Flashback
The moon had never burned so cold.
"You betrayed me." The Moon Goddess's voice shook the heavens, not with volume but with the weight of something irreparably broken. "You and the Earth Goddess. And you stand before me expecting what exactly?"
"There is a misunderstanding," the Sun God said, his voice careful and measured.
"A misunderstanding." She laughed, but there was nothing warm in it. "Every first day of the week she comes to your chamber. Every single week without fail. And every single week that door is sealed to everyone, including me. When I ask you about it you call it a secret and expect me to simply accept that." Her eyes blazed. "If that is not betrayal then tell me what is worse."
"My love, please." The Sun God stepped forward, his light dimming slightly the way it always did when he was desperate. "Give me until this season ends. I will explain everything. I promise you that."
The Moon Goddess turned away from him and fixed her gaze on the Earth Goddess.
"And you." Her voice dropped to something quieter and far more dangerous. "You are the only fertile entity in all of existence. The only one capable of bearing life. I thought that gift would come with some understanding of what it means to protect something precious." She shook her head slowly. "I was wrong."
The Earth Goddess met her gaze without flinching.
"I understand everything you are feeling," she said. "Every part of it. And I wish I could tell you the truth right now. More than you know." She exhaled. "But the Sun God has forbidden me from speaking of it. All I am asking is for your patience."
"Patience." The Moon Goddess repeated the word as though tasting something bitter. "You stand in front of me and ask me for patience."
"I will not tell you anything," the Earth Goddess said, her voice firming. "And I will not be threatened into doing so."
"My love please." The Sun God's voice was soft now, reaching. "Nothing is happening between us. Let this go. Trust me this once."
The Moon Goddess looked between them both, the Sun God with his dimming light and his careful words, the Earth Goddess with her steady eyes and her sealed lips.
And something inside her that had always believed in them quietly went out.
The Moon Goddess raised her hand and a ceremonial staff appeared, summoned from the air itself. A red half moon blazed at its crown, pulsing with a light that had no warmth in it.
When she spoke, the heavens listened.
"Since your offspring, humans and beasts, have lived peacefully together on the earth you so carefully tend," her voice was measured and absolute, "I therefore curse them."
The staff flared.
"Let them turn against one another. Human against human. Beast against beast. And beast against human. Let greed take root in their hearts and jealousy poison every bond they form. Let them wage war without end, without resolution, without mercy, until their very existence consumes itself from within. Peace will be a word they remember but never find. They will become the weakest of all entities, prey to every power that walks above them."
The curse left the staff like a living thing, a pulse of deep red light that tore upward and vanished.
Then the earth shook.
The tremor moved through everything, through the moon, through the heavens, through the court where they stood. The Earth Goddess staggered and fell to her knees, the full weight of the curse pressing down on her through her connection to every living thing it had just touched.
"What have you done?"
The Sun God's voice broke through the chaos, raw in a way it had never been before. He did not call her his love. He did not call her dear.
For the first time, he called her by her title.
"What have you done, Goddess of the Moon?"
The lightning came without warning, tearing across the sky in every direction, splitting the heavens open with light that had nothing of warmth in it. And from the ground, still on her knees, the Earth Goddess lifted her head.
When she spoke, her voice carried the stillness of something that has made its decision and will not be moved from it.
"Then I, the Earth Goddess, curse you in return."
The air around her trembled.
"Your worshippers will no longer dwell on the moon. They will be bound to the earth, to the ground, to the dirt and the struggle of mortal existence. The vampires, the wolves, the demons, the witches and wizards, all who lifted their hands to you, will be set against one another in unending war. The sacred places where they once stood to worship and sacrifice in your name will become the very ground where they slaughter each other and their different kinds. There will be no peace among them. Not ever."
Silence followed.
Then the Sun God stepped forward, and his voice when it came was not angry. It was broken.
"The reason we met every first day of the week," he said quietly, "was to create offspring of our own. Something neither of us could do alone." He looked between them both. "I understand now why it is said that divine entities must never love one another. Because when love enters, duty is abandoned. And when duty is abandoned, everything falls."
The Moon Goddess turned to him, the staff still burning in her grip, and something in her face collapsed.
"I did not know," she said. Her voice, for the first time, was small. "I did not know what you were doing. If I had known, I would never have done this." She let the staff fall and lowered herself to her knees. "I would never have caused this."
The Sun God looked at her for a long moment.
"I therefore curse you, Goddess of the Moon." His voice was soft but it carried the finality of something that cannot be recalled once spoken. "In the space where darkness and light once existed together, they will do so no more. Darkness and light will never meet again. And your descendants, the children of your power, must take shelter within humans before they can endure the sun."
The Moon Goddess looked up at him, the full meaning of it settling over her slowly.
"Do you understand what you have said?" Her voice broke. "We can never be together again. Never." She rose to her feet, reaching toward him. "We promised each other. We promised we would always remain."
The Sun God said nothing.
And then the void came.
It arrived without sound, a great and absolute separation that split the heavens down the middle, pushing the moon and the sun apart as though they had never shared the same sky. The distance between them grew and grew until there was nothing left to see across it. No shape. No light. No face.
Only emptiness where everything had once been.