The palace corridors felt different now—
too quiet,
too watchful,
as if every stone remembered something I shouldn't yet know.
I walked quickly, letting my footsteps echo as loudly as they wanted.
Anyone watching me would think I was simply restless.
But the truth was far sharper:
Something had followed me back from death.
I felt it behind me like cold breath on my neck—
not close enough to see,
but too real to ignore.
The moment I stepped out into the courtyard, the sunlight hit my face and warmth flooded my skin. For a second, I stopped and closed my eyes.
Alive.
Alive in a world that had already buried me once.
I didn't have time to enjoy it.
I headed straight toward the stables. If I waited for Father to "send someone later," I'd lose the trail. And the ruins in the western forest did not forgive hesitation. Not in my first life.
Not now.
The stable boy, Micah, looked up from brushing a mare. "Lady Aura? You're riding alone?"
I smiled the soft, harmless smile everyone expected. "I'll only be gone a short while."
He hesitated—because he was trained to.
Because a future princess should not ride alone into a forest of old legends.
But there was something else in his eyes too:
fear.
"Be careful," he murmured. "Some of the guards said the trees were whispering last night."
My pulse jumped.
"Whispering?" I said lightly. "Trees do that."
"No, my lady." He swallowed. "Not like wind. Like… voices."
Exactly what I'd feared.
Exactly what had happened the night before the blood moon rose in my old life.
I mounted my horse in one smooth motion and urged her forward.
The moment the palace walls vanished behind me, the air shifted—
colder, sharper, tasting faintly of iron.
The forest was waiting.
The western woods were older than the kingdom itself.
Dark roots curled like sleeping serpents across the path, and branches entwined overhead, letting through only fractured sunlight. The wind was unnaturally still.
Nothing moved.
Not a bird.
Not a leaf.
Nothing alive.
My horse snorted uneasily.
"It's alright," I whispered, though my own heart beat too fast. "I'm not afraid."
A lie.
But a useful one.
As I guided her deeper, memories clawed up my spine.
The first time I visited the forest in my old life was after Father died. I had followed a dream—a moonlit voice calling me to the ruins hidden beyond the old riverbed. I had stood before the ancient stone archway, trembling, hearing whispers that sounded like broken singing.
I hadn't understood then.
Now I did.
The ruins didn't simply hold magic.
They remembered it.
And they remembered me.
The trees grew denser.
The light dimmed.
My breath formed pale clouds despite it being morning.
Then the whispers began.
Soft at first—
like fabric brushing stone,
like footsteps on moss,
like someone breathing just behind me.
My blood froze.
Not again.
Not here.
I tightened my grip on the reins and forced myself to listen.
The sound grew clearer, weaving through the trees like a thread pulling me forward.
A voice.
Low.
Ancient.
Calling—
"Child of the moon…"
My horse reared violently.
I barely held on before she bolted backward, eyes wild, nostrils flaring. I jumped off before she could throw me and let her gallop back down the path toward the palace.
I stood alone in the silence.
The voice whispered again—
closer this time.
"Return…"
Return?
I had returned.
I had been dragged through death into this younger body because the moon had chosen me.
But what did it want now?
"What are you?" I whispered to the trees.
The wind didn't answer.
The shadows did.
They shifted near the old riverbed—
darkness bending where no darkness should be,
rippling like ink in water.
I stepped toward it, heart hammering.
The closer I came, the deeper the shadows grew, pooling unnaturally around the base of a near-dead tree. The whispering thickened, turning into something almost like a language.
A language I felt in my bones.
Then—
a figure stepped out of the shadow.
I froze.
He was tall, dressed entirely in black, with a hood that hid most of his face. His presence was wrong—
not human,
not animal,
not anything I had ever encountered in my first life.
The shadows clung to him like fog.
My voice barely left my throat. "Who are you?"
He lifted his head slightly.
I glimpsed eyes—
not brown,
not silver,
but dark, glowing faintly violet like deepest twilight.
"You came back," he whispered, his voice echoing as if layered with another voice beneath it.
Cold shot down my spine.
"You… know me?" I managed.
"I knew your death."
The words struck me like a physical blow.
"I knew the moment your blood touched the floor," he continued, stepping closer with unnatural grace. "I knew the moment the moon tore open the sky to pull you back."
My breath caught painfully.
"You were not meant to die that night," he said. "But fate was rewritten by hands that were not mortal."
My sister.
Prince Kael.
The council.
Pieces twisted into place in my mind like jagged metal.
But before I could speak, he lifted a hand very slightly.
The forest reacted—
branches trembling,
roots shifting,
air thickening.
"You walk in a body that remembers nothing of its future," he murmured. "But the magic in you remembers everything."
Magic.
Me?
I stumbled back a step.
"I'm not—"
He cut me off, voice low and soft as winter ash.
"You are moon-born, Aura. You always have been."
My pulse roared in my ears.
He knew my name.
He knew my death.
He knew my rebirth.
And now he was telling me something even I had never understood.
Moon-born.
"What do you want?" I whispered.
His head tilted slightly, as if studying the shape of my fear.
"To warn you," he said. "They will try to kill you again."
The air left my lungs.
"Your sister does not act alone. The man you once loved will betray you a second time. And the palace… hides more enemies than your memory can count."
My throat tightened.
I knew this.
I had lived this.
I had died from this.
But hearing it in another voice—
a stranger's voice—
made the truth unbearable.
He took one more step toward me.
The shadows wrapped around his ankles like loyal beasts.
"You have been given a second life," he said softly. "But second chances are not gifts. They are traps if you walk them blindly."
"Then tell me what to do," I whispered, hating the tremor in my voice.
His lips curved faintly—
not a smile,
not quite,
but something like recognition.
"You will learn," he said. "When the blood moon rises again, you will choose whom you destroy… and whom you save."
A harsh wind raced between us, whipping my hair around my face.
When I blinked—
He was gone.
The shadows drained back into the forest floor, leaving only silence.
I stood alone in the cold forest, breathing hard.
Moon-born.
Destined.
Hunted.
And now—
watched.
But one thing was clear:
If the first life was stolen from me,
this second life would be mine to shape.
And this time,
I would not wait to be betrayed.
I would strike first.
I turned back toward the palace, the last whisper of that shadow-man echoing in my mind.
"When the blood moon rises again…
he will choose a side.
And so will you."
He?
Kael?
Father?
A stranger?
Or… him?
Whoever he was,
he knew me.
And I had a feeling
he would not be the last secret the moon returned to me.