Angela woke on cold moss with no memory of falling asleep, and seven moons hung over her like watching eyes. She sat up fast. This was not her apartment. This was not Earth. The trees glowed faint blue, and her pink hair caught the strange light and shimmered back at her. Her only anchor was a single thing clutched in her fist: a torn page from her sketchbook, creased and dirty. She had drawn roses on it last week, home, safe. Now she had no idea how to get back. Something breathed behind her. She turned. A massive wolf stepped from the mist, its silver fur striped with glowing runes, obsidian horns curving from its skull. Its pink eyes locked on her. Angela scrambled up and ran. Roots tore at her bare feet. The creature paced her easily, herding her, unhurried. She tripped into a clearing and froze. A broken stone archway stood there, covered in carved symbols she somehow almost understood. The portal was shattered, dead. No way through. The hound lunged. A shape moved faster. He came between them without a sound, over seven feet of pale skin and silver-white hair, two black horns rising from his temples. The wolf dropped flat and whined. The tall man did not look at it. He looked at her, and his eyes were the same impossible pink as hers caught the moonlight. Thin black markings slid beneath his skin like shadows. "You should not exist," he said. His voice was low and wrong and beautiful. Angela backed into the cold stone. "Please. I don't know how I got here." He stepped closer. Up close he smelled like frost and smoke. She saw the fractures of pink light flicker inside his horns, then fade. He reached out. She should have run. She didn't. His fingers closed around her wrist. The touch hit her like a struck bell. Heat poured up her arm and into her chest. She gasped. The markings on his skin flared bright white, racing toward the hand that held her. He staggered. For one instant she felt something that was not hers: an old, buried hunger waking up inside him, and a single word pressing out of it. Mine. He let go as if she had burned him. They stood staring, both breathing hard. "What did you do," he whispered. It was not a question. His voice shook. In thousands of years, Angela understood somehow, nothing had ever made this creature afraid. The broken archway behind her pulsed once. A thread of silver light lifted from the dead stone, thin as spun silk, and drifted between them. It touched his chest. It touched hers. Then it sank into them both and vanished. The Moon King looked at the fading light, then at Angela, and his pale eyes filled with something close to dread. "You are bound to me now," he said. "And I cannot undo it."

Angela stood in the clearing, staring at the broken archway. The silver thread had sunk into her chest and left a dull ache. She pressed her palm to the cold stone. Nothing. The symbols did not light. The gap in the center stayed dead. This was the only door home, and it was shattered. She had to know what broke it. "It will not open," the Moon King said behind her. "Not for you. Not for anyone." She turned on him. Fear made her sharp. "Then tell me what broke it. I came through here. I need to go back." He said nothing. His pale eyes moved over the ruined stone. Angela stepped past him and grabbed a loose chunk of the arch. The violet crystals at its base glowed faintly under her fingers. She tried to fit the piece back into the gap. It slipped free and fell. The glow died. "Stop," he said. "Help me, then." She grabbed his wrist to pull him toward the stone. The touch struck her a second time. Heat flooded her arm. The world tilted. She saw things that were not hers: a sky split open, this same archway whole and burning with light, and his own hand raised toward it. She felt his terror. She felt him break the portal himself. Then it was gone. She let go and staggered back. "You," she whispered. "You broke it. I saw you do it." His face went still. The fractures of pink light flickered inside his horns, then faded. "You cannot see that. No one can see that." "I did." Her voice shook. "Why? Why would you close it?" "I did not close it for you." He stepped closer, towering over her. "I closed it long before you were born. To keep something out. To keep something in." His clawed hand lifted, almost touching her hair. "I have spent a thousand years burying what you just saw. And you reached into it like it was nothing." Angela understood then. The portal was no accident. He had destroyed it on purpose, ages ago. There was no quick repair. There was only him, and whatever he was hiding. "Then you can reopen it," she said. "You broke it. You can fix it." "It is not that simple." His voice dropped. "And now you are bound to me. If I reach for that power, it reaches for you too." He turned toward the black spires rising beyond the trees. His palace. He did not ask her to follow. He simply expected it. "Come," he said. "I will not leave you here for the hound. And I must learn how a human touched my memories." Angela looked at the dead archway one last time. The crystals stayed dark. No way through. Then she followed the monster toward his obsidian gates, because the only path home now ran straight through him.