Chapter 1: The Drowning Moon

Bramblehollow was a quiet village, wrapped in the dense arms of an ancient wood, the sort of place forgotten by maps and remembered only in the stories told at the hearth. The village was a place of shadows and whispers, where time seemed to slow its course and the world outside felt distant, almost foreign. The stone cottages, small and weatherworn, leaned against one another like gossiping old men, their chimneys curling smoke into the sky as if the very earth had decided to grow old with them. Ivy clung to the walls like secrets, creeping up the sides of homes and through the cracks in the stone, its tendrils weaving themselves into the very heart of the village. The trees—the great, ancient sentinels that surrounded the village on all sides—towered like giants, their gnarled branches reaching toward the sky, whispering things that only the wind and the earth could understand. They watched everything, their leaves trembling in the breeze as though they were in on a secret the villagers had yet to learn.

The village was quiet, too quiet. No laughter echoed in the streets, no cries of children or the hustle of market day. It was the kind of quiet that stretched long and thin, the kind that settled deep into your bones. It was a silence that came from the heart of the forest itself, where the trees held their breath and the world seemed to pause, as if waiting for something to happen.

And on that night, the night Elric was born, the earth itself seemed to hold its breath.

The moon rose heavy and red over the treetops, its swollen face casting an eerie light across the fields, staining everything it touched in a wash of blood-colored light. The village, bathed in that strange glow, felt as though it were holding onto something, a secret too ancient to speak. It was a night like no other, when the air itself was thick with an unsettling stillness. The elders called it The Drowning Moon—a rare celestial omen that had not graced their skies in over a hundred years. It was said that the moon’s light was a harbinger, a signal that something ancient and forgotten was stirring in the shadows. The air that night was thick with the smell of wet earth, damp and cloying, mingling with something fouler—something that could only be described as ash, a scent that clung to the lungs and left a bitter taste on the tongue.

Wolves did not howl that night, their mournful cries silenced by the weight of the air. Birds did not sing, their usual chorus of song replaced by an oppressive silence that pressed down on the land like a thick, suffocating blanket. Even the wind, which usually carried the sweet scent of the forest and the freshness of spring, turned sharp and sour, as if it carried a warning. The trees—those ancient giants—stood still, their branches hanging like heavy shadows, as if they, too, were waiting for something. And the hare goddess, who had been the protector of the village for as long as the villagers could remember, did not answer her shrine.

The shrine had stood at the edge of the forest for centuries, a stone altar covered in the green fuzz of moss and the tangled vines of creeping ivy. It was carved with intricate patterns of running hares and curling vines, a testament to the goddess’s presence in the village. The altar was a sacred place, where off