The journey proved to be far less thrilling than Elizabeth had imagined. In her mind, the voyage to the moon should have been a grandiose event, full of lights, arcane shudders, and a sky opening into cascades of stars. Instead… it was… instantaneous.
Her carriage simply passed through the magic portal, like someone crossing a doorway between rooms. And on the other side, they were there: on the surface of the moon.
What did take time was the military deployment. For over forty minutes, guards, strategists, healers, and sages descended one by one, securing the perimeter, and erecting a defensive camp with clockwork precision. Banners were driven into the lunar stone as if asserting the will of six kingdoms. A defensive formation was raised with foldable, magically reinforced structures, while mages summoned containment barriers around the encampment.
Inside each carriage, an environmental stabilization spell maintained everyone's vital functions as if they were on solid ground: they could breathe, speak, and move without noticing the lack of atmosphere or gravity. Even the ground seemed to obey the rules of the planet they had left behind.
Finally, when all was in place, Elizabeth descended from her carriage, accompanied by the princes. What she saw left her speechless.
The lunar wasteland was desolate. The terrain, more than just inhospitable, seemed to have been ravaged by an ancient cataclysm. Fragmented rocks, eroded hills, and an endless array of deformed structures that could not be natural. It was as if someone had taken an entire civilization, smashed it to pieces with blows of chaos, and then molded the rubble into a hollow shell.
Everywhere she looked, she found traces of ancient architecture: a half-buried column, the remains of a sunken portico, or the fragment of a staircase that led nowhere. It all evoked a story no one had ever told. A memory the moon had not yet decided to release.
"This place… is not natural," whispered Vincent, dismounting from his magical beast.
Elizabeth didn't answer. She just stared at the horizon. The landscape was sadder than a graveyard. There were no tombs here, no epitaphs. Only absence.
Suddenly, a group of riders on silver unicorns approached swiftly. The white armor with nacreous reflections they wore identified them as part of the advance squadron. One of them bowed briefly before the princess and the princes.
"Your Highnesses," he reported. "We will escort the carriages on the ground. The aerial squadron will be above us. They will alert us to any anomaly."
"Aerial squadron?" Elizabeth asked, looking up.
And then she saw them.
Seven dragons.
True dragons of war, flying in perfect formation over the camp. Colossal creatures, with iridescent scales, translucent leather wings, and latent fire in their throats. Each was mounted by an elite rider, carrying enchanted spears and floating grimoires. The mere roar of one of them shook the ground beneath their feet.
Who in their right mind would dare face something like that? Elizabeth thought. For the first time since she had glimpsed that dark vision, she felt a shred of security.
But Azrael's voice was quick to cloud that thought.
"I don't wish to seem impertinent," he said with his usual elegant and distant tone, "but if we find nothing here… it will only make you look ridiculous."
Elizabeth frowned at him. She didn't need to be reminded of what was at stake.
Azrael lowered his voice slightly, stepping just a little closer.
"Don't misunderstand me, Princess… I am merely suggesting that, if you allow it, I could arrange for some 'proof' to legitimize this expedition. So as not to return empty-handed."
That was enough.
Elizabeth scoffed in annoyance and walked away without a word.
Now she perfectly understood why Narel sometimes wanted to punch him.
Azrael had a special gift for finding the exact words to irritate anyone. And the worst part was that he did it with a serene smile, as if every provocation were part of some twisted diplomacy.
She walked aimlessly along the secured perimeter, feeling the others' eyes on her back. The doubt was palpable. Mayron was examining a rock with scientific disinterest, Dren was watching the horizon with his arms crossed, clearly bored, and Azrael… he simply waited, with the patience of a statue.
"Eli…" Narel's soft voice reached her. He was the only one who didn't seem to be judging her. "What exactly did you feel?"
"I don't know…" she admitted, frustrated. "It's an echo. A memory that isn't mine. A warning. It tells me that something terrible happened here, and that the answer is hidden."
A tense silence, heavy with expectation and doubt, had fallen over the makeshift camp. Finally, the firm voice of a royal knight, resonating with metallic clarity in the thin air, broke the stillness.
"All set! Your Highnesses, please proceed to the carriages!"
Elizabeth and the princes were instructed to enter the main carriage, the expedition's command center. Dren, however, refused with a grunt.
"No. Walls are a cage," he declared, crossing his imposing arms. His gaze drifted to the figure of a knight beginning to climb a rope ladder toward the back of one of the dragons. "I'd rather ride on the roof. If something happens, I want to be the first to leap into battle."
It was a logical reason, and very much like him, but there was something else he secretly yearned for, an almost childlike spark in his eyes that only a very sharp observer might notice. He longed, with an intensity that surprised even himself, for the chance to ride one of those enormous, majestic beasts. To feel that power under his control… that would make this entire trip completely worth it, regardless of the outcome.
Mayron, Vincent, Elizabeth, and the silent Veldora entered the carriage without protest. For Mayron, it was the perfect laboratory, and he was already deploying a series of scanning lenses and crystals on the central table. For Vincent, his place was beside Elizabeth. For Veldora, her duty was to be her princess's shadow.
Outside, Narel and Azrael made a different choice. With natural elegance, they mounted their unicorns. Narel's was a creature of Vhalmir, with a horn that shone with starlight and a coat that seemed woven from the night itself. Azrael's was a stallion from Solarys, white as snow and with a haughty gaze that was a reflection of its own rider. Both princes, for very different reasons, preferred the freedom and the view that riding in the open offered.
The plan was explained by a Vhalmir strategist: the objective was to circle the entire moon, scanning the perimeter by sky and land. The dragons in the air would use wide-area tracking spells, while the ground teams, led by the princes, would employ precision magic to analyze any anomaly. Tracking spells from different magical schools were deployed: detection of arcane essence, telluric resonance, dimensional anomalies, ethereal tracking… Each with a different range of precision. Like a swarm of wisdom floating over an ancient wound. After five complete rotations, they would have mapped the entire lunar surface without missing a single millimeter.
Which would take them about a day per rotation.
Five days.
And if that happened—if the result was the absolute silence of a barren moon—Elizabeth knew what would come next: the mocking glances, the whispers of distrust, the comparisons to capricious and unhinged queens of the past. If things went well for everyone else, but fatally for Elizabeth, the expedition would end in just five days. Five days to prove she wasn't crazy. Five days for her visions, her terror, and the memory of her past deaths not to be dismissed as the delirium of a frightened princess.
She would be the laughingstock of all. The jest of the six kingdoms.
Her hands, sheathed in fine silk gloves, began to sweat. She felt an icy knot in her stomach. Every passing second was a grain of sand falling in an hourglass that marked the countdown to her humiliation.
And then, with a soft jolt that was barely felt, the expedition began. The carriage started to move, a heavy, luxurious sarcophagus rolling over the dust of a dead world. Through the window, Elizabeth saw the figures of Narel and Azrael riding with unperturbed elegance. Above them, the colossal shadow of the dragons was cast upon the desolate ground. Everything moved with impeccable military efficiency, a perfect machine in which she was the one defective piece, the one uncertain variable whose failure seemed increasingly inevitable.
Six hours passed. Six hours of a dense silence, broken only by Mayron's monotonous and increasingly irritated voice, which sounded like a hammer striking a nail into the coffin of Elizabeth's hopes.
"Quadrant B19, analysis complete… Result: nothing." One blow.
"Quadrant B20, analysis finished… Result: absolutely nothing." Another blow.
"Quadrant B21, analyzed… Result: nothing at all. Seriously, there is nothing here!"
Elizabeth wanted to scream at him to shut up. Each of his words was a stake of ice slowly penetrating her heart. She clenched her hands in her lap, her nails digging into her palms. I shouldn't worry yet, she told herself, a silent prayer. It's only the first day… good things always happen in the end, right?
That was when all hell broke loose.
A sharp, metallic CLANG!, as if an iron fist had struck the roof, echoed inside the carriage. Instantly, the outside was illuminated by a glare so intense that the shadows inside the cabin turned sharp and black. The carriage shook violently.
Narel's voice, stripped of all its calm and filled with a wild urgency, tore through the air: "Raise the defenses! Protect the carriage! Now!"
From the roof, Dren's shout was a roar of pure disbelief and rage. "What the hell does this mean?!"
The most surprising thing, what froze the blood in Elizabeth's veins, wasn't the attack. It was what she felt next. She could perceive Dren's power gathering above them, a supernova contained in a mortal body, a volcano on the verge of erupting, tensing every fiber of his being to annihilate the threat. But beneath that fury… for the first time, she sensed fear. A cold, deep fear emanating from the strongest warrior she knew. And that was more terrifying than any monster.
"What the hell does this mean, Narel?!" Azrael accused from outside, his voice losing its elegance for an edge of panic. "What the hell is that thing?!"
"I… I don't know!" Narel's reply came, broken, full of a confusion that bordered on terror. "I swear, I don't know!"
Elizabeth needed to see. The chaos of shouts and the din of the unseen battle were suffocating her. "Mayron! Master Vincent! Someone, show me what's happening outside!"
"I'm on it, Your Highness." Before she could ask, Master Vincent's hands were already moving in the air, weaving threads of light. A magic screen flickered and came to life before them.
At first, they saw nothing. The image was completely saturated by a torrent of white-hot fire. The deafening roar of three dragons attacking in unison shook the foundations of the moon, and even through the magic viewer, the heat was almost palpable. They were trying to incinerate something while the other four dragons flew in tight circles above them, like vultures watching over an unimaginable danger.
A few seconds passed that felt like an eternity.
Then, the breath of fire ceased. The silence that followed was almost more terrifying than the roar. The dragons regained altitude, their silhouettes stark against the pitch-black sky.
Where their combined breath had struck, there was now a smoking crater, a sea of molten rock and fused metal that glowed with an orange, agonizing light.
But in the center of that liquid inferno, standing impassively, was a figure.
As the smoke cleared, the details became sharp. It was semi-destroyed, its armor cracked and partially melted, but its form was unmistakable. Elizabeth felt the air leave her lungs. She had seen it before. In fact, very recently.
It was a suit of armor. A black knight.
It wasn't a similar suit of armor. It was the same one. Exactly identical to the form Dren had taken in his battle against Narel. The nightmare made real was standing in the middle of a sea of fire, as if the breath of three dragons were nothing more than a summer breeze.
The knight did not move.
It just watched.
Faceless. Wordless.
It just watched the carriage from the heart of the burning crater. As if it had been waiting for this exact moment. This arrival.
As if it recognized Elizabeth.
And was challenging her.