The Twelfth Moon || ✔️

Prologue

It is said that in the beginning of time our Moon stood not alone. She danced around the skies surrounded by the stars and her eleven sisters. Every day, the twelve Moons marveled at our world, Zyama, and its beauty. And every night, the twelve Moons wept for themselves, for not possessing that same life and beauty as did Zyama.

They would glow, each in turn, and shine their brightest light onto Zyama, so none of its beauty would waste away in the darkness of the night.

Mournful for their own lack of it, the twelve Moons banded together to give a piece of themselves to our home, to add to its beauty. They beheld mankind, blessed with intelligence and survival.

But They also did not forget the creatures who worshipped them, who howled at them every night they appeared: the wolves.

Each one of our Moons gave a fragment of their power to create what would be their greatest Creation.

The first ten Sister Moons offered their Creation everything meant to make it all-powerful, so no living creature would be able to vanquish this almighty being.

The Eleventh Moon, Sariranyasa, perhaps the darkest of them all, saw beauty in the things the others did not. She knew that even the Moons should not temper with the laws of nature without consequences. And so She gave death.

The Twelfth Moon, Aranyasvan, followed her deathly sister and saw that no creature could be this powerful. So She limited their Creation's power, bound it to a wolven form that would only come out when one of the Moons shone brightest.

And that is how we came to be, my people. Werewolves, part wolf and part man. We were fierce and powerful creatures, blessed by the Moons themselves. And each time one of the Sister Moons would shine brightest, we would run and howl and live. We would rely on their power and make it our own, until the Moon disappeared again to make room for the glowing Sun. We did not possess our gift when the Sun came to be, or when our Moons did not shine bright enough.

We shared our gift with our kindred spirits: men. They beheld our beauty and power and wanted to make it their own. But not all mankind was blessed by the Moons. They did not possess the strength needed to handle the powers the Moons offered us. Many tried, blinded by their arrogance and self-worth and many more gave their lives in the process, blaming us for their losses.

Men, corrupted with greed and their desire for power, declared war on us. Using the knowledge on our kind we had provided them in better times, they found a way to subdue us when our Moons shone brightest. Without our powers, we stood no chance against men who marched on us with armies filled with hatred and death.

The Moons beheld what was happening to us, to their Creation and raged. They cried and wept and screamed, but were powerless from up above. So eleven Moons decided to come down to save us. The first eleven Sister Moons sacrificed their being and gave all their powers to us.

They came down on different parts of our lands where the war raged, each Moon blessing a different part of our people with their power.

We did not rely on our Moons to shine bright in the skies anymore, instead we became the Moons. The Moons flowed in each of us, and we could run and howl and live whenever we wanted to. We were no longer limited by the night and the Sun could not hold us back any longer. We became even more powerful than we had been before, the distance between us and our Moons being reduced to ash.

And so we fought. It did not take long for us to avenge all the crimes men had brought down upon us. Armies wasted away and trembled as we marched upon them, promising death and revenge.

After the war ended, we grieved our Moons who had sacrificed all for us. We worshiped the Twelfth Moon, who stayed up in the skies and watched over us, taking over the tasks of her Sister Moons and shining bright for us, for Them each and every night.

The first years after the war, our people needed hope. Leadership, someone to guide them through the ages of our rebuilding and healing. So we became eleven packs with eleven different leaders: the Alphas. Each pack separated from the others based on the Moon that had given them their power.

But the Moons had forgotten we were only part wolf. We also possessed that same greed and hunger for power as did mankind. War broke out between the packs, and many more lives were lost. The Twelfth Moon seethed at what was happening, at what the packs were doing with the sacrifice of her Sister Moons. But She could not come down, for life on Zyama would cease to exist without the Moon to guide the nights.

So She watched the wolves destroying themselves, ripping apart every inch of the Moons' Creation. Her rage was replaced with sorrow, and slowly our Moon stopped shining as bright. She would no longer fight the Sun to stay up, to admire life on Zyama. Slowly, life on Zyama watched her waste away.

Until one day, She caught a glimmer of hope. A lost soul, a wolf who had lost everything in the wars and seen things even our Moon didn't dare to watch. But still our Moon saw a heart of gold, even after all that the wolf had endured. She watched him night after night, and beheld his kind nature.

Until finally, She gathered her strength to shine the brightest She ever had. And in that powerful glow, She let fall a single droplet of her power down upon Zyama. Upon the wolf, who lingered lonely in the forests.

The wolf was blessed with a power none had seen before. A power made of rage, grief, sadness. But also made of hope, love, forgiveness and kindness. A power that came down upon him—straight from our Moon, and only him. Every bit of our Moon's power was meant for him, so he could become the strongest wolf of them all and end this war.

And so our first Moon Wolf was made, as rare and powerful as they come. When the packs and their Alphas beheld who stood before them, and what had blessed him, they remembered the sacrifices of the eleven Sister Moons. They remembered the war and everything bad that had fallen upon them from it. As the legend goes, the eleven Alphas looked into the Wolf Moon's silver eyes and saw our Moon itself in them. The Wolf Moon lead our people to prosperity and peace. The eleven packs answered to him, and the new war ended.

Because of her sacrifice, our Moon could not shine bright for us every night anymore. She gathered her strength every night, bit by bit, to shine bright twelve times a year, once for each of her eleven lost Sister Moons and once for us.

But She had not possessed enough strength to sacrifice more of her power to create another Moon Wolf. So when he came to his end, no one followed him to lead our entire kind.

With our Moon powerless in the skies, there was no one left to guard the peace between the packs. And with no one to answer to, it was only a matter of time for the Alphas to begin spreading chants of death and melodies of hate, and poisoning life with the threat of war.

And now, those songs of demise have grown so loud, that the threat has turned into a promise: the new war is coming, and all it will bring is death and destruction.