The Moon-White Tiger

The Night the Moon Vanished

The first scream came from beneath the water.

It rolled through the Merman sanctuary like the death knell of some vast creature buried beneath the seabed. Ki Crystals that were embedded in the coral walls flashed from blue to violent white. Fractures of light seared through the submerged corridors; the Ancient wards ignited one after another. For the first time since the last war, the towers rang with distorted notes until they resembled voices calling from the deep.

Cane Yarrow woke with blood already running from her nose. For one stunned moment, she did not understand why the chambers around her were trembling. Then Serein's terror tore through their bond; the terror came not with words, but the absence of sensation.

The kit was gone.

Cane did not pause to dress. She seized the moon-bladed knife beneath her pillow and ran barefoot into the corridor, her night robes tangling around her legs as water poured from ruptured channels overhead. Merman guards surged past her toward the sanctuary gates. Others were dragging children from their rooms or struggling to awaken protective seals that had begun turning against their keepers.

Someone had poisoned the wards.

The sanctuary had been hidden for almost two thousand years. No outsider should have known where it stood, much less how to pass through defenses shaped by Seal song, Kitsune fire, and the blood of generations of Merman rulers. Cane's stomach twisted as a chill rolled down her back.

Cane rounded the final corner and nearly slipped in the blood covering the floor.

Two guards lay outside the birthing chamber.

One clutched his throat while a healer fought to keep the gray stain in his veins from reaching his heart. The other stared sightlessly at the ceiling, his scales peeling away from his face as Discordant energy ate through him from within.

Snake energy filled the air.

It curled through the blood, clung to the walls, and twisted every scent into a different direction.

Cane slammed through the chamber doors, and bile rose in her throat.

The nest was empty.

Serein stood over it with all nine tails unfurled, each one blazing with a separate current of the Zodiac Concord. Lightning snapped through the water. Frost crawled across the stone. Flowers erupted from cracks in the floor only to blacken beneath waves of heat. Her grief and rage had become too vast for any one energy to contain. Blood still dripped from her flank with remnants of her recent birth.

A Merwoman attendant was pressed against the far wall.

She held a woven basket against her chest.

The newborn inside it was crying.

Cane knew the attendant. Mara had helped tend the sanctuary nurseries for three centuries. She had delivered Serein's food, sung old hunting songs to the unborn kit, and wept when the child was finally born.

Mara was also lying dead beside the nest.

The thing wearing her face smiled.

Its features trembled, the disguise slipping for half a heartbeat before reforming. Its eyes became too wide. Its mouth split at the corners as teeth vanished and cracked fangs formed. Black veins pulsed beneath borrowed blue scales, a sickly sweet tar dripped from its nose.

"You waited a very long time for this," The shape shifter said.

Serein lunged with a howl. The thief crushed a Ki crystal in one hand, causing green fire to explode through the chamber.