Beyond the Moonlight

The first time Nymelle found a Crystal that should not have existed, she was still young enough to believe that every question had an answer.

She only had to look long enough.

That night, the moon was unusually bright.

Its light slipped between the branches of the forest and settled over the path in pale, uneven patches. Nymelle knew that path well. She knew where the roots rose from the earth, where the ground dipped after the rain, and where the sound of running water became loud enough to drown out her footsteps.

There was nothing frightening about the forest.

Not then.

It was simply a place she knew.

Which was why she noticed the light immediately.

Nymelle stopped.

Something shimmered between the roots of a tree a few steps away.

At first, she thought it was water catching the moonlight.

Then it pulsed.

Once.

Nymelle frowned.

Twice.

She took a step closer.

The glow vanished.

For a moment, there was only the forest again. Trees. Moonlight. The quiet movement of water somewhere beyond the path.

Then the light returned.

Nymelle smiled.

“Was that you?”

Nothing happened.

She crouched beside the roots.

“Do it again.”

The light pulsed.

Her smile widened.

Hidden beneath a thin layer of earth was a Crystal no larger than the center of her palm.

There was nothing extraordinary about its shape. She had seen Crystals before. Everyone had. Some were kept in homes. Others were used by artisans, travelers, researchers, or merchants. People knew their colors, their reactions, their uses.

This one should have been ordinary.

But it wasn’t.

Nymelle reached toward it, then stopped.

The Crystal seemed almost to be holding the moonlight inside itself.

Not reflecting it.

Holding it.

She tilted her head.

“What are you?”

The Crystal did not answer.

Obviously.

Nymelle looked around, although she wasn’t sure whom she expected to find watching her.

No one.

She turned back to it.

“I’m only going to look.”

Her fingers moved closer.

She hesitated again.

“That’s not the same as touching.”

The distinction lasted perhaps two seconds.

Then her fingertip met the Crystal.

The forest disappeared.

Nymelle forgot how to breathe.

There was no transition.

No flash.

No sensation of falling.

One moment, she was kneeling beneath the trees.

The next—

She was somewhere else.

A moon hung above her.

But the sky was wrong.

Or perhaps it was the trees.

Their silhouettes stretched toward a horizon she did not recognize, and beyond them stood something illuminated in the distance.

A structure.

No.

More than one.

Lights glimmered where no lights should have been.

Nymelle stared.

She had never seen this place.

She was certain of that.

And yet something inside her tightened with the strange, impossible feeling that she had returned somewhere.

There was someone ahead.

A figure stood far beyond her reach, almost swallowed by the pale light.

Nymelle tried to call out.

No sound came.

The feeling struck her before she could try again.

Longing.

It was so sudden that her chest hurt.

Not sadness.

Not exactly.

It was the ache of missing something so deeply that the absence itself had become part of you.

Nymelle pressed a hand against her chest.

She didn’t understand.

There was nothing here for her to miss.

She had never been here.

She didn’t know that figure.

So why—

The person in the distance moved.

Slowly.

As though they had heard something.

Nymelle froze.

The figure began to turn toward her.

And the world vanished.

She gasped.

The forest crashed back around her.

Water.

Leaves.

Cold earth beneath her knees.

Moonlight.

Nymelle pulled her hand away from the Crystal and nearly fell backward.

For several seconds, she simply stared at it.

Her heart beat too quickly.

“What was that?”

The Crystal remained still.

She swallowed.

Then looked at her own hands.

They were trembling.

She had seen something.

No.

That wasn’t quite right.

She hadfeltsomething.

The place. The lights. The distant figure.

The longing.

Especially the longing.

Nymelle touched her chest again.

It was fading now, but slowly, like warmth leaving a stone after sunset.

And with it came a thought that frightened her more than the vision itself.

What if the feeling hadn’t been hers?

She looked at the Crystal.

“What did you show me?”

Silence.

Nymelle waited.

Nothing pulsed this time.

She should have left it there.

Even then, some part of her understood that.

Instead, she carefully lifted the Crystal from between the roots.

It was cold in her palm.

Ordinary.

Almost disappointingly so.

Nymelle glanced once more toward the trees, half expecting the strange place to appear between them.

It didn’t.

She carried the Crystal home.

She told no one.

Not because she thought she had done something wrong.

At least, that was what she told herself.

She simply wanted one night to understand it before someone older explained to her what it was supposed to mean.

In her room, she placed the fragment beside the window.

Moonlight touched its surface.

Nothing happened.

Nymelle sat in front of it for a long time.

She tried turning it.

Moving it closer to the glass.

Covering it with her hands and uncovering it again.

Nothing.

Eventually, she rested her chin on her knees.

“You’re not very helpful.”

The Crystal remained unimpressed.

Nymelle narrowed her eyes at it.

Then, almost without thinking, she whispered,

“Maybe you want me to remember.”

The words changed something.

Not in the Crystal.

In her.

She looked toward the window.

For an instant, she could almost see that other moon again.

The distant lights.

The figure beginning to turn.

The feeling that did not belong to her.

Nymelle looked back at the Crystal.

“Tomorrow,” she promised, “I’ll figure out what you are.”

She went to sleep believing it.

By morning, the Crystal was gone.

Nymelle searched beneath the bed.

Inside the blankets.

Behind the furniture.

She checked the floor twice, then a third time.

Nothing.

The window was still closed.

The door had not been opened.

The Crystal had simply disappeared.

She returned to the forest that afternoon.

She found the tree.

The roots.

The exact place where the fragment had been buried.

There was nothing there.

So Nymelle did the only thing she could think to do.

She went home and drew what she remembered.

The moon.

The trees.

The lights in the distance.

The figure.

Then, beneath the drawing, she wrote four questions.

What kind of Crystal was it?

Why did it react?

Was that a memory?

And finally:

Whose?

Years passed.

Some details faded.

The exact shape of the distant structures.

The color of the sky.

The way the light had moved between the trees.

But three things remained.

The figure.

The longing.

And the certainty that, for one impossible moment beneath the moonlight, Nymelle had remembered something that had never happened to her.

She learned to stop asking about it.

She learned to leave the page buried among old notebooks.

She even learned, eventually, to let the question remain unanswered.

But she never forgot.

And somewhere beneath the moonlight—

something had not forgotten her either.

✦✦✦

Author’s Note

Thank you for stepping into Beyond the Moonlight. 🌙

This is the beginning of The Lumera Sagaand Nymelle’s first journey into the SevenMoon universe.

This story will be released chapter by chapter, and there are many mysteries waiting beyond what Nymelle — and you — can see right now.

If you enjoyed the prologue, I’d love to know: What do you think the Crystal showed Nymelle?

Thank you for reading. ✦

— Lee Yuna