The Case of the Missing Moon

It was raining magic the night the moon went missing.

This wasn’t an exaggeration. Magic really filled the air. Blue sparks slid down the gutters, glowing until they turned to steam. The rain made your skin itch and left you uneasy.

I was halfway through a glass of cheap whiskey when the sky suddenly went dark.

Not clouds. Not an eclipse. Just gone.

The Moon of Aurelion was blessed by the goddess, pulled the tides, and kept everyone sane. It vanished as if a god snuffed it out like a cigarette.

The bar fell quiet. Even the fae stopped laughing.

That’s when she walked in.

She wore her grief like a tailored coat, black velvet with silver runes. Her eyes were pale, almost like the moon, and they revealed truths most people tried to hide. Anyone could see she was important and dangerous. Usually, she was both.

“You’re a detective,” she said, sitting without asking.

“I find things people lose,” I said. “Sometimes people.”

She pushed a crescent-shaped pendant across the table. It felt warm and still seemed to hum.

“The moon has been stolen.”

I let out a short laugh, but it sounded off surprisingly. “Lady, if this is a joke, you need to stop.”

“I am Selene,” she said softly. “And I’m dying.”

That shut me up immediately.

In Aurelion, the moon was more than just light in the sky. It represented the law, time, and memory. Without it, spells broke, werewolves lost control, and the dead wandered without purpose. Selene, the living symbol of the lunar order, was tied to it.

No moon. No goddess.

“Who would do this?” I asked quickly.

She hesitated.

“Someone who loved me once,” she said.

That was always how it started.

The undercity always knew before the palace did. When magic is misused, it smells like burnt copper and regret. I followed that trail past spell shops and cursed pawn brokers, down to the canals where you couldn’t trust what you saw in the water.

The name resurfaced in pieces.

Morrow.

Former court mage. Exiled. Brilliant. Bitter.

And Selene’s former consort.

Love in Aurelion was never simple. Immortals loved mortals until the mortals died. Mortals loved gods until they destroyed them. Morrow loved Selene long enough to know her, and long enough to start resenting her.

I found him in an old, empty observatory. The lenses were cracked, and star maps peeled from the walls. The moon, or what was left of it, hung inside a glass sphere, dim and weak, like a heart outside the body.

“You shouldn’t be here, detective,” Morrow said without turning. “This is divine business.”

“Everything’s my business if it ends up bleeding in the streets.”

He smiled sadly. “I didn’t steal the moon. I saved it.”

“By killing its goddess?”

“She was already dying,” he said sharply, turning to face me. “She’s bound by laws older than mercy. She keeps giving until there’s nothing left. I just took the burden off her shoulders.”

“You caged her source of power.”

“I freed her from obligation.”

I remembered how tired Selene’s eyes looked.

“Love doesn’t get to decide that,” I said.

Morrow’s voice broke. “It does when gods won’t.”

Selene arrived before I could stop her.

Silver light filled the observatory. Her form flickered, unsteady. She looked at the stolen moon, then at Morrow.

“You would end the world for me?” she asked.

“I would end my life for you,” he replied.

She touched his face. He trembled.

“And that,” she said gently, “is why I left.”

Magic surged. The sphere cracked.

I ran.

When the light faded, the moon was back in its place, whole, bright, and distant. The tides settled, the dead rested, and the city breathed again. Morrow was gone. All that was left was ash and a final spell carved into the floor: Let her choose.

Selene found me at dawn.

“I suppose you’ll want payment,” she said.

“Already got it,” I replied, lighting a cigarette. “The world didn’t end.”

She smiled faintly. “What will you tell them?”

“The truth,” I said. “That love doesn’t excuse destruction. And gods don’t get happy endings.”

She nodded. “And detectives?”

I watched the moon rise, clean and cold.

“We keep looking,” I said. “Even when the light comes back.”

She faded with the dawn.

The rain stopped raining magic.

But the city never truly forgot what it was like to lose its moon.

Neither did I.