The Moon Thief

In the kingdom of Veloria, the moon was not a rock in the sky—it was a silver lantern, hung from the heavens by the gods themselves. It floated gently above the world, tethered by an unseen thread, glowing with soft, celestial light. The moon did not follow phases by orbit or science. Instead, it responded to the ruler of Veloria—their heart, their spirit, their joy and grief. When King Thalen laughed, the moon gleamed full and golden-white. When Queen Ysolde wept, it thinned into a solemn crescent.

For generations, the moon’s light had been a constant companion to the land—guiding ships, blessing harvests, and coloring dreams with wonder.

Then the last monarch died, childless and alone. No heir stepped forward. No cousin, no distant royal line. Just silence. And as the crown sat unworn in the throne room, the moon flickered once… and vanished.

It did not fall. It simply ceased to be.

Veloria plunged into a moonless night. Crops stunted in the fields, deprived of the moon’s strange nourishing light. The tides of the Eversway Sea stilled and thickened, like soup left cold. Dreams across the land curdled—turning into hushed nightmares, or worse, nothing at all. For Velorians had always dreamed by moonlight.

With no monarch, there was no tether. And with no tether, the moon was free—or lost.

In the city of Umbren, where shadows walked with names and starlight was bought and bottled in alleyways, a thief named Lira stood on her rooftop, watching the last of the moon’s shimmer vanish from the sky. The city’s towers pierced the heavens like broken teeth, and a permanent dusk lingered, lit only by lanterns and false magic.

Lira had grown up with the moon. She’d learned to climb under its glow, to leap from rooftop to rooftop with a silver gleam in her eyes. Her hair was dark, streaked with ash and the shimmer of soot; her hands could pluck secrets from pockets, poems from sealed letters, or gold from the tightest purse. She was the best in Umbren—possibly in all Veloria.

She was also the last person who wanted anything to do with prophecies.

So when a knock came at her attic door that night—a gentle knock, followed by a hoot—she opened it only to tell whoever it was to leave.

And there stood an owl. But not any owl—this one was nearly her height, cloaked in royal blue armor etched with sigils and tiny glowing stars. Its eyes glowed like lanterns.

“You must return the moon,” it said in a deep, serious hoot. “You’re the last Moonbound.”

Lira blinked. “The last what?”

“The Moonbound,” repeated the owl. “The one chosen by birthright to safeguard and, in times of peril, restore the silver lantern. It is in your blood.”

She laughed. “You’ve got the wrong attic.”

But the owl wasn’t laughing. With a quiet rustle, it dropped something onto her floor—a silver feather, shining with a strange inner light. When Lira touched it, the world swayed.

She saw castles made of clouds and music. A lullaby hummed in a voice she had never heard, but somehow knew. A woman with comet-braided hair kissed her forehead and whispered a name—a name Lira hadn’t heard since her grandmother died. She stumbled back, breathless.

“That was a memory,” the owl said gently. “Yours.”

“I never knew my mother,” Lira said, eyes wide.

“No. But she knew you. She was a Moonbound, too.”

Reluctantly, something deep within Lira began to stir. A kind of... calling but also skepticism.

The owl, whose name was Zeffir, explained the truth. The moon was more than a symbol—it was a source of balance, tied not just to Veloria but to every corner of the continent. And now, someone—or something—had stolen it.

“It’s not gone,” Zeffir said. “It’s hidden. Trapped. Caged. You are the only one who can follow the thread it left behind.”

Lira didn’t want to be a hero. She wanted her rooftop, her secrets, her freedom.

But she also wanted the moon.

So she stole a sword from a tomb where time stood still. She plucked a ship from the cloudless sea—a vessel shaped like a crescent, held aloft by windless magic. And from a sleeping god in a mountain temple, she whispered a name and stole a spell older than the sky.

With Zeffir at her side, she journeyed. Through forests where trees grew upside down and gravity forgot itself. Across deserts where every grain of sand whispered a lie. Into a storm that had raged for a hundred years and held a stillness inside it, like the eye of a forgotten deity.

The moon’s trail was faint, but it sang to her. Not with sound, but with memory. The more she followed it, the more she remembered things she had never lived—echoes of her mother’s life, of other Moonbound before her, each one called when the world was most broken.

Finally, she reached a valley of dusk.

There, curled in the hollow of a mountain, was the thief.

It was not a monster. It was not a man.

It was longing, made flesh. A creature of shadows and sorrow, its eyes like distant stars. In its arms it cradled the moon—not as a prize, but like a child with a nightlight.

“I only wanted to feel warm,” it said.

Lira did not lift her sword. She stepped forward, slowly, and sat beside it.

She told it stories. She shared her laughter, her childhood dreams, her memory of the time she fell off a rooftop and landed in a bakery and ate bread until the owner forgave her. She gave it her grandmother’s lullaby.

And finally, she gave it her name. Her true one. The creature cried. Not loudly. Just a single star-shaped tear.

And then it let go.

The moon rose, light blooming from its silver skin, and drifted back into the sky like a balloon returning to a child’s hand.

When Lira brought it home, the people of Veloria wept. Crops stretched. The sea sighed. The dreams returned.

They begged her to be queen. She refused.

Instead, she climbed to the highest tower, tied the moon back to the heavens—just a little off-center—and left.

No one saw her go. But legend says she wandered into the horizon, walking moonbeams like stairs.

Some say she lives among the stars now. Others believe she visits the moon when it twitches slightly in the sky—checking its tether, whispering stories to it, or perhaps just stealing a few dreams from sleeping kings.

Because Lira was never meant to rule. She was meant to roam.

And the moon? It dances still, because she taught it how.