The Moonblade Arrives in Blood
This is Book 1 of the Moonblade Series.
Chapter One - The Moonblade Arrives in Blood
The village had stopped screaming by the time May Silver arrived. That was how she knew she was too late. Smoke dragged itself across the ruined square in black ribbons, curling around shattered market stalls, overturned carts, and the bodies no one had dared touch. The snow beneath her boots was not white anymore. It had been churned into red mud by paws, claws, and fleeing feet. Above the rooftops, the moon watched through a veil of storm clouds, pale, silent and unmoved. May understood that kind of silence. She wore it like armour. The surviving wolves of Red Hollow Pack stood in a broken ring around the square, their faces hollow with terror and hope. Some had shifted halfway and become trapped in that awful middle state: human eyes glowing behind wolfish brows, claws trembling at the ends of bloodied fingers. Others clutched children against their chests and lowered their gazes as May passed. No one spoke her name. They did not need to. Everyone knew what silver-white hair meant when it appeared beneath a dying moon. Everyone knew the black cloak pinned at the throat with a crescent blade. Everyone knew the woman who walked through slaughter without flinching.
The Moonblade had come. And when the Moonblade came, an alpha died.
May stopped at the edge of the square. The alpha of Red Hollow crouched atop the old stone well in the centre of the village, naked from the waist up despite the snow, his broad chest heaving, his skin webbed with black veins that pulsed like living roots. Blood slicked his claws to the knuckles. His eyes were not the gold of an alpha’s wolf. They were wrong, too bright and much too empty. Behind him, his wolf-shadow moved separately from his body. It writhed against the snow like a second beast trying to peel itself free - this was a manifestation of corruption. There was no doubt.
A woman sobbed somewhere to May’s left. The alpha’s head snapped toward the sound. May drew her blade and the entire square inhaled. The Moonblade did not sing as it left the sheath. It whispered a thin, silver sound that slid through the air, sharp enough to make every wolf in the square bare their throats by instinct. The blade was long and pale, forged from lunar bone and ancestral judgment. Runes slept beneath its surface until May’s fingers tightened around the hilt. Then they awakened one by one, glowing with cold light all the way to the tip of the blade.
The corrupted alpha saw it and smiled. His mouth was full of blood. “Little executioner,” he rasped.
May stepped into the square. Her boots made no sound. “I am May Silver of the Moonblade line,” she said, voice calm enough to cut. “By sacred law and lunar witness, I answer the sentence placed upon Alpha Torren Vale of Red Hollow Pack.”
The alpha laughed. The sound cracked open into a growl. “Sentence?” He rolled his shoulders, bones shifting beneath skin. “I am alpha. My word is sentence. I am the law.”
A child whimpered off to the left and the alpha’s gaze flicked again. May moved before he did. One moment, she was ten paces away. The next, her blade flashed between the alpha and the trembling child as he lunged from the well. His claws struck silver, and sparks burst white and blue in the dark. The force of him drove May back three steps ...only three. The villagers scattered with cries, dragging the child away. May held the alpha’s claws against her blade and looked into his ruined eyes. Up close, the corruption stank of rot and old hunger. It poured from his pores, thick and oily, trying to crawl toward her skin. Her wolf stirred, not fully awake - it was more like a cold breath in the locked chamber of May’s soul. Death was near.
May shoved Alpha Torren back. He landed in the snow and circled her on all fours, lips peeled from his teeth. His muscles rippled grotesquely, too large for his frame, as though something now lived inside him and wore his body badly - like a skin that was much too tight to contain the evil within it.
“You came too late,” he said. “I already tasted them.”
May’s eyes did not move to the bodies. She would count them later. She would remember them later, but not now - now she was the blade. Now she possessed a singular focus. “Alpha Torren Vale,” she continued, “you have slaughtered your council, devoured your oath-bond, and turned your claws against your own pack.”
He grinned wider. “They were weak.”
“You have rejected the Moon Goddess’s law.”
“She rejected me first.” The Alpha snarled.
“You have allowed corruption to separate your wolf from your soul,” May continued to detail his crimes. At this, his smile faltered. The wolf-shadow behind him bucked and twisted, snapping silently at the air. May lifted the Moonblade. “And so your life is forfeit.”
Torren roared, and came at her fast enough to blur. The first strike would have torn open her throat if she had been afraid, but May had no fear. Fear required imagining a future, and in battle, May had none. She turned beneath his arm and carved a shallow line across his ribs. Silver light flashed, and black blood hissed where it struck the snow. Torren screamed and spun, backhanding her across the square. Pain exploded along her cheek. She let the force carry her, dropped to one knee, and rose before the villagers could gasp.
Torren stared at the thin line of blood now sliding from the corner of her mouth. His nostrils flared. “Pretty thing,” he growled. “They always make the holy ones pretty.”
May wiped the blood away with her thumb. Then she flicked it into the snow. “Is that the best you’ve got?” she asked, unimpressed.
His face contorted. The black veins in his chest pulsed harder. Something beneath his skin pushed outward, as if claws pressed from the inside - the corruption wanted out. It always did, at the end. May had seen it in tyrants who fed on fear. In feral alphas who slaughtered their mates. In kings of small territories who mistook power for divinity until their wolves rotted from the inside out. They all ended the same - on their knees, at her feet.
Torren attacked again. This time May met him head on. Silver and claw clashed. The shock rang through her bones. He was stronger. Alphas usually were. But strength was a language May had been taught to interrupt. She cut his forearm, his thigh, the tendon behind his knee. Each strike was exact, measured, necessary. He howled and swung wildly. May ducked beneath his claws, turned, and slammed the hilt of the Moonblade into his throat. He staggered. She kicked his knee sideways, and the bone snapped. The alpha crashed down hard enough to crack the frozen ground. Around the square, Red Hollow wolves watched with their hands over their mouths. Some wept, some looked relieved, and some looked ashamed of their relief. May knew that look well. People prayed for monsters to die. Then mourned the face the monster used to wear.
Torren clawed at the ground, dragging himself toward her. His broken knee twisted behind him. Black blood dripped from his lips. “You think this ends with me?” he spat.
May stood over him. “No.”
His laugh came wet and low. “No,” he echoed. “No, it does not.” The wolf-shadow behind him rose like smoke, towering above his body. Its jaws opened wider than any wolf’s should. The villagers screamed and stumbled back.
May’s wolf woke fully. The awakening was always cold, never comforting, never wild, never warm like other wolves described theirs. May’s wolf did not howl with freedom or hunger for the run. She rose in silence, white-eyed and ancient, in the locked hollow of May’s chest. Death is near, her wolf whispered.
May tightened her grip. “I know.”
Torren looked up at her then, and for one heartbeat, something almost human surfaced in his face - terror, not of death but of what waited inside him. “Please,” he rasped. The word rippled through the square.
May looked down at him. Some executioners might have softened. Some might have hesitated. Some might have asked if there was enough of the man left to save. May did not. She had asked those questions once when she was nine years old and watched her mother execute a corrupted alpha who begged with his daughter’s name on his lips. Her mother had told her afterwards, while washing blood from May’s hands: Mercy given to corruption is cruelty given to everyone else. May had never forgotten this lesson, so she raised the blade.
Torren’s eyes locked on hers. “You think the Goddess chose your bloodline to kill us?” he whispered.
May held the point above his heart. “She chose us to end what you became.”
His mouth curved into something ugly. It was not a smile ...it was a warning. “No, little blade.” His voice dropped until only she could hear. “She chose you to hide what she feared.”
For the first time that night, something touched May beneath the armour, not fear nor doubt exactly. This was ...something older. The Moonblade’s runes flickered. Torren saw it and his ruined eyes brightened. “There are monsters wearing crowns,” he breathed. “And your blade has been cutting their evidence for centuries.”
May drove the blade down and silver pierced his heart. The alpha arched, mouth open in a soundless scream. The wolf-shadow above him thrashed, tearing at the air, its jaws snapping inches from May’s face. She did not move. The Moonblade blazed as light poured through Torren’s veins, silver burning black from beneath his skin. The separate wolf-shadow shuddered as the sacred severance took hold. For one awful second, May saw the alpha as he had been before corruption: young, proud, laughing beside a woman with red hair, holding a child on his shoulders beneath a summer moon. Then the vision shattered. The corrupted wolf-spirit split from the body and dissolved into ash. Torren Vale collapsed into the snow -dead.
The silence afterwards was worse than the screaming. May withdrew the blade. Black blood slid down the silver edge and vanished before it could touch the hilt. The Moonblade cleaned itself as it always did. But tonight, the blade remained cold. May stared at it. That was wrong. After a completed sentence, the blade usually warmed slightly, like moonlight resting on skin. It was how the Moon Goddess marked the fulfilment of justice. But now the hilt felt like ice. Her wolf retreated without another word.
Around her, the Red Hollow Pack slowly bowed. First one wolf, then another. Then all of them. May hated that part most, not because they feared her, but because some of them were grateful.
A grey haired woman approached with shaking hands. The left side of her face was bruised. Her throat bore the fading imprint of claws. “Moonblade,” she whispered. May turned towards her. The woman dropped to her knees. “Thank you.”
May looked at the dead alpha between them. Then at the bodies in the square. “Do not thank me for arriving after he had already begun.” The woman flinched. May immediately regretted the cruelty of it, though her face did not change. She sheathed her blade.
“Burn the bodies before dawn,” May said. “All of them touched by black blood. Bury the rest beneath moonstone if you have it. Salt the well. No one drinks from it for seven days.” The woman nodded quickly.
“And the children?” someone asked behind her.
May looked toward the cluster of small, pale faces watching from beneath blankets and bloodstained shawls. “Keep them away from the council hall,” she said. “Corruption lingers where power was broken.”
A young man stepped forward. His arm was wrapped in a torn shirt. “Was he damned?”
May paused. That was not a question people usually asked after. They asked if it was over. If they were safe. If the curse would spread - not if the monster had been damned. She looked back at Torren’s body. The black veins were fading now, leaving only a man in the snow. “No,” May said. The young man’s eyes filled. “He was corrupted. That is not the same thing.” The distinction mattered ...it had to matter. Otherwise May was nothing but a murderer with holy permission. She turned away before grief could attach itself to her.
At the edge of the square, her horse waited beside a cracked stone trough. The beast was black, silent, and trained not to shy from blood. May took the reins and mounted. Behind her, the pack began to move around their dead. No one stopped her, no one ever did. The road out of Red Hollow wound through pine trees bent beneath snow and smoke. Dawn was still hours away, but the horizon had begun to pale in faint streaks of iron. May rode until the village lights disappeared. Only then did she let her shoulders loosen a little. Her cheek throbbed where Torren had struck her. Blood had dried at the corner of her mouth. Beneath her cloak, her ribs ached from the force of blocking an alpha’s claws. She would heal. She always did. A Moonblade did not break from pain. Pain was training. Pain was proof the body remained useful.
May reached into her saddlebag and withdrew the black ledger of sentences. Each page contained one name - one alpha, one judgment, one ending. She opened to the newest page and wrote:
TORREN VALE. ALPHA OF RED HOLLOW. CORRUPTION CONFIRMED. SENTENCE CARRIED OUT.
May dipped her pen in the small vial of lunar ink at her belt. Her hand hovered over the page. Usually, the words came easily, but tonight, Torren’s final warning crawled through her memory: There are monsters wearing crowns.
May wrote anyway. Severance complete.
The ink shimmered, then sank into the page. A thin line of silver crossed through Torren’s name - done, ended. Forgotten by law, if not by those who had loved him.
May closed the ledger. The forest around her was still, too still. Her horse stopped before she touched the reins. May looked up to the tree line. A raven sat on the branch ahead. It was too large to be natural, its feathers black as spilled ink, its eyes marked with a ring of silver. A strip of parchment was tied to its leg with red thread - tribunal bird.
May’s jaw tightened. The raven lowered its head. “Already?” she murmured. The bird clicked its beak, and May extended her arm. The raven hopped down, its claws biting through the leather guard at her wrist. She untied the parchment and recognised the seal before she broke it - black wax, with three claw marks. Northern Alpha Tribunal.
A sentence sealed in black meant urgency was needed. There must have been some sort of containment failure, mass casualty, or threat to multiple territories. May unrolled the parchment. The first line was written in formal silver ink.
By authority of the Northern Alpha Tribunal, sacred execution is requested and sanctioned.
Her eyes moved lower. Condemned: Daniel Storm.
May stilled. She knew the name. Everyone in the northern territories knew the name Daniel Storm, Alpha of Blackthorn Pack. The wolf who had inherited one of the oldest bloodlines beneath the moon. The alpha who had once ended a border war by walking alone into enemy territory and dragging three rival alphas back alive. The ruler whose pack held the northern passes, the black pine forests, and the old fortress built over the bones of the first wolves. And now, if rumours told the truth, he was the monster meant for death.
May read on.
Charges: council slaughter, unlawful blood rite, land-curse, oath-bond destruction, suspected alpha corruption, imprisonment of dissenting pack members, threat of curse expansion beyond Blackthorn territory.
The raven shifted on her arm as a cold wind moved through the pines. May read the final command.
Enter Blackthorn Fortress. Confirm corruption. Execute before the next blood moon.
At the bottom of the parchment were seven Tribunal signatures. Beneath them, in older ink, was a mark that made May’s breath stop. Her family’s crescent. The ancient execution mark of the Moonblade line, already stamped, already accepted. May stared at it. That mark could only be placed by a Silver - by her mother, or by someone with access to the sealed Moonblade records. Acceptance before confirmation was not how these matters usually proceeded.
The raven’s claws tightened. May slowly rolled the parchment closed. Her wolf did not stir, and that, too, was wrong. A sentence of this magnitude should have awakened her. If Daniel Storm was truly as corrupted as the Tribunal claimed, May’s wolf should have risen at the sound of his name. But inside her chest, the locked chamber remained silent. May looked north. Beyond the forest, beyond the mountains, beyond miles of frozen road, Blackthorn waited beneath its curse. And if the stories she had heard while travelling to Red Hollow were true, Daniel Storm waited in chains, half-mad, feral and condemned. May slid the parchment into her cloak. The raven launched from her arm and vanished into the dark.
For a long moment, May did not move. Then she drew the Moonblade halfway from its sheath. The runes along the blade remained dim. The hilt was still cold, not the cold of completed justice, but the cold of a grave before the body arrived. May pushed the blade back into place and turned her horse toward the northern road. Snow began to fall again, white at first. Then, as the wind shifted from the direction of Blackthorn, one flake landed on May’s glove. Black. May watched it melt against the leather. A single drop of dark water slid over her knuckle like blood. Her expression did not change, but somewhere deep inside her, behind all the locks her family had built, her wolf opened one silver eye.
