Eclipse of the Souls

The year was 2001. In the mist-soaked forests of Oregon, where pine trees stood like silent sentinels and the sky rarely showed its face, an ancient secret stirred beneath the earth. The townsfolk of Evergrove had heard legends—whispers of an old ruin buried deep within Ashen Hollow, a forest no one dared to enter after sunset. They called it "The Wound," a collapsed temple older than any known civilization.

But something had changed.

On the eve of a rare celestial event—the Total Lunar Eclipse of the Blood Moon—strange occurrences began. Power outages, dead birds falling from the sky, people sleepwalking toward the woods. And in the silence between 3:00 and 3:01 a.m., the town's clocks froze.

Among the curious was Eli Mercer, a 24-year-old anthropology graduate who had returned home after the death of his estranged father. The elder Mercer had spent his final days raving about “the gate beneath the roots.” Eli found his journals filled with occult diagrams, drawings of the eclipse, and a recurring name: “Umbrae Lux”—The Light of Shadows.

His childhood friend Ava Reyes, now a local sheriff’s deputy, warned him to leave it alone. But something about his father’s last sketch—a map of Ashen Hollow with the words “When the moon dies, the souls will wake”—pulled Eli toward the forest.

The night of the eclipse, Eli and Ava ventured into the Hollow.

The air thickened. The trees felt…alive. As the blood moon reached its zenith, they found the ruins: black stone archways etched with symbols glowing faintly red. The temperature dropped. Eli felt it before he saw it—the Veil tearing open. From the cracked earth emerged beings that didn’t belong to any myth.

Not demons. Not ghosts. Echoes of the damned, shadows with human forms and hollow eyes that radiated hunger. The Umbral Ones.

Eli learned too late that his father had been a Warden, a guardian of the seal between realms. The eclipse weakened the barrier. Now, the Umbral Ones were loose—and they remembered Eli's bloodline.

Ava fired shots, but bullets passed through the creatures like mist. Eli, guided by instinct and his father's writings, discovered an old relic buried in the altar—a blade of obsidian fused with lunar crystal, humming with latent energy. As he touched it, memories not his own flooded his mind—visions of ancient wars between light and darkness, and the last Eclipse War that buried the temple.

The sword responded to him. With every swing, it absorbed the shadows, locking them back into stone. But they were endless.

The duo ran, reaching the forest’s edge as the eclipse ended. The light weakened the creatures, forcing them back underground—but only temporarily.

Eli knew this was just the beginning. His father’s journals revealed a cycle: every 200 years, the veil thinned. The Eclipse of the Souls had returned, and Eli had inherited his father’s role.

Ava, once a skeptic, became his first ally in a growing war.

Now, armed with ancient knowledge, a cursed blade, and a town sitting atop a gateway to a forgotten underworld, Eli Mercer stands as the last light between humanity and the darkness it forgot.

Author's Note :

The news never reported what happened in Evergrove that night. Official cause: mass hysteria from eclipse-induced panic. But if you ever find yourself near Ashen Hollow on a blood moon... stay out of the trees. Some shadows don’t need light to move.