On the night the red moon bled across the sky, no child was meant to be born. The elders sealed their doors. The wind turned still. The sky held its breath, as if reluctant to witness what destiny had written. Defying all odds, a girl came crying into the world-her voice ragged, her eyes unnaturally bright.
Some said the fire lanterns refused to burn that night. Others swore the birds flew backward, and the bells tied to their temples rang without wind.
"A Divine intervention", announced the high priest.
"When flesh turns to ash and wrath becomes wind, the sky shall weep magma, and the stars shall kneel," whispered the high priest, tracing a scorched feather over the infant's brow. "She is not meant for peace."
She was born wrapped in silks kissed with sunlight. Loved. Protected. Adorned with the gentle pride only a firstborn daughter could command. But her fate had already been written—her birth on that forsaken night preordained by the gods. For a greater cause, but one that had to face tribulations.
Fate ever hungry, chose its moment.
She was three when the trusted hand meant to tuck her into safety instead vanished into shadow. The servant's betrayal was swift, traded in whispers and coin. And so, the heir of a powerful house disappeared—not into death, but into obscurity.
She woke in cages.
In darkness.
In cold hands and harsher words.
By ten, she was sold again—this time to the Gu family. The surname Gu added to her own name Ming Yue. It sounded elegant. Respectable. But no name could soothe the ache of displacement, the rage of abandonment buried in young bones.
She searched their eyes for warmth.
They gave her duty.
She offered loyalty.
They gave her silence.
And now—bound to a stake, fire crawling toward her flesh—they offered her death.
Not even the moon dared show its face. As if the heavens themselves knew: this was not an end, but the spark of something old returning.
"The girl who fell from the stars," the high priest once whispered, reading from a scroll no one dared touch. "She will burn—not in punishment, but in passage."
*********
Years passed, but time could never dull the edge of fate.
Gu Ming Yue grew within the shadows of the Gu family. All hope for warmth and love slowly faded, replaced by scorn, cold soup, and whispered orders.
But every now and then—on stormy nights or beneath moonless skies—she would feel it stir. A flicker in her bones. A pulse in her blood. The cruel fire she feared felt more like home than harm.
And so, the stars watched silently, bound by their own decree, as the wheel turned toward the night foretold.
The night of judgment.
The night of red.
The Night of Fate.