Something evil twisted the night sky's impressionable mold; what was usually only the moon's changing shapes was now a complete takeover. A blood moon hung in the sky, which was once only seen at night at the beginning of the week, then started to tread the lines between morning and night, then into the day, and up until now, where the sky was pitch black. The stars that made up their night sky had been swallowed by the void, leaving only the deathly glare of an unhappy divine presence. 

This was not the first time Aelia experienced a blood moon, as once she had in her youth, when her witch of an older sister dressed as a monster from the lake, and forced the Daystar's blood pressure through the roof. But after the first night of the blood moon, when it bled into the morning, she felt something wrong in her stomach — like she'd eaten something rotten. It stayed, like a rock, heavy, as the afternoon sun had scraped it away, yet the next day it almost overtook the afternoon sun. And she knew that it was time for her and her twin to return home — whether this was a sign from the Five or just a product of the curse, it was clear that their trip in the desert needed to come to an end. They'd found what they'd been looking for. Now all they needed to do was find the way back. The way back through an endless plain of dry grass and decrepit plants.

It was the middle of the week when she rallied her sibling to go through, where they would spend the next few days navigating using the stars. Though the deepening fog made it hard to sift through, the lingering night guided them where they needed to be: at the tunnel's entrance.

Aelia took a shaky breath as she felt the overbearing sight of the blood moon upon her, like a heat lamp on her, much unlike the daytime. She'd barely had any time with the sun, and it was starting to drive her a little up the wall. This wasn't like the times that it rained for days — no, because at least then, even the moon's presence was there, its light finding a way through the clouds. But the day... It had suffered this past week, and the lack of sheen in Aelia's fur was sure-fire evidence of her cracking from it.

Finally. She croaked, feeling as if she hadn't spoken in ages, her lunar gaze falling to Amaris. The tunnel that would lead them back to the Highlands offered reprieve from the high-hanging eye in the sky, and it was taking everything in her to wait for her twin to fall into step with her, so they did not part from one another. Are you ready to go home, Amaris? To leave what they had found here, and return to the life waiting for them at Elysium, to see if there was still life that existed there.