#daniellemoonstar

Moonstar: Silent Vision ANIMATION

Neon Antlers

Rain stitched Tokyo together in silver seams, and Dani Moonstar felt the city pull at her like a living net. She stood on the roof of a pachinko parlor in Shinjuku, boots balanced on slick concrete, the glow of signs painting her cheekbones pink and acid-green. Somewhere below, a siren warbled into laughter, then cut short. Dani closed her eyes and tasted fear in the air—not hers. That was always the tell. When terror thickened, she could read it like smoke.

“Time,” she murmured, and the word went to the others like a pulse through bone.

Rahne Sinclair crouched beside a rusted ventilation unit, eyes reflecting neon as if it were moonlight. She looked feral and solemn all at once. “Aye. They’re near. I can hear their shoes arguing with the street.”

“Arguing?” Illyana Rasputin said, leaning on her Soulsword as if it were a cane. Her smile was sharp enough to cut paper. “Tokyo shoes don’t argue. They conspire.”

Dani smiled despite herself. Humor kept the dark at bay. Tonight would need it.

Below them, a man peeled himself away from a lamppost. No—he didn’t peel. He flowed. The lamppost sloughed into skin and fabric, a face forming like a thought remembered too late. Then another stepped out of a vending machine, and another rose from the rain itself. The mercenaries had arrived. Psychotic, shape-shifting hunters with smiles stitched from borrowed mouths.

Dani lifted her bow. It was carved from a fallen tree on Cheyenne land, polished smooth by hands that loved it. “Listen,” she said softly. “They don’t know where we’re going. They think they’re chasing us.”

Illyana laughed. “They always think that.”

A voice floated up from the alley, warm and intimate, as if whispering secrets into Dani’s ear. “Danielle Moonstar,” it said, wearing her mother’s cadence. “You can stop running.”

Dani didn’t flinch. She loosed an arrow not meant to kill but to reveal. It hummed as it fell, singing Dani’s will into the rain. The fear-construct bloomed midair: antlers of pale light branching outward, a stag’s skull turning slowly, sockets burning. The mercenaries froze, each confronted by something private and exquisite. One screamed with delight. Another wept. The third bowed, reverent.

“Move,” Dani said.

They ran.

They leapt rooftops, slid down fire escapes, cut through a karaoke bar where the chorus kept singing as glass shattered. Dani led, every choice an instinct sharpened by the city’s terror-map unspooling in her mind. Tokyo was afraid of small things tonight: mirrors, puddles, the space between footsteps. She threaded them through alleys narrow as confessions, under train lines where the rails moaned like old bones.

“Dani,” Rahne panted, vaulting a bicycle rack. “They’re changing. They smell like—like arguments, aye?”

“I know,” Dani said. She could feel it. The mercenaries were learning, shedding fear like skin. That was their trick. They loved the chase because it fed them. She needed to starve them.

They burst into a shrine courtyard, paper lanterns swaying. Dani skidded to a stop. “Illyana. Door.”

Illyana slashed the air, and a portal yawned open, revealing a night of red snow. Then it flickered and collapsed. Illyana hissed. “Something’s biting my magic.”

A priest stepped from behind the torii gate. His face was Dani’s own, eyes too bright. “You are far from your stories,” he said kindly. “Let us help you find the ending.”

Rahne growled. Dani raised a hand. “Wait.”

She stepped forward alone, bow lowered. The priest smiled wider. The mercenaries loved seduction almost as much as terror. Dani felt it like a hand on her back, urging her to lean into the promise of rest.

“You know my name,” she said.

“I know all your names,” he replied. “You carry them like talismans. You think they protect you.”

“What do you want?” Dani asked.

The priest’s face rippled, resolving into a woman with a scar across her lip, then a child, then a man with too many teeth. “We want the shape of you,” they said together. “We want the way you make fear behave.”

Dani smiled. It was slow, deliberate. “Then you should have asked.”