The Descent
The crimson moon began to change.
I'd been watching it pulse overhead for what felt like hours, swollen and red like a wound that wouldn't close, that couldn't heal. The column of white light in the center of the arena had faded gradually, taking whatever divine presence had been forming with it. We were alone again beneath that bleeding sky, thousands of marked wolves waiting for whatever came next.
Then the moon flared.
Not brightening gradually but exploding with light, going from dull crimson to blazing scarlet in a single heartbeat. The color was wrong, too saturated, too vivid. Like someone had concentrated all the blood in the world and painted it across the sky in thick, viscous strokes.
"It's starting." Kael's voice came from beside me, tight with tension I hadn't heard before. "The First Trial."
