The first thing I learned about silence was that it could scream.
It lived in the cracks of their house, between slammed doors, broken plates, and her mother's breath held too long. Silence came after the shouting, after the fists met walls… or skin. It sat heavy on my chest, teaching me young that some words were safer swallowed.
Her father was not born cruel. He was carved into it.
A man hollowed out by things he never spoke of, by bottles emptied faster than promises, by rage that needed a body to land on. Some nights, his anger chose her mother. Other nights, it chose the walls. Always, it chose the house.
I learned to count bruises by color. Purple meant fresh. Yellow meant fading. Neither meant forgiveness.
The night everything broke, there was no shouting.
That was what terrified me most.
I woke to my mother's sobs, raw, animal sounds that tore through the dark. Blood stained the sheets. The air smelled like iron and fear. A life that had not yet learned to breathe slipped away before dawn.
The miscarriage didn't just take a child.
It took her mother.
After that, her mother moved like a ghost, eyes dull, hands trembling, love leaking out of her in quiet pieces. And her father, he blamed the world. Then her mother. Then me.
The final betrayal came weeks later.
I had come home early, school bag still slung over her shoulder, the house too quiet. I followed the sound of laughter down the hallway, confusion knotting in her chest.
And found her best friend in her father's bed.
The world tilted.
Trust shattered louder than any slap.
That was the day they left.
They packed their lives into suitcases and silence and walked away from the wreckage. Her father didn't chase them. He didn't apologize. He just watched, eyes empty, as if they were another thing already lost.
I thought that was the end of it.
I was wrong.
Her mother remarried a year later.
The man was… different.
Too calm. Too observant. His smiles never reached his eyes, and when he looked at her, it felt like he was measuring something invisible. Still, he never raised his voice. Never raised a hand. For the first time in years, the house felt stable.
They moved into a new home. New walls. New rules. New lies they told themselves about being normal.
I tried to believe it.
Until the morning sunlight betrayed her.
I was tying my shoelaces when the light hit my wrist just right. A faint glow shimmered beneath my skin, silver-blue, like moonlight trapped in flesh.
My stepfather froze.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
Slowly, he reached for my wrist. His fingers trembled.
"No," he whispered. "It can't be."
The symbol pulsed once, alive.
My heart slammed against her ribs. "What is that?" I asked, voice shaking.
He released her as if burned.
The room felt colder. Older.
"You were never meant to be found," he said quietly.
That was the moment my life stopped pretending.
They didn't explain much.
Only that the mark was ancient. Forbidden. A prophecy whispered once every thousand years. The Half-Blood Moon, a convergence of power that rewrote destinies and drowned worlds in blood.
I was marked by it.
"You are leaving here tomorrow" he said.
"What?! To where? Why?" I asked
"To a special academy... you'd understand better when you get there, I and your mom have agreed to this. Go pack your things." he said
I looked at him incredulously.....
Wow, just when things started to get better, so much for trying to settle down.
No time to understand. Just a sealed letter, a bag packed for me, and a car that drove too fast toward a place that should not exist.
An academy hidden between worlds.
As iron gates rose from mist and stone, I felt it, the pull in my blood. The mark burned softly against my wrist, as if waking up.
Whatever I was…
I lifted my wrist up, tracing the pattern of the crescent mark
"We are here" my stepfather announced
I lifted my head up to look at the overwhelming building
This place knew her.
And somewhere inside those walls, eyes were already watching.
Waiting.