NOVEL WEB Chapter 9: Whispers Beneath the Crimson Moon
The wounds on my hand hadn't stopped bleeding.
I wrapped it with my sleeve, but the blood soaked through.
The torn page had vanished. Turned to ash. But the pain remained — not just in my body, but deep in my chest. Something had changed.
The vision. The masked cult.
**Yuria, chained like a sacrifice.**
My name being written on a cursed prophecy wasn't just a coincidence.
---
The next few days passed in a strange haze.
School felt even colder than usual. Not the weather — the people. The whispers. The stares. Even teachers had started avoiding me, like I carried some kind of plague.
Ever since Yuria disappeared, I was no longer the quiet, unnoticed boy in the back row. I was a shadow of a scandal. The freak who was close to "that vampire girl."
I didn't care anymore.
Let them whisper. Let them judge.
Because they didn't see what I saw.
They didn't hear her scream.
---
I skipped the last class and took the train out of town. There was only one place I could think of — the place I saw in the vision.
Black Rose Hill.
A forgotten cemetery on the edge of town. People said it was cursed. A place where the moon always looked red, even when the sky was clear.
No one went there anymore. Except maybe the dead.
But I wasn't going to mourn. I was going to find her.
---
As I climbed the cracked stone path, a gust of wind blew past — cold, bitter, sharp. Snowflakes danced through the air like feathers made of ash.
The hilltop was covered in graves. Most names had faded off the stones. One grave stood alone at the far edge, covered in black roses.
And at its base… was a mirror.
A small hand mirror, old and silver, half-buried in snow. My reflection stared back at me — but it wasn't alone.
Behind me, in the mirror… I saw her.
**Yuria.**
Her expression was blank, her eyes hollow — as if she couldn't see me. She raised her hand and pointed. Not at me. At something behind the grave.
I turned.
There was nothing but snow and silence… until the ground cracked open.
---
From the grave behind the roses, something rose — slow, unnatural.
A figure dressed in priest's robes… but its face was hollow. A skull of shadow. No eyes. No mouth. But it screamed.
My body froze. My legs wouldn't move.
> *"THE PRICE OF BLOOD… HAS NOT BEEN PAID."*
The creature swung its arm — a flash of black mist shot toward me.
I ducked, rolled to the side, and grabbed a rusted cross from the grave. It wasn't a weapon. It was just instinct.
But the creature stopped.
It stared at the cross — and trembled.
A whisper filled my ear:
> *"Faith… still holds weight here."*
I turned, but no one was there.
The creature lunged again. This time, I stood my ground. My body moved before I could think, slashing the cross through the mist.
It howled — a sound like a hundred voices crying at once — and vanished into ash.
---
Silence returned.
And then I heard it.
> *"You're getting closer."*
Her voice.
Yuria.
I turned around, and there she stood — not a vision, not a dream — but not whole either.
She looked transparent. Like moonlight made flesh.
> "Why are you here…?" she whispered. "You'll only suffer more."
"I don't care," I said, barely breathing. "You saved me once. Now it's my turn."
She stepped closer. Her hand brushed my cheek — soft, cold, aching.
> "Takeru… even if I disappear, I'll never forget you."
The air around us grew heavier.
> "They're coming," she said. "The Crimson Order. They know about you now."
"Then let them come."
> "You don't understand. You're not just marked anymore… You've been chosen."
The wind howled louder.
She leaned in, her lips just beside my ear.
> *"Run… before the blood moon rises again."*
And just like that, she vanished — into petals of red.
---
I stood there in the snow, heart pounding.
The grave behind me was gone. The cross had crumbled.
But the black roses remained… and they were blooming..