Daughters of the Hollow Moon Pt. 01

"You walk like someone waiting to get caught."

The voice came from a woman standing beside the checkpoint. Tall, veiled in crimson, her bare feet dusty and sure. Her tone wasn't hostile. Just... observant.

Elara didn't flinch.

"I was born on the border," she said calmly. "The rhythms take time to settle."

The woman raised an eyebrow.

"Mm. That's a lie that could cost you more than your name."

Then she leaned in, almost like a friend sharing advice.

"If they think you're not Qadiran, they won't burn you. They'll hand you over to the thrown-outs."

Elara forced herself to stay still.

"The what?"

The woman gestured past the Veilwaters to the dry outskirts, where the silver plateau ended and desert began.

"Thrown-out men," she said. "Exiles. Not criminals. Just... unfit."

Elara knew about them. In theory.

The men who failed the Temple's training, who couldn't serve women properly, who let desire overtake obedience, were stripped of their names, their collars, their place.

They were left outside the holy circle of the city to rot in hunger, lust, and desperation.

No woman crossed to them. No man returned from them.

"They live like animals," the woman said. "And if you're caught lying, you'll be sent to them. Just as an offering."

Elara nodded once.

She knew what kind of offering that meant.

"Go on, then." The woman stepped aside. "If your blood is Qadiran, the Veilwaters won't mind."

Elara walked forward barefoot onto the stone bridge, heart thrumming.

The Veilwaters shimmered beneath her.

It wasn't just a river; it was a line. A test.

Water drawn from the Mountains of Yoni, where the oldest temples were carved into the cliffs.

The water was believed to carry judgment: it burned men who were impure, and sometimes even women who pretended to be Qadiran.

Those who lied too deeply, in skin, in blood, in purpose, were sometimes marked, or drowned, or driven mad.

But Elara stepped across without a tremor.

The river didn't ripple.

Her feet passed through the mist like she belonged.

She let out the breath she'd been holding for six days.

The city beyond was nothing like the gray North.

Qadira rose like a dream carved from ivory and stone, a holy city built atop a gleaming plateau that cut directly between the sky's two moons.

The scent of smoke, sex, and salt filled the air.

The streets curved instead of cut.

There were no sharp corners. Only arches, whispers, and heat.

Women walked bare-shouldered and barefoot, veiled in silk that clung to their hips.

Men, when they were visible, moved like shadows, collared, silent, kneeling.

Qadira was ruled by the Daughters of the Hollow Moon, women who didn't pray for prophecy, but pleasured it into being.

Elara had studied it for three years from afar.

She had called it myth.

A perversion of theology.

But now she was inside.

The twin moons hung above her: Asha, the red moon of desire, and Vel, pale with memory.

One wanted.

The other remembered.

Qadira, the women here said, was built to live between them.

Elara passed through the second gate, the one no foreigner was ever meant to cross.

She shouldn't be here.

Not because it was illegal. But because she was lying to everyone.

She wasn't Qadiran.

She wasn't even a devotee.

She was Dr. Elara Vance, age twenty-nine, cultural anthropologist from the Rationalist North, working under the Institute of Human Memory.

Her job was to observe, catalog, and decode the erotic-mystic rites of Qadira.

But that wasn't enough.

She wanted to feel it.

She wanted to know what happened inside the Temple, not with the mind, but with the body.

So she forged a name.

She studied movement and speech.

She dyed her skin with oil.

She walked barefoot and veiled herself in border silk.

And now she was here, inside the sacred wall, alone, and closer than any Northern had been in two generations.

The corridor narrowed, shadows clinging to the cold stone walls.

At its end stood a woman cloaked in white, her veil loose enough to reveal sharp eyes rimmed with kohl, scanning Elara with quiet suspicion.

"You walk like someone carrying a secret," she said softly. "Someone who doesn't belong."

Elara met her gaze steadily, voice even despite the tightening in her chest.

"I am Qadiran."

The woman's lips pressed thin.

"Your accent betrays you. Your movements are too precise, too learned. The Temple sees everything, even what you try to hide."

Elara swallowed, fighting the sudden rush of panic.

"I am one of you."

The priestess took a step closer, voice dropping.

"If you are truly Qadiran, then you will Hollow."

The word fell heavy in the air.

Elara's throat went dry.

"And if I refuse?"

A shadow crossed the priestess's face.

"Then you are not one of us."

She paused, letting the silence stretch, thick as the fear curling in Elara's belly.

"That means exile beyond the Veilwaters."

Elara forced herself to breathe, steady her trembling limbs.

"I will Hollow."

The priestess nodded once, sharp and certain.

"We will see."

Elara's mind spun even as her body remained still.

Hollowing, the sacred rite said to be the exclusive gift of Qadiran women.

She wasn't one of them. Not really.

Hollowing was supposed to be more than pleasure: a divine unlocking where the body's climax became a conduit for prophecy.

The women believed that at the moment of surrender, the veil between present and future thinned, and visions poured forth.

Visions that shaped the laws, the harvests, even the fate of the city itself.

Qadira's entire society was built on these revelations, on the whispered commands of the Daughters of the Hollow Moon.

But what was the difference, truly, between an ordinary orgasm and the Hollow?

She had studied the rites, read the sacred scrolls, listened to the elders' stories but the line blurred like smoke in her mind.

Could she conjure the sacred vision, or would she merely falter, an outsider caught pretending?

The cost of failure was exile.

Or worse.

She stood in the center of the Temple atrium, veils falling one by one.

First the crimson, then the ash-gold beneath. Priestess hands stripped her slowly, not with cruelty but with ritual precision. Each removal was a revelation. The curve of her breasts, the line of her hips, the softness of her belly. Her body was no longer hers. It was an offering.

Oil came next. Warm, glistening, scented with amber and crushed lotus. The priestesses anointed her skin with reverence, letting slick fingers glide over her breasts, down her flanks, across the round swell of her ass. They rubbed her thighs apart, thumbs grazing close to her pussy, not touching yet, just tracing the promise.

The stone beneath her feet pulsed like a second heartbeat.

Then the Voicebearers arrived.

Three men. Silent, bare-chested, their bodies toned with discipline, not vanity. Each wore a silver collar, glowing faintly. They did not look at her with hunger. They looked at her like a lock they were trained to open.

The first stepped in front of her and placed a hand on her bare belly.

"I am the Gate," he said.

Another knelt behind her, fingers brushing the back of her thigh, heat curling around her ass.

"I am the Key."

The third came closer, one hand lifting her chin, the other sliding into her hair.

"And I am the Path."

Together, their voices merged.

"Let the Hollow open."

They began not with fucking, but with pressure. Touch. Heat. One brushed his lips against the peak of her breast, circling her nipple with his tongue until it stood hard. Another kissed just beneath her tailbone, lips parting against the dip where her spine met her ass. The third traced lazy, maddening circles just above her mound, close enough that her pussy clenched in response.

They didn't claim her. They read her. Every twitch in her hips, every stuttered breath, every tightening muscle. They studied her with their mouths, with their fingers, with their breath.

One man pressed her against the altar and sucked her nipple until she moaned. Another stroked between her thighs, fingers slick with the oil that now shimmered across her skin. He parted her folds with reverence and slid two fingers slowly inside.

She gasped. Her pussy clenched around the intrusion, welcoming, greedy.

"Not yet," the Path whispered in her ear.

He pinched her other nipple as he said it, sharp and sudden. Her body bucked. The man inside her stayed still, buried in her but unmoving.

They built her up, slowly, mercilessly. Bringing her to the edge again and again. Her ass pushed back against the Key behind her, seeking pressure. Her breasts heaved as the Gate suckled her. And her pussy, so wet now it made slick sounds in the silence, pulsed around the fingers inside her, begging for release.

The Voicebearers shifted. The Key stood and entered her from behind. Thick, deliberate. She cried out as he filled her, her body stretching around him. Her breath hitched. The Gate still suckled her breasts. The Path cradled her head in his lap, letting her tongue slide along the base of his shaft without taking him fully. She didn't need to. This wasn't about their release.

It was about hers.

And she came.

Hard. Violent. Her pussy clamped down around the cock inside her. Her thighs shook. Her vision went white.

But the orgasm didn't end.

It rolled into a second. A third. Her body writhed, twitching, slick with sweat and oil. Her nipples ached from the suckling, her clit throbbed with every pulse. The man behind her never stopped moving, deep and slow, pushing her further with each thrust.

And then it happened.

She screamed, but not a scream of pain or pleasure. A sound came out of her throat, low and resonant, a note that vibrated through the stone floor.

A priestess dropped her bowl.

"That's Sael's rhythm," someone said.

"No," Mehir snapped. "It can't be."

"She Hollowed like Sael," another whispered. "You felt it."

They backed away. Elara collapsed onto her side, hair stuck to her sweat-slick cheek, thighs trembling, pussy still pulsing with aftershock. She was breathing in gasps, her nipples raw and tight, her body trembling with something deeper than release.

Her voice, hoarse, cracked the silence.

"Who's Sael?"

"A traitor," said Mehir, but softer now.

"And the greatest prophetess we ever knew," someone else whispered.

"If you carry her rhythm," Mehir said slowly, "we have to test you further."

Elara lifted her head, eyes glazed, skin glowing. Her ass still bore the red marks of hands. Her pussy was swollen, glistening with sacred oil. Her breasts heaved as she tried to speak.

"Only one man ever carried her echo."

A pause.

Then: "Nadir."

Elara's lips parted. She barely had voice left, but she whispered,

"Then call him."