Lunaria Silverhorn's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The moonfawn's light spread across the snow, and the trail broke apart. Lunaria stopped. Three paths forked away from her boots, each winding into the dark trees. The crystal at her chest flickered, dimmer with every beat. She did not know which path led to the sleeping heart. Guess wrong, and the shard would die before she found it. She knelt and studied the ground. The left path climbed toward a rise. The middle path sank into a hollow. The right path bent away and vanished. All three looked the same under the fawn's glow. She pressed the shard and felt it stutter against her palm. No power to spare for a test. No time to walk them one by one. The moonfawn pawed the snow beside her. It stepped onto the middle path, then stopped and looked back. It did not go far. It seemed as lost as she was. Lunaria's stomach tightened. Her guide had brought her here, but it could not choose for her now. Then a soft chime broke the quiet. The starlit fox trotted out of the trees. Its flecked fur threw pale blue sparks across the snow. Lunaria had followed this small creature once before, through the dark to the shrine where she found the fawn. It had never led her wrong. The fox sniffed each path in turn. It ignored the rise. It ignored the hollow. Then it fixed on the right path, the one that bent away and disappeared. It took three steps, stopped, and looked at her. Its eyes caught the light and held it. "That way," Lunaria said. "You're sure." The fox flicked its white tail and waited. She had no reason to trust it but every reason she had left. She rose and followed. The moonfawn fell in beside her, its light washing the right path silver. The trail curved hard, then straightened. The trees thinned. The fox stopped at a clearing. In the center stood an old stone shrine, half buried in moss, a carved half-moon above its door. Two dark lanterns hung at the entrance. Inside, on the altar, hung a frosted confection shaped from petals. It shimmered like glass. Lunaria's breath caught. Not the sleeping heart. Another shrine, deeper in the wood, marking the way she had chosen. She stepped under the mossy roof. Behind the altar, the ground sloped down into a wide dark basin. Far below, something pulsed. A slow, buried glow, faint as a heartbeat under ice. The sleeping heart lay down there, close now, but still asleep and still cold. The fox had chosen right. But the crystal at her chest flared and cracked again. A sliver broke loose and fell into the snow. Its light sank to a weak red ember. Lunaria had found the way down. She had almost no power left to make the descent.