Instead, our texts gloss over it like an afterthought. Maybe it’s because the Reckoning is marked by the blood moon, and in Lunaris, the sky belongs to the clouds. We get eight hours of sun before the darkness rolls in. We've never seen the stars, and the moon is little more than a rumor, glimpsed through brief tears in the gray.
The only acknowledgment of the Reckoning comes at the Veritas Ceremony on the first night of the Moon Festival. But the festival is annual. It just happens to coincide with when the blood moon supposedly rises.
“Are you saying this is a Reckoning year?”
“Yes.”
I point at the lighter Shroud on the twenty-year-old map. “And this was one too.”
“The Shroud shifts. I've read texts about it. Old ones, buried in the restricted stacks.”
I flip through the maps beneath. “Where's the one from ten years ago?”
“Gone. Forty years ago, too.” His jaw tightens. “They're hiding something. Either the Reckoning itself, or they don't want us near the Shroud right now. Probably both.”
“They have scholars who study the Shroud.”
“From afar. And they're forbidden from going near it in the months before the Moon Festival.” He taps the map. “During the Reckoning, the trees within the Shroud move. That's how the pathway forms.”
“Wouldn't we have felt it? The ground would tremble.”
His lips twist. “That's what Naima said.”
I huff a laugh. “Goddess strike me, Jor.”
“The laborers have seen strange lights in the sky.”
“What kind of lights?”
“I don't know. I haven't?—”
The door crashes open. The raven croaks. Two students barrel in, still wearing their maroon houndstooth skirts and white knee-highs, hands pressed to heaving chests. Soot streaks their faces. Twin expressions of horror.
I glance from Mara to her quiet friend with the blue hair. “What happened?”
“The Shroud,” Mara gasps. “The guards … come quickly!”
I grab my healing kit. Jordi shoves the maps into the bottom drawer where I keep my things.
We run.
Chapter Two
“Did you see Arlo anywhere?” Jordi shouts over his shoulder, nearly colliding with Lenora.
My mentor presses her back against the wall and lifts the cage in her hand over her head. The small white owl inside tilts its head to eye us curiously as we rush past them.
"What's going on?" she calls out.
“The Shroud!” I shout back. “There's a loose raven with a bandaged wing in room four!”
Panicked gasps follow us as we crash through the front door. We skid to a stop on the sidewalk. Thick clouds swallow the afternoon sky, and fog has already descended on the streets, turning everything beyond a few feet to shadow. Somewhere ahead, a shriek splits the air. The four of us look in every direction, then bolt left toward the road at the edge of the forest.
“Did you see Arlo anywhere?" Jordi repeats as we run. "Arlo the Undefeated, Master of?—”
“Bow and arrows. No, we didn't,” Blue says. “A woman with a House of Justice patch screamed for us to get help. There was a guard on the ground. He looked…”
“Lifeless,” Mara finishes.
