A Mother's Plea

A Mother's Plea
Seraphina's POV

The old power ripped through my body like lightning.
I screamed as the Luna Priestess magic I'd buried for twenty years burst back to life. My bones felt like they were breaking and rebuilding themselves. My eyes burned as silver light poured out of them.
But I didn't care about the pain. My kid was disappearing right in front of me.
"Elara!" I shouted, forcing myself to stand even though every muscle in my body was on fire. "You have to fight this!"
Above us, my baby girl floated like a goddess made of stars. She was so beautiful and so scary that I wanted to cry. But those silver eyes that looked down at me held no recognition. No love. No memory of the little girl who used to crawl into my bed during rains.
The Moon Goddess was taking my daughter piece by piece.
"I know you can hear me, Elara Stone!" I called out, letting my own power rise higher. "You're not just some divine tool! You're the little girl who cried when we had to leave her pet bear behind!"
Her glowing head tilted slightly. For just a second, I thought I saw something flicker in those empty silver eyes.
But then that other girl appeared.
Aurora appeared out of thin air like a nightmare come to life. She looked perfectly like Elara, but everything about her was wrong. Where Elara glowed with warm light, Aurora radiated cold that made my breath fog in the summer air.
"Hello, mother," Aurora said, her voice like winter wind. "Did you miss me?"
My heart stopped. "That's impossible. You died when you were born."
Aurora's laugh made the trees around us wither. "I never died. I just went somewhere else. Somewhere dark and hungry." She looked up at Elara with eyes like black holes. "And now I'm here to collect what's mine."
"Leave her alone!" I snarled, stepping between them. The power in my chest roared like a caged wolf. "Whatever you are, you're not my daughter!"
"Oh, but I am," Aurora smiled, and it was the most awful thing I'd ever seen. "I'm the kid you threw away. The twin you let die so precious Elara could live."
The words hit me like physical blows. Because they were true. When the girls were born, Aurora had been stillborn while Elara lived. I'd made my choice to save the live child.
"That's not what happened," I whispered, but my voice shook.
"Isn't it?" Aurora's power started growing around her like a storm. "You chose her over me. You gave her all the love while I got nothing but darkness."
Above us, Elara was beginning to change. The warm silver light was getting colder. More like Aurora's power.
"No!" I reached out with everything I had, sending my memories flying toward my live daughter. "Elara, remember who you are!"
I pushed the memory of her first steps into that holy light. The way she'd laughed and fallen into my arms.
Then the memory of her first day of school. How she'd been scared but tried to be strong for me.
The time she got sick and I stayed up all night taking care of her.
Every scraped knee I'd kissed better. Every bedtime story I'd read. Every moment of pure, human love we'd shared.
"You are my daughter first!" I shouted into the burning light. "Before you were chosen by any goddess! Before any of this divine crap! You're Elara, and you're mine!"
For a moment, the cold light warming up again. Elara's face scrunched up like she was trying to remember something important.
"Mama?" she whispered, and her voice sounded almost human again.
Hope burst in my chest. "Yes, baby! It's me! Come back to me!"
But Aurora wasn't done.
"How touching," she growled, raising both hands. "Let me show you what real power looks like."
Dark energy shot out of her like poison. It slammed into Elara's silver light, and both my girls screamed in harmony. The sound made my eardrums feel like they were going to pop.
Where their forces met, reality started to crack. Actual tears emerged in the air, showing glimpses of something that shouldn't exist.
"Stop!" I screamed. "You're going to destroy everything!"
But it was too late. The collision of their opposite forces was tearing holes in the world itself. Through those holes, I could see a place of total darkness. And in that darkness, something huge and old was stirring.
Something that had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Aurora laughed as the thing in the darkness started pushing through the cracks. "You wanted to know where I've been all these years? I've been learning from the Void itself! And now it's coming to collect what you owe it!"
The temperature dropped so fast that frost formed on the ground. The thing coming through the tears in reality was bigger than anything should be. It had too many eyes and too many teeth and a hunger that made my soul want to run and hide.
"Twenty years ago," Aurora continued, her eyes now totally black, "you made a deal with the Void to save Elara's life. You promised it a Luna Priestess in exchange. Well, here I am to collect!"
My blood turned to ice. She was right. When Elara was dying as a baby from the curse, I'd made a desperate deal with something dark and powerful. I'd promised it anything to save my child.
I just never thought it would come to collect.
"The deal was for one Luna Priestess," the Void spoke through Aurora's mouth, its voice like the death of stars. "But now there are two. How lovely. We'll take them both."
Tentacles of pure darkness reached through the cracks toward both my girls. Elara was still fighting the goddess change, but she was weakening. And Aurora... Aurora was welcoming the darkness like an old friend.
I had seconds to make a choice that would decide the fate of everything.
Save one girl and lose the other? Try to save both and risk losing them to something worse than death? Or...
I looked at the mark on my wrist that I'd hidden for twenty years. The mark that showed I'd made a deal with the Void. There was one more choice, but it would cost me everything.
As the darkness reached for my girls, I closed my eyes and whispered the words I'd hoped I'd never have to say.
"I invoke the blood price."
The moment those words left my mouth, every star in the sky went out.