Era of the Living Moon

Aurora swiped at her screen, confirming the allocation, then turned back to me, something sharp glinting in her expression. Her lips parted, ready to speak—but the words never came.

The door rattled.

Not the frantic, desperate pounding we'd grown accustomed to upstairs. This was different. Methodical. A slow, deliberate sound that sent ice crawling up my spine. A scrape of nails against metal, a dull thud, then another. Patient. Calculated. Hunting.

My muscles tensed as reality crashed down on me again. The brief reprieve we'd found in this basement wasn't safety—it was borrowed time. In this new world of lunar magic and silver-eyed monsters, "safe" was nothing but a comforting lie we told ourselves. Even here, surrounded by cold concrete walls and protected by a thick steel door, we weren't hidden. We were just delayed prey.

Aurora moved before I could finish the thought, rising to her feet in one fluid motion. Her sword materialized with a soft shing of silver light, coalescing from nothing like it had been waiting just beyond the veil of reality for her call. It still caught me off guard—the effortlessness of it, as if wielding a weapon forged from moonlight was the most natural thing in the world for her.

"I'll take care of it," she said, voice steady as she stepped toward the door, the blade humming with quiet energy.

"Wait." I reached out, fingers wrapping around her wrist. The contact sent a jolt through me—her skin was burning hot, heart pounding beneath my grip.

She turned, eyes narrowing. "Nate, we don't have time to—"

"Let me try," I said, surprising even myself with the conviction in my voice.

Her eyebrows shot up. "What?"

"My class. I want to see what it does." What I could do.

She studied me for a long moment, tension radiating from her like heat. The sword in her hand pulsed once, twice, as if sensing her indecision. After what felt like an eternity, she gave a short, sharp nod. "Fine. But the second you screw up, I'm stepping in."

"Deal."

I swallowed hard and forced myself to stand, legs unsteady beneath me as I faced the rattling door. My fingers clenched into fists, nails digging into my palms. 'Breathe,' I commanded myself. 'Just breathe.'

'System. Abilities.'

A new screen shimmered into existence before me, translucent blue and impossibly real. I focused on the first skill that flickered into existence:

Astral Rewrite: Gravity Anomaly

Edit gravitational force in a localized area by rewriting the lunar code.

The words hung in the air, their meaning sinking into me like stones dropped into still water. Edit. Rewriting. I didn't summon spells or swing a weapon like Aurora. My class altered reality itself.

The rattling grew more violent, metal groaning under increasing pressure. Whatever waited on the other side wasn't mindless. It knew—it knew—something was hiding here. And it was growing impatient.

I stepped forward, heart hammering against my ribs. Aurora shifted behind me, the soft hiss of her blade cutting through air the only indication of her readiness to intervene.

I lifted my hand, unsure what I was reaching for, but trusting the system to guide me.

Something cold shimmered into existence between my fingers—a quill.

Not metal, not wood, not anything that could be defined by earthly terms. It pulsed with otherworldly energy, shifting colors between deep indigo and shimmering stardust, its tip dripping with what I somehow knew was Astral Ink—liquid cosmic energy harvested from the very force that had turned our world upside down.

The moment my skin made full contact with it, my vision changed.

Reality fractured before my eyes, splitting open to reveal what lay beneath. Thin, glowing lines of energy—a network of flowing, interconnected lunar magic—spun through the air around me, as if the fabric of existence had been written on invisible parchment. Every object, every surface, every molecule of air was coded into this strange script of luminous constellations and runic formulas that twisted and turned through three-dimensional space.

And through all of it, past the heavy steel and concrete, I saw the zombie.

Its form outlined in raw, pulsing lunar energy, like a broken marionette filled with unnatural life. Silver light leaked from the cracks in its skin, pouring from its eyes and mouth like liquid metal. And above its head, something strange flickered—lines of lunar code, shifting and twisting like a chaotic tangle of equations I could barely comprehend.

'The code that made it move. That made it exist.'

The quill pulsed in my hand, eager, almost hungry.

I had no idea what I was doing. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty—if I could read this code, then maybe, just maybe, I could change it.

I gritted my teeth and reached forward, quill hovering over the tangled lunar script that defined the creature's existence.

I tried to rewrite.

And I immediately failed.

The moment I pressed the tip of the quill against the air, the symbols twisted violently, fighting back with unexpected force. The ink spattered and fought, the equations flickering and reshaping themselves in response to my intrusion.

A sharp pain exploded behind my eyes, white-hot and merciless. My knees buckled. My mind burned as if someone had poured molten steel directly into my brain. Distantly, I heard Aurora call my name, but it was muffled, as if she were underwater.

"Nate!" Her voice finally broke through the haze of pain. "Whatever you're doing, do it fast!"

The door groaned, metal bending inward with each impact. A loud bang echoed through the basement, reverberating off the concrete walls. The hinges wouldn't hold much longer.

I had seconds.

I ignored the pain, pushed past the blaring Equation Failure—Risk Detected! message that flashed across my vision in angry red letters. This wasn't about understanding the code perfectly. It was about forcing my will upon it.

I pushed through.

The symbols twisted beneath my quill, erratic and unstable, but this time—this time I forced them to submit. I didn't need to understand every line, every rune. I just needed to change enough.

The script shifted. The ink bled through reality itself.

And then—

Gravity collapsed.

Not throughout the room, not in some dramatic explosion of force. Just in the exact spot where the creature stood—a crushing, impossible weight that shouldn't exist imploded on that single point in space.

The thing outside didn't scream. It didn't have time to.

One second, it existed. The next, it was flattened into something that barely resembled matter, let alone a living being—lunar or otherwise.

A wet, sickening crunch echoed through the basement. The metal door shuddered violently one final time before falling still, permanently dented inward where the force had warped the steel.

Silence descended, heavy and absolute.

I stared, unable to process what I'd just done.

The quill pulsed once, twice, then vanished from my fingers like morning mist under sunlight. The runes in the air faded, melting back into the invisible fabric of reality. The Astral Ink dissolved into nothingness, leaving no trace of its existence save for the afterimage burned into my retinas.

I swallowed hard, my breath shaking, legs trembling beneath me.

Aurora slowly lowered her sword, the silver light dimming as her grip loosened. "...Holy shit," she whispered, eyes wide.

I lifted my hand, staring at my own fingers as if they belonged to someone else. I could still feel the phantom pressure of the quill, the lingering pulse of energy that had surged through me like an electric current.

I had just rewritten gravity.

And it had killed something.

"You okay?" Aurora asked quietly, stepping closer. Her sword dissolved into silver mist, leaving her empty-handed as she reached for my shoulder.

I nodded numbly. "Yeah. Just... processing."

"That was..." She searched for words, her eyes fixed on the warped door. "What exactly did you do to it?"

"Gravity manipulation," I said, my voice steadier than I expected. "I increased the gravitational force in that exact spot by about... a thousand times? Maybe more. Enough to..." I trailed off, the image of what remained of the creature flashing behind my eyes.

Aurora nodded slowly, understanding dawning in her eyes. "So you're not a fighter in the traditional sense. You're more like..."

"A reality hacker," I finished for her. "I don't create or destroy. I edit what's already there."

A soft notification chimed, drawing our attention. A small window appeared before me:

Experience gained: 100 (First Blood)

Level up! You are now level 2.

Stat points available: 5

Aurora glanced at it, then back at me with a grim smile. "Welcome to the game, Nate."

I looked down at my hand again, still feeling the ghost of the quill between my fingers. The raw power that had coursed through me was unlike anything I'd ever experienced—terrifying and intoxicating in equal measure.

"I think I get my class now," I said quietly. The Astral Equationist. One who balanced cosmic equations, who could read and rewrite the very code of reality itself. In a world suddenly governed by Luna's system, I had somehow been granted the ability to manipulate its fundamental rules.