The Tower of the Goddess

Moonlight lies thin over Luna's tower, silvering the grass and the black stone path.

Three travelers are sprawled at the gate, half-buried in dew, each wrapped in cold iron chains that drink at them like frost.

Luna draws near, and the shadows at the tower's base stretch wrong, pooling together as if something beneath them is waking.

A shape in the treeline shifts, tall and patient, then stills again as if waiting for Luna to choose the wrong mercy.

Luna snaps her fingers. Cold iron cracks like glass, and the chains fall apart in black pieces at the travelers’ feet.

In the same breath, she blinks them behind her. They reappear in a tight cluster at her back, out of the grass and out of reach.

The moonlight flickers across the gate stones, and a fine crack of blue-white heat runs through Luna’s fingertips before it fades.

Luna vanishes from the gate path and reappears at the treeline in a crack of blue-white heat.

Her hand clamps the hunter’s throat before the bow can swing aside, and their feet leave the ground at once.

The hunter’s hood tips back as Luna lifts them, dark sleeves twisting against her wrist.

Cold air shivers through the grass. The hunter goes still in Luna’s grip, then smiles through the strain.

Luna’s breath unfurls in a white-gold torrent. The hunter’s hood flashes, then empties into a burst of ash that the wind snatches apart.

The bow drops untouched into the grass. Around it, the treeline’s blue-white flicker gutters and fades, as if the spell feeding it has been cut.

Behind Luna, the travelers go silent. Their bindings are gone, their danger is gone, and the night suddenly feels much larger.

A glint remains where the hunter stood, a blackened coin half-buried in the ash, warm and faintly marked with a warding sigil.

Luna closes her hand around the ward-coin. Black residue flakes away between her fingers, then the sigil crumbles into dead dust that the wind cannot lift.

The First Traveler straightens, eyes fixed on Luna, while the Third Traveler backs toward the dark arch of her tower as if afraid to believe it is still there.

They start for the gate, cautious but no longer trapped, while the treeline stays still and unanswering.

The travelers reach the archway, but the count stays wrong. One footstep, then two, then a gap where a third should be.

The First Traveler stops short at the threshold, turning back with a startled look that searches the dark behind Luna.

The words hang between them. The tower door remains open, the treeline stays mute, and the missing traveler is nowhere in sight.

Luna lets the thought go and motions the two travelers through the open gate, her steps calm and careful. The empty space where the third should be stays like a wound in the count, but the tower welcomes the pair inside.

Their voices soften as they cross the threshold. Inside the gate, they draw close to one another, no longer split by the clearing.

They look to Luna now, waiting for an answer the treeline does not offer.

Luna leads them deeper inside, away from the threshold and into a narrow hall of sleeping rooms. The tower hushes around their footsteps, and the empty place in their company follows like a shadow.

Luna points them to two small chambers side by side. Edrin chooses one at once, while Sella pauses only long enough to claim the other.

The travelers slip into the rooms and begin settling in, hands easing from their tension as the doors take them in.

For the first time since the trap sprang, the tower holds them as occupants instead of prey. Then a faint scrape answers from farther down the hall, as if something else in the tower has noticed their arrival.