Prologue

  Excerpt from the Forbidden Verses of the Lunar Codex, Translated by the Lore-Keeper Vaelith, Fourth Cycle

  “Of the One Who Hungers in Silence”

  In the first twilight, when the world was still warm from the gods’ breath, they carved the heavens in twain: sun to reign in fire, moon to cradle in silver. From this rift was born desire—wild, formless, divine.

  The gods gave this nameless thing a body of shadows and a voice made from every whispered yearning. They called it Azazel, Vox Umbra - the shadow voice. It was sent to walk among mortals so that their passions might not wither, that their love and grief might have teeth.

  But desire is a river without banks. It forgets the path. It devours the shore.

  Azazel grew swollen on offerings of longing—unspoken love, secret hatred, desperate want—and soon, he craved not their emotions but the ones who felt them.

  He drank them dry: lovers in bloom, kings on thrones, priests in prayer. He whispered promises sweet as sin, and they followed. Whole cities burned with nothing but want in their hearts.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The gods, fearing what they had unleashed, called upon the Great Dragon—Maelzar, Guardian of Velaria. With his scales as hard and shiny as diamonds, and a heart that fed on fury and fire, he was the only one untouched by Azazel’s tongue.

  Beneath the gaze of the ancient black moons, whose light cast long, skeletal shadows across the ravaged land, Maelzar and Vox Umbra clashed. The earth trembled with the dragon’s earth-shattering roars and the ethereal shrieks of the formless being. Flames of pure wrath met tendrils of shadow and yearning, a battle waged not for dominion but for the very soul of the mortal realm. In the end, Maelzar, though his fury burned hotter than any forge, could not extinguish the divine spark, however twisted it had become. He did not kill him.

  Maelzar was created to guard, not to destroy, and he could not overcome his purpose, no matter his orders.

  Instead, with ancient runes etched in starlight and chains forged in the heart of dying stars, chains that hummed with the very essence of unfulfilled hunger and eternal longing. Maelzar bound the entity deep beneath the roots of the oldest temple. There, where the blessed moonlight could never penetrate, Vox Umbra would be imprisoned, its influence curtailed.

  Still, Azazel dreams in his subterranean prison. His influence, though leashed, bleeds into the waking world. He drifts between the fragile shells of mortals, wears their skin as easily as cloaks, and his voice echoes in the deceptive stillness of mirrors and the mournful sigh of midnight winds. Wherever a secret longing festers, wherever a hidden want takes root, his insidious shadow may yet follow.

  Beware the voice that knows the secret language of your heart. Beware the man who looks into your eyes and says, with unnerving certainty, I understand you.