelith back."

"But Matriarch!" Daro gritted his teeth. "How much longer can the island hold out? The crops are already dead!"

"Twelve moons," Ixara spoke up, her voice firm now, cutting through the chaotic murmurs of the crowd. She looked Daro square in the eye. "Oma Teyra delivered the prophecy last night. We have only twelve moons before this island turns entirely into a desolate rock, and the last breath of the Ahtelan people fades forever."

A restless stir swept through the crowd. Choked sobs broke out among the women. Twelve moons—a single year. A cruelly brief window of time to witness the collapse of an entire civilization.

"If you know the deadline," Daro rasped, his eyes flashing with skepticism, "then do you plan on kneeling here waiting to die, or waiting for the gods to show mercy?"

"I will not wait," Ixara tightened her grip on the hem of her purple-feathered cloak. "I will descend into the Ancestral Cavern. I will take the strongest dose of ashbloom, crossing the threshold of life and death to demand a complete prophecy."

Oma Teyra turned to look at her, her silver eyebrows knitting together. "Ixara... you know the cost. Concentrated smoke in the depths of the stone cavern can burn out your mind. You may never wake up."

"If our tribe dies, what good is keeping my mind?" Ixara replied, her gaze locking onto the Matriarch. "Give me one final chance to set things right. Before the sun sets today, if I do not bring back a way out... the Council may strip me of my title and banish me to the barren reefs."

Oma Teyra studied her for a long moment, then slowly nodded. "Go, daughter of smoke and dreams. But remember this: the truth is sometimes far more ruthless than death."

The Ancestral Cavern lay deep beneath the heart of the mother mountain, where the oldest roots of the Sylvan trees burrowed into the earth. The air within was chilly and damp, heavy with the reek of desiccated decay—a sign that the blighting decay had reached the tribe's most sacred realm.

Ixara knelt before the ancient stone altar dish. From her cloth pouch, she pulled out a handful of dried, dark purple ashbloom leaves. The herb served as a bridge linking the High Priestess’s mind to the flow of time, but it was also a potent toxin. In excess, the smoke would scorch the veins, turning whoever inhaled it into a raving lunatic or a lifeless husk.

Without a moment's hesitation, she dropped the entire handful of leaves onto the glowing brazier coals.

A dense cloud of purple smoke—carrying a sickly sweet scent of overripe fruit mixed with the sharp, metallic tang of iron—billowed up, swiftly swallowing the cramped chamber. Ixara bowed her head and took a deep breath.

Searing pain.

Her lungs felt ablaze. White heat surged straight into her brain, shattering every earthly sense. The stone chamber vanished. The sound of dripping water faded away. Ixara felt ripped from her physical form, hurled into an endless void filled with jagged streaks of light and whispering voices in an ancient tongue.

This time, she did not seek passively. She forced the stream of time to reveal itself. She called upon the name of Aurelith.

And the space exploded.

A violent vision billowed before her eyes like a roaring sea storm:

She saw the deep-green meteorite—the Heart of the Great Forest—resting inside an ornate glass cage, surrounded by cold, gray stone walls and men clad in the strange attire of the outside world. The relic's energy was being drained away, bleeding out in faint, sluggish ribbons of light.

An invisible voice, ancient and heavy as rocks grinding on the ocean floor, echoed in her mind, bearing the full prophecy that the blood moon had withheld:

"The leader of the voyage bears a heart of iron and eyes of blackest night. Should the Heart of the Great Forest remain away from the breast of Mother Corvane for more than one full year, the sacred roots shall rot, the blood shall dry, and the Ahtelan tribe shall be wiped from the face of the earth forever. The path of survival lies not in the blade, nor in sorcery. Only blood and flesh bridging two worlds can mend the rift of fate. A half-blood child—born of the island's Priestess and the voyage's commander—shall be the key. It will save everything, or reduce both worlds to ash."

The next image slammed into Ixara's mind, taking her breath away:

She saw herself, hair wild and unbound, lying on the deck of a ship pitching wildly in a storm. And looming over her was a European man—his broad shoulders blocking out the moon, his angular face sharply carved as if from granite, his gray eyes cold as ocean mist. He no longer wore a mask. She saw every line of his features clearly: pride, ruthless rationality, and a deep, buried melancholy behind that icy facade.

He was the thief who had stolen the Aurelith. The man who had carried the Heart of the Great Forest away.

And then, the smoke churned. The vision shifted.

She saw a child with heterochromatic eyes—one gray like London fog, the other deep green like the waters of Corvane. The child let out a cry, and the vibrations of that wail shook both tall stone buildings and the sacred mountain of the Ahtelan.

A child.

Ixara snapped back to consciousness. She jolted upright, coughing violently, her chest heaving as cold air rushed into her lungs. She collapsed onto the stone floor, drenched in sweat that glued strands of black hair to her neck and forehead.

The prophecy was clear. Cruelly, brutally clear.

The Aurelith had to return to Corvane within a year—twelve moons. But she could not single-handedly reclaim it from foreigners armed with warships and firearms. The only way to retrieve the relic, the only way to save her people, was to bear that child.

The half-blood child born of her and the man who had stolen the Heart.

A union of blood. A single life binding the fates of two worlds.

Ixara looked down at her trembling hands. She was the High Priestess. She had sworn to keep her body pure for the gods. Yet now, the gods demanded a sacrifice far more terrifying than death: to offer her body, her blood, and her heart to the very enemy who had plunged her homeland into ruin.

When Ixara emerged from the Ancestral Cavern, the sun was sinking beneath a gray horizon, bleeding crimson across the western sea of clouds like an open wound.

Oma Teyra and Daro were waiting at the entrance.

"You're still alive," Daro sneered, though he couldn't hide the raw anxiety in his eyes. "So, what did you see? Did the gods show you where the Heart is hidden so we can set sail and take it back?"

"We cannot take it back through war, Daro," Ixara brushed past him, stopping before Oma Teyra. Her voice was raspy, yet cold as ice. "That ship is heading north, toward the land of the white men. If Ahtelan warriors set foot on their soil, we will be buried by gunfire before we ever lay eyes on the Aurelith."

"So you're telling us to sit by and watch the island die?" Daro snapped, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around. "You are the High Priestess! You have to give us an answer!"

Ixara looked straight into Daro's eyes, firmly brushing his hand off her shoulder.

"I have an answer. The prophecy has shown me the path."

She drew a deep breath and turned to Oma Teyra. The Matriarch stood in silence, her clouded eyes looking as if she had already sensed the darkest of truths.

"Only a child of two bloodlines can reconnect the power of the Aurelith and save this island," Ixara said, each word falling heavy as iron nails driven into wood. "I must leave Corvane. I must board that ship and find their commander—the man who wore the mask on the night of the blood moon."

Daro froze. It took him several seconds to process what he had just heard. "You... what are you saying? You want to hunt down the thief? For what?"

"To give him a child," Ixara replied without a single second of hesitation. "A child born of him and me."

"WHAT?!"

Daro roared, his face contorting with shock and disgust. He drew the ivory dagger from his hip, brandishing it wildly in her face. "You've lost your mind! You want to surrender the body of our sacred High Priestess to a heathendom outsider? A thief who murdered our motherland? It’s an abomination! It’s the ultimate betrayal!"

"It is the only way to save all of you!" Ixara barked back, striding directly toward the point of Daro’s blade, forcing him to take a startled step backward. "You can drive that dagger straight through my heart right now, Daro. But tomorrow, the streams will run completely dry. Next month, the roots will rot. And in three months, the Ahtelan will be nothing more than bleached bones rotting on this rock! Do you want to protect my 'purity,' or do you want this tribe to live?"

"I will reclaim the Aurelith myself!" Daro slammed a fist against his chest. "Me and the warriors! We will build ships, and we will tear that man in black limb from limb!"

"You don't even know where he's taking the Heart across the endless ocean!" Ixara yelled. "But I do! The smoke guided me! He is the key, and the child I bear will be the only lock that safeguards Corvane's survival!"

Daro breathed heavily, his bloodshot eyes staring at Ixara as if she were a complete stranger. He turned to Oma Teyra, his voice shaking with desperation: "Matriarch! Say something! Tell her this is blasphemy! Forbid her!"

Oma Teyra remained standing there, her wooden staff planted firmly into the ground. She looked out toward the crashing waves against the distant cliffs, then turned her gaze back to Ixara. There was no surprise in her eyes—only a sorrow as deep as the ocean floor.

"The smoke never lies to the High Priestess," she said softly, her voice weary. "If that is the price the gods demand to keep the Ahtelan alive... then our flesh and blood belong to this island."

"Matriarch!" Daro gasped, stunned. "You're letting her..."

"My silence is my consent, Daro," Oma Teyra cut him off. "Unless you have another way to make this island bloom come next summer?"

Daro gripped the hilt of his dagger so hard his knuckles trembled violently. He looked at Oma Teyra, then at Ixara. Finally, he spat onto the ground and shoved the dagger back into his belt with a snarl.

"If you step foot onto the enemy's ship," Daro whispered, his eyes filled with bitter agony, "then as far as I'm concerned, the High Priestess of Corvane died today. You are nothing more than a traitor who sold herself to the devil."

He turned on his heel and strode briskly into the shadows of the forest, leaving the two women standing alone on the hilltop.

Ixara watched the back of the warrior she had grown up with, her heart aching acutely. But she did not cry. She had no tears left to waste.

"Are you certain of this path, Ixara?" Oma Teyra drew near, her withered hand resting gently against Ixara's cheek. "Twelve moons. You must travel to that foreign land, track down the man, make him take you in, conceive, bear his child, and bring the Heart back... all before the clock runs out. You will live in the heart of enemy territory, hide your true identity, and face a man with a heart of iron."

"I know, Oma," Ixara replied, her gaze fixing upon the pitch-black ocean where the stranger's black-sailed ship anchored off the strait, waiting for the wind to set sail come morning.

"He thinks he stole our greatest treasure," Ixara clenched her fists, feeling the chill of the night sea air caress her skin. "He thinks he is the hunter and we are merely unsuspecting prey."

She turned to look at the sacred mountain one last time, engraving into memory every cliff and every withered canopy. Then she unclasped the purple-feathered cloak of the High Priestess, leaving herself in only the simple linen slip of an ordinary woman.

"He used cunning to steal the Heart of Corvane. So I will use my very body, flesh, and soul as the key to reclaim it all. He holds the Aurelith... but I will hold him."