Prologue

People in Elaris liked to say the Warm Moon had always been there.

They were wrong.

Once, it was cold and distant—just a silver coin hung too high to ever spend, a watchful eye that never blinked. It only began to glow with its strange, gentle warmth when people started trading their memories.

At first, the trades were small—a forgotten fear here, a broken promise there. Someone would bring a piece of their past to the Lumen Market and leave feeling lighter, having exchanged pain for beauty, talent, or a moment’s peace. They smiled more, slept better, and thought they had outwitted sorrow.

But every memory sold became part of the Warm Moon’s light. It drank sorrow and grew heavy with the love people no longer held, forging a fragile flame in the sky.

The more memories given away, the thicker the moon’s warmth grew—until it began to tremble beneath the weight of memories no one wanted to face.

When it finally cracked, no one heard the sound. Except two.

One was Kael, a starmapper who never sold a memory and wore his past like armor. The other was Seren, no mere mortal, but the mortal fragment of the moon itself, made flesh and breath.

They met on a night lined with flickering paper lanterns and the scent of blooming flowers, beneath a sky soft enough to touch. He thought this was just a first date. She knew it was their anniversary—the hundredth time the moon tried to anchor itself through their love.