Poppy swallowed. “It… wasn’t a creature. Not like the fragment. Not like the revenants. It felt… enormous. Like a hole in the sky. Like standing in sunlight and suddenly the world goes dark.”
Mingxi’s breath stuttered. “You saw an eclipse.”
Poppy blinked. “Not the sun or moon—something shaped like one.”
“That’s not a form,” he whispered. “It’s a mark.”
Before she could ask more, footsteps raced down the corridor. Minghua burst in first, hair tangled, wearing mismatched sandals.
“I felt the wards shake! What’s happening? Why do you look like that? Why do I feel like I’m going to be sick?”
Mingjun grabbed her hood again and yanked her back, panting, “Stop. Running. First.”
Xu Yunlian and Mingzhao followed, both fully dressed despite the hour, faces grave. Caelan barreled in behind them, still tying his coat. Mingxi stood, drawing Poppy gently to her feet but keeping her tucked against his side.
“She saw the moonwell.”
Every elder in the room went still.
Poppy told them the dream carefully, every detail in order.
By the time she finished, Yunlian was pale. Caelan’s freckles stood out starkly against his unnaturally pale face. Minghua had both hands over hermouth. Mingjun’s arms were crossed so tightly they looked like they might break. Mingzhao had closed his eyes, clearly in thought. Elder Suyin had started muttering prayers under her breath. Elder Qiao looked like he had aged ten years.
Mingzhao spoke first. “The moonwell is sentient but rarely speaks. If it is calling for help…”
Poppy nodded.
“It’s… afraid.”
The room exhaled sharply, horrified.
“But why would the moonwell fear a fragment?” Minghua whispered.
Poppy shook her head. “It wasn’t afraid of the fragment. The fragment is… dangerous, yes. But what I saw—what I felt—it was afraid of something else.”
Mingxi’s tail tips flicked sharply. “The shadow.”
Poppy nodded again. “Yes.”
Mingzhao opened his eyes slowly. “An eclipse shadow is an omen used only once in our recorded history.”
Caelan frowned. “When?”
Mingzhao turned toward the ancestral shrine in the corner of the sanctuary and then said, “When the Devouring One first appeared.”
Everyone froze.
Poppy felt the air thin, and Mingxi’s arms tightened around her instinctively.
Elder Qiao’s voice shook. “It wasn’t always called the Devouring One.”
Poppy blinked. “What do you mean?”
Mingzhao answered quietly, “In the oldest records, written before the moonwell’s corruption… it was known by another name.”
Mingxi’s ears tilted forward, hyper-focused. “What name?”
Mingzhao hesitated. “The Eclipsed Star.”
