Chapter 222: The Moon Princess Descends Here
"Before sunrise, everyone stays indoors."
Barghest's brows knit together for a moment, then she exhaled and forced the tension out of her shoulders. Her gaze shifted toward the main camp.
Above the central tent, a small silver haired figure sat cross legged, perfectly still. A quiet pressure lingered around her, like a blade left on a table. Not pointed at anyone, yet impossible to ignore.
A strange expression crossed Barghest's face.
"With her here… there should not be any problems."
Barghest believed it, because she had seen it.
She had witnessed the giant dragon's claw descend in daylight, and she had felt the difference in scale. Barghest, merged with a combat type Machina God body, trusted her own strength. As a fairy, she even believed she could clash with a chief god of a pantheon right now and not be instantly erased.
But against that claw, she did not even imagine struggle.
There would be no struggle.
Only the moment before everything ended.
"Speaking of which," Barghest muttered, trying to sound casual, "the moon tonight is strange."
"Indeed…" Boudica's voice was low.
Crimson stained it. A haze like dried blood washed over the moonlight. It was beautiful in the wrong way, an elegance that made the skin prickle.
And that beauty felt like it was growing.
Growing.
Barghest's pupils tightened.
"Wait."
Her head snapped up.
"It is getting bigger."
No, bigger was not the right word.
Closer.
"Is the moon… falling?"
The moon expanded in their vision.
The moon descended.
Across the military camp, countless people looked up as if pulled by a single invisible hook. They stared at the full moon swelling overhead, the curve becoming obscene, the presence becoming oppressive.
A massive hum bored into their ears.
A weight accumulated, scraping against the atmosphere, pressing through the planet's shield as if it were grinding past the edge of reality itself.
The air warped.
The plains shuddered.
The ground tilted and shook like a living thing trying to crawl away.
Eardrums throbbed. Bones vibrated. Yet the soldiers forced their eyes open, wide, unblinking, as if looking away would count as surrender.
The moon, suspended above them, was truly falling.
That light that guided countless people home through the night.
That presence everyone had gazed at since childhood.
That figure which once drove the Emperor of Rome into madness.
The descent of the moon.
The shadow of reality swallowed the sky.
The heaviness in their chests became suffocation.
Boudica gripped her sword, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something like helplessness coil around her ribs.
Even Barghest, who laughed at battlefields, felt her expression go blank.
As a fairy, she would not die.
But she could still feel humiliation.
Powerlessness.
"My Lord…" Barghest breathed.
Baobhan Sith's lips parted. No sound came out.
Instead, she called toward Rowe inside her heart.
Your Majesty.
The moon's descent stirred a gale that tore through the camp. Tents snapped. Firelight guttered. Dust and sand lifted as if the world itself was trying to peel away.
Closer.
Closer.
And then it stopped.
The shadow remained, but the camp did not crumble.
A collective gasp rose and choked off as everyone saw what now held the sky.
"So heavy…"
A steel body unfolded iron wings in the air. Engines at its feet roared, pouring out flame and force. Two hands braced against the descending mass, fingers spread as if refusing the concept of being crushed.
The figure was Rowe.
It was Machina God Rowe.
He had been waiting.
"Even if it is not the real moon," he said, voice carrying through the violent wind, "this weight is infinitely close, is it not?"
He was not speaking to the soldiers.
He was speaking upward.
To the one who had thrown the moon down like a test.
A voice answered from above, cold and clear.
In that instant, Rowe exerted force with both hands.
Chaotic chimes rang out, grand and dissonant, like a cathedral bell struck in the wrong world.
Behind the Machina God, a vast chaotic mist unfurled. From it, countless tentacles extended, each gripping a Noble Phantasm.
Blades, spears, chains, relics.
Weapons that carried stories.
With each strike and resonance, they closed from every direction.
They wrapped the falling moon.
Then, with merciless precision, they shattered it.
The shadow overhead collapsed.
There were no fragments.
The false moon dissolved into broad clouds of dust, drifting apart in the air like ash from a burned myth.
But higher still, the true moon remained.
Blood red.
Unmoved.
And at the center of the shattered moon's remains, a figure stood.
Under crimson moonlight, she lifted her gaze.
"Is it you…?"
"The one who threatens the Moon Cell!"
Golden hair streamed behind her like scattered radiance. She raised one hand, and within her crimson eyes, endless rainbow light bloomed, refracted and cruel.
"My name is Brunestud."
"I am the true…"
"Moon Princess."
She was impossibly beautiful.
Not the kind of beauty meant for affection, but the kind that made the mind hesitate, the kind that made the soul pause and wonder whether it was allowed to resist.
Her face was exquisitely shaped, as if sculpted by a law rather than a hand.
Her figure was tall and graceful. Though her essence was closer to genderless, she manifested as feminine without question, like the moon choosing a mask it knew humans would recognize.
A gown woven of gold and red billowed around her, alive in the air.
Long legs extended beneath it.
Her chest, partially exposed, was full and smooth, an almost careless luxury.
Her hands opened slowly, and the curve of her sides was revealed in the motion, as if the gesture itself was a declaration of ownership.
Behind her, the blood red moonlight condensed into magnificent wings.
Radiance poured downward.
Wherever the moon shone, that was her territory.
Because compared to the Moon Cell, an existence that had stolen the moon's position through vast computation, she could be called the real Moon Princess.
Crimson Moon.
Brunestud.
…
Later, scholars would try to write her into order.
They would speak as if paper could pin something like that to a page.
"Regarding Brunestud, the Moon Princess and Ancestor of Dead Apostles, the earliest records indicate her appearance in the second century AD, manifesting on the vast snowy plains of what is now northern Russia."
"However, earlier rumors suggest Brunestud descended to Earth as early as the beginning of the first century AD and clashed with King Rowe, who was leading his army in conquest."
"The scorched earth that still remains in West Asia is the trace left by that conflict."
"That was the battle between the Primordial Human and the Moon Princess."
Clock Tower Journal, Magical Archaeology.
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