But then, the river shook. A quake burst through the darkness as if the water itself had been split in two. From deep within, light exploded upward, a spear of brilliance came out from beneath of the water. In the heart of it bloomed a colossal lotus, each petal white-gold, dripping fire that did not smoke, fire that devoured without mercy. The worms screamed, their bodies writhing as the light touched them, skin blistering, pus hissing into vapor. In seconds, the swarm was nothing but charred husks drifting lifeless on the boiling surface.

The water around her cleared, the burned corpses sinking away. She leapt from the wrecked boat, clutching only a bamboo pole, and drove it into the riverbed again and again, rowing faster, stabbing harder, heart pounding like a drum in her throat.

After what felt like miles, she slowed, breath ragged. The surface lay still. No shapes moved beneath. She realized she had gone far beyond the shadow's reach, beyond where the dome had fallen before. For a heartbeat, she thought it was over.

...........................

Nothing could be seen behind the dome now. Her boat had fallen back onto the river's skin with a hollow slap, sending ripples into the dark. She turned her head, staring at that looming shape. No moonlight to guide her - not this time either. Then she noticed it: ahead, the river's path was being swallowed by mist. Not the soft kind that kissed the water, but a heavy, unnatural haze. A dark mist.

Her gut twisted. Something about its movement told her - this was bad. Worse than the dome. The darkness above her felt as if it had spread across the whole world, choking out every star.

Then came the sound. A laugh, but not one voice, total thirteen, with same sentence different voice. Each one with a different timbre, layered like cracking wood, like chewing meat, like wet, sloppy munching. The chorus broke into whispers between the laughter:
"In lonely moon… why a beauty drifts alone? Come to us."
"Why alone?"
"Why protect?"
"What will you gain? What will you lose?"

The words slid under her skin like cold needles.

She held her ground on the still boat, eyes narrowing as shapes began to form in the mist — thirteen silhouettes. Five clearly women, four clearly men, and four… not human in any way she could name. Their proportions were wrong, joints bent backward, outlines flickering as if they were unfinished.

Her breath slowed. She raised her right hand. From her palm, a small orb of yellow light was born, rising into the choking fog. It climbed higher, pulsing faintly… before stopping mid air.

Then it swelled, suddenly, violently, a sunflower burst of light. The mist didn't vanish; it collapsed, settling into the river as if being swallowed by the current.

Something in that collapse made her instincts scream. She drew in her energy fast, wrapping her whole body in it.

And then, from the dark, the voice came again — layered, hungry, amused:
"Will you feed them… or will you feed me?"

............................

The fog peeled away in curling wisps, revealing a sky where no stars breathed, no moon glowed—until she looked up and saw it.

A moon, caught in an eternal eclipse, hung unnaturally low above the river. Its dim edge pulsed faintly, as if something beneath its surface was trying to push through. A deep, humming vibration trembled in the air, crawling over her skin.

Her grip tightened on the bamboo pole. The river had grown still, unnaturally still—its surface now a dull mirror reflecting the suffocating darkness above.

Then she saw it.
Something… rising.

At first, just a curve appeared at the moon's lower edge, and from that curve a face emerged—half black, half white, the division cutting straight down the middle. The teeth followed the same pattern: alternating black and white in perfect symmetry. Two eyes, both glowing yellow like molten gold, stared directly into her.

A sharp peek escaped the thing's mouth as it crawled out of the moon's surface like an insect leaving a shell. One clawed hand gripped the lunar edge, but the other slipped—its black half dangling for a heartbeat before catching itself again.

Then the moon changed.

From its corners, red veins began to burst into view—like cracks on an inflamed eye. They bulged outward, spreading in jagged threads across the pale surface, inching toward the centre. Each strand was thick, pulsing with dark clots that dried instantly, forming brittle rivers of scarlet.

The veins pushed down past the moon's edge, dangling toward the earth. They hung there, swaying in an unseen wind, a grotesque curtain of dried blood threads.

It might have been beautiful - had it not been alive.

The moon began to melt.

Its silver-white surface sagged inward, dripping in slow rivulets toward a single point along the curve. The molten lunar flesh gathered and thickened, then began to split. Something was inside.

The first wing tore free, a membrane slick and trembling, red as raw muscle. Then another. And another. The things inside clawed their way out like new-borns desperate for breath. They were bats, but wrong, each snout curved too sharply, each set of teeth far too long. Their wings were strung with black veins, their eyes hollow pits.

They fell from the moon in clusters, unfurling as they dropped.

First one. Then ten. Then fifty. Then a hundred.

The sky darkened as thousands poured from the lunar wound, blotting out what little light remained. They swirled in tightening circles before breaking into a downward torrent.

She didn't think, as she saw them coming.

Her hairpin spun between her fingers, its metal glinting faintly. In a swift motion, she unfurled it into a rotating construct, a strange, umbrella-like shield that whirled. The first wave of bats struck it and scattered, their shrieks slicing the air.

For a moment, she thought she'd held them back.

Then she heard it.

A tune. Soft. Drawn-out. Almost… deliberate.

From the moon's surface, it began to bleed again - but this time it did not form a bulged shape. Instead, it shaped itself into the figure of a woman, lying asleep along the moon's curve. A gentle breeze blew. From the wax of this woman's figure, the surface began to melt, and a real woman emerged. She silently opened her eyes, stretched in a yawning motion, then stared at her with blankness.

She wore red, the folds of her garments heavy as if soaked in blood. A single paramita flower bloomed over one eye as it was open, its pale petals strangely untainted. Her other eye was a shattered thing, like broken glass holding the fragments of many irises. Light green hair spilled down her shoulders in slow waves, shifting with an unseen breeze.

The figure moved not toward her, but around her, as if inspecting prey. Her lips curled faintly, the ghost of a smile forming before fading again.

Then she lifted one hand, slowly, gracefully, until it aligned with the level of the moon's edge.

But her posture shifted. Her head tilted, and in that instant, her presence darkened.

The bats had returned, swirling in a tightening funnel above the river. They began to gather again, their bodies pressing together in a writhing mass until they were almost solid.

From the red woman's shadow, an object took shape.

A violin.

Its body was unlike any mortal instrument, strings of varying colours stretched taut: some black, some bone-white, others the deep blue of midnight or the wet crimson of fresh blood. Each string ended in a small bell that swayed gently, giving off faint, uneven chimes.

The violin's frame was carved from something pale, smooth, and unmistakably human. The bow was worse—fashioned from a torso's length of bone, with two tiny, blinking eyes embedded where the hair began. Instead of horsehair, the bow's string was a bundle of pulsing veins, weaving over one another into a rope-like thickness.

The woman's hand moved.

The bow touched the strings.

The first note was made. it was pressure. A pulse that shuddered through the river, the mist, the sky. Her teeth ached. Her chest tightened. The air thickened as if it were trying to enter her lungs and choke her from the inside. 

A flower-shaped bell began to materialize, hanging from the top corner of the moon. It rang softly as a gentle breeze blew.

And beneath the music… whispering.

She couldn't tell if it was coming from the violin or from somewhere deeper...

........................................

So, what will happen next? Who are these people? And why do they want to hurt them?

To find out more, keep reading Nirbindra. 

To be Continued...