Blood Moon Covenant

The first time the moon turned red, it was an omen. The second time, it was an invitation. The third time—it was a summoning.

Our village stood at the edge of the moors, where mist clings low and the ground remembers every footprint. We’d been told the Blood Moon was superstition, a trick of dust and shadow. Yet when the sky bruised crimson and the wind died, every dog fell silent, every clock stopped, and the elders gathered at the chapel door with candles trembling in their hands.

The Covenant Remembered

Centuries ago, the villagers made a pact. When famine came and the harvest failed, they prayed not to heaven but to something older. They offered blood beneath the red moon, and in return the soil grew rich again. They vowed to repeat the offering every hundred years—to keep the balance, to keep the land alive.

Most dismissed it as myth. But myths have long memories.

This year marked a century exactly. The night of the Blood Moon returned—and so did the hunger.

The Chosen

When the bell tolled midnight, twelve of us were summoned to the chapel cellar. I went willingly, though I didn’t know why. The air down there was thick with iron and rot, and the floor was etched with symbols that pulsed faintly like veins beneath skin.

The elder, her face lined like cracked parchment, carried a knife older than the village itself. “It must be renewed,” she said. “Or everything dies.”

We knelt. The chanting began—not words, but sounds shaped by fear and tradition. The air shimmered as though underwater. And then the first cut was made.

The Binding

Our blood spilled into the carved sigils. The lines on the floor drank greedily, glowing red-hot before fading to black. The ground trembled. A voice—no, many voices woven into one—rose from below:

“We remember. We are owed.”

The cellar walls bled where the mortar met stone. Faces emerged in the seepage—faces of those who had made the first covenant. Their mouths opened and released a sound like wind through graves. The elder raised her hands and shouted, “We give what was promised!”

But the voice laughed. “You are not the ones who bargained. You are the debt.”

The Reckoning

The symbols ignited. One by one, the others fell, their bodies dissolving into crimson vapor drawn down into the cracks. I ran for the stairs, but the steps stretched endlessly upward, no longer leading anywhere. The walls breathed around me, the stones slick with something living. Outside, the moon filled the sky like a single, watching eye.

I stumbled into the night, my shadow stretching impossibly long across the field. The crops that had withered for years now stood tall and black, their leaves whispering in a language I almost understood. My blood still dripped onto the soil, and wherever it fell, the earth shivered in pleasure.

The voice followed me, soft and intimate: “One drop for life. One drop for eternity. One drop for us.”

I think I am the covenant now. The others are gone, their names forgotten, their blood absorbed. The moon still hangs low and red, refusing to fade with dawn. It waits, patient, knowing the bargain is unending.

When it rises again, I will not be the one offering blood. I will be the one collecting it.

Read More Horror & Fantasy Stories by Damien Ashworth →