The Obsidian Knight and the Moon Beyond the Forest

 

For Jerimiah the polylingual Bicolano who was my childhood crush. Moreno and pogi.

For Jeremy

For Pavel

and his little brother Adrian who keeps bugging me

This story is inspired by a blend of Bicolano oral folklore and European dark fantasy.

 From Bicolano folklore, it takes the feeling of an old spoken myths and stories told through generations about spirits, nature, and celestial beings like the Moon. From European dark fantasy, it takes the mood of cursed knights, endless battles, and dark enchanted forests.

Together, they inspired me to write this short story: a cursed immortal knight and a divine Moon spirit who meet in a mysterious forest.

The Obsidian Knight and the Moon Beyond the Forest

Once Upon a time In a land far far away there was a Knight with heart noble and true.

The first time he died, the sky was the color of ash and iron.

Sir Alric of Veyne once a knight of bright banners and sunlit vows fell beneath a hill of broken lances and screaming men. He remembered the weight of his armor dragging him into the mud, remembered the taste of blood and the quiet relief of surrender.

But death did not keep him.

He woke beneath a forest that did not belong to any map he had ever known. The trees rose like cathedral pillars, their bark blackened, their branches veiled in silver mist. No birds sang. No wind stirred. Only the slow, hollow echo of his own breath reminded him he was not buried.

He tried to leave. The forest turned him back.

He tried to die again. The forest refused him.

Years or centuries; time unravelled there ground him down. His armor rusted into his skin. His sword dulled, then sharpened itself on unseen stone. He became a thing whispered by the trees: the knight who could not end.

It was on a night without a moon that he first saw them.

They stood at the edge of a clearing, where pale flowers glowed faintly like fallen stars. Their hair flowed endlessly, black as ink spilled into water, brushing the ground though no breeze moved it. Their skin seemed untouched by time or sorrow, luminous against the gloom. Their form neither man nor woman, or perhaps both shifted subtly with the angle of his gaze, as though refusing to be held in a single truth.

Alric raised his sword out of instinct. “Spirit,” he rasped, voice long unused. “Name yourself.”

They tilted their head, studying him with eyes that held entire seasons. “You have many names already, knight,” they said, their voice soft and distant, like a memory half-forgotten. “Why seek mine?”

“I seek nothing,” he said. “I endure.”

A faint smile touched their lips not mocking, but not kind either. “Endurance is a form of seeking.”

Silence settled between them, heavy as snowfall.

“Will you kill me?” Alric asked after a time.

“I could,” they replied. “But it would not last.”

For the first time since his curse began, something within him stirred not hope, but its sharper, more dangerous cousin.

“Then stay,” he said. “If only until I forget how to ask that again.”

They did not answer. But they did not leave.

They met again a year later.

Alric did not know how he understood the passing of time there were no seasons in the forest, no sun to chart the days but something in his bones told him when the night had come.

He found the clearing again. Or perhaps it found him.

They were already there.

“You returned,” he said.

“You remained,” they answered.

This became their ritual.

Once each year if it was a year they would meet in the clearing of pale flowers. He would arrive carrying the weight of all the nights between; they would arrive untouched by it. He spoke more with each meeting, words scraping free from a rusted soul. He told them of kingdoms that no longer existed, of battles that had lost their meaning, of prayers that had never been answered.

They listened.

In return, they offered little of themselves. A fragment here, a suggestion there: they were older than the forest, older perhaps than the land itself. A being bound not by curse, but by choice or duty, though they never named it.

“Why here?” he once asked. “Why me?”

They traced a finger through the air, and for a moment the mist parted, revealing shapes that might have been mountains or memories. “This forest is a seam,” they said. “Between what is and what is forgotten. You belong to neither.”

“And you?”

“I pass through both.”

There were moments brief and unbearable when Alric felt something like peace.

He would sit beside them as the pale flowers dimmed and brightened in slow rhythm. Sometimes their shoulder brushed his. Once, he dared to reach for their hand.

They allowed it.

Their skin was cool, impossibly smooth, and for a heartbeat the curse loosened its grip. The endless ache within him softened, like frost touched by sunlight.

“Stay,” he whispered.

They closed their eyes.

“I cannot.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of what I am.”

He tightened his grasp. “Then make me what you are.”

Their gaze met his, and for the first time, there was something like sorrow within it. “You would not survive it,” they said gently. “And I would not survive watching you try.”

The pain of parting never dulled.

Each time, it struck him anew sharp, absolute. The forest seemed colder after they vanished, its silence heavier, its shadows deeper. He would rage then, striking at trees that would not break, driving his sword into earth that would not yield.

He died many times between their meetings.

None of it mattered.

And yet

Each year, he returned to the clearing.

Each year, so did they.

On one night that felt different though he could not say why Alric arrived to find them standing closer than before, almost within reach.

“You are fading,” he said immediately.

Their form flickered, just slightly, like a reflection disturbed by ripples.

“So are you,” they replied.

He laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “I have been fading for an eternity.”

“No,” they said softly. “You have been enduring. That is not the same.”

A long silence stretched between them.

“This will end,” they continued. “Not your curse. Not my passage. But this ” they gestured to the clearing, to the fragile space they had carved out of an uncaring world “ this cannot repeat forever.”

Alric felt something fracture inside him. “Then break it,” he said. “Stay. Or take me with you.”

They stepped closer. For the first time, they touched his face, brushing rusted metal and scarred flesh with unearthly gentleness.

“If I stay,” they said, “I cease to be what I am. If you leave, you cease to be what you are. We do not meet in a place that allows both.”

“Then let it end,” he whispered. “Let me end.”

Their hand lingered.

“I cannot give you death,” they said. “But I can give you this.”

They leaned forward, pressing their forehead to his.

For a moment one impossible, eternal moment the forest vanished.

He saw skies not bound by ash, rivers that flowed forward instead of in circles, lives that began and ended as they should. He felt warmth, and grief, and love unbroken by repetition. He felt what it was to be finite.

Then it was gone.

When he opened his eyes, the clearing was empty.

The pale flowers had withered into nothing.

The forest remained.

He remained.

But something had changed.

The curse still held him. Death still fled from his grasp. The endless dark still stretched in every direction.

And yet 

He could remember warmth.

He could remember an ending, even if it was not his own.

A year passed.

Or something like it.

Alric returned to the clearing.

He waited.

The forest said nothing.

For the first time, they did not come.

And so the dark knight wandered on, no longer seeking death, but carrying a fragile, unbearable gift:

The knowledge that even endless things can hold moments that matter 

And that sometimes, the joy of meeting is worth the certainty of parting.

The forest did not forget.

It kept the shape of the clearing even after the flowers died an absence more precise than any presence. Sir Alric returned to it as one returns to a grave, not expecting answer, only compelled by memory.

He stood there, year after year that could not be counted, until the silence itself began to change.

At first, it was only light.

Not sunlight never that but a pale radiance that gathered like breath on cold glass. It spilled between the black trunks, soft and distant, until it rested upon the clearing as though it had always belonged there.

The celestial being neither bound by mortal form nor name drifted into the stillness, robes of white unfolding like dawn across the night. Their long black hair flowed as though it belonged to the sky itself, each strand carrying the memory of stars. Around them, small winged fairies shimmered into existence, flickering like living constellations, their soft radiance pushing back the gloom.

And then

They stood within it once more.

The same and not the same.

Their hair fell like a river of night unbroken, longer than before, or perhaps simply heavier with something unspoken. Their white robes shimmered faintly, untouched by soil or time. Their form was still that shifting truth neither man nor woman, yet now unmistakably him in the way Alric’s gaze held him, in the way longing shapes recognition.

“You returned,” Alric said, though the words trembled.

“I never left,” the deity answered.

The light deepened around him, and Alric understood not in thought, but in something older that this was no mere spirit passing through the forest’s seam.

The knight watched, still and uncertain. He had only ever known darkness—but this light did not fight him. It felt calm… and kind.

Slowly, he reached out.

The celestial being stepped closer without fear. Their hand touched his cold armor, and instead of breaking the darkness, the light softened it.

“You are…” He faltered, the word resisting him.

The deity lifted his gaze, and the dim world bent around it.

“I am what remains when the sun is gone,” he said softly. “I am the witness of endings. The keeper of tides. The light that does not warm.”

Alric’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The moon.”

A faint smile, distant and unbearably gentle. “If that is the name your kind has given me, I will wear it.”

The knight bowed his helm, not in defeat, but in something far rarer recognition.

For in that fragile closeness, where light met shadow without fear, a new truth was born:

Even in a world made of eternal night, something could still bloom.

And it chose to bloom… in them.

From that night onward, the pattern changed.

The deity did not come only once.

He came when the forest darkened to its deepest silence when even the curse seemed to hesitate. His light would thread through the trees, silver and still, and Alric would feel it before he saw him.

The moon had entered the knight’s endless night.

Alric still fought.

The forest was not empty of violence. Things crawled in its depths shapes that had forgotten their names, echoes of battles that had never truly ended. They came for him, again and again, drawn to his unending life like moths to a dying flame.

He met them with rusted steel and relentless fury.

Each battle was the same: the clash, the tearing, the fall. His body broke; his breath stopped; the world went dark.

And each time

He rose again.

But now, there was a difference.

High above the black canopy, unseen yet undeniable, the moon watched.

And sometimes

He descended. Luminous and glowing

Alric staggered from one such battle, armor split, limbs barely answering him. The ground beneath him was thick with something that had once been alive, though it no longer resembled any creature of the waking world.

He fell to one knee.

“Still enduring,” came the quiet voice.

The moon stood before him, untouched, luminous in white.

Alric let out a bitter laugh. “You always arrive after.”

“I arrive when you can still see me,” he replied.

A pause.

Then, softer: “Would you prefer I watched you fall?”

Alric lifted his head. “I would prefer you stayed.”

The deity stepped closer. “You know I cannot.”

“And yet you come more often.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

For a moment, the forest seemed to hold its breath.

Then the moon answered, with a truth that did not hide itself:

“Because I have learned what it is to long.”

They did not name what grew between them.

Names belonged to mortal things things with beginnings and endings that could be defined, contained.

This was neither.

It lived in the space between their meetings, in the way Alric fought harder knowing he was seen, in the way the moon lingered longer each time, his light softening, bending toward something it had never been meant to touch.

They stood closer.

They spoke less.

They understood more.

“One day,” Alric said, leaning against the hollow trunk of a dead tree, “I will forget who I was before this.”

“You already have, in part,” the moon replied.

“And you?” Alric asked. “Do you forget?”

The deity shook his head. “I remember everything.”

“Then remember this,” Alric said, his voice low, steady despite the endless weight behind it. “Whatever this is, whatever we are, it is the only thing in my eternity that feels… real.”

The moon’s gaze flickered, something dangerously close to joy breaking through his usual stillness.

“It is real,” he said. “That is the problem.”

Joy, for the moon, was not meant to exist.

He was a witness, a distant constant, untouched by the tides he governed. To feel was to fracture that distance.

And yet 

When Alric looked at him, there was warmth in it. Impossible, defiant warmth, born not of light but of recognition.

Two beings outside the natural order.

Two men shaped by forces that denied them ordinary lives.

Drawn together in a place that could not sustain them.

The moon began to change.

Not in form he remained luminous, androgynous, untouched but in presence. He lingered longer in the clearing. His light deepened, less distant, more… intimate.

And when he watched Alric fight 

He felt something he had never known before.

Fear.

“You will break yourself,” the moon said one night, appearing before Alric mid-stride, halting him.

“I already have,” Alric replied.

“You do not need to fight every shadow.”

“It is what I am.”

“No,” the deity said, stepping closer, his voice sharper than before. “It is what you were made into.”

Alric’s jaw tightened. “And you? Are you not bound as well?”

“I am.”

“Then do not ask me to be less than my prison,” Alric said. “It is all I have left.”

Silence.

Then, quietly:

“You have me.”

The words hung between them, fragile as frost.

Alric closed the distance.

He reached out not hesitating this time and pulled the moon closer, his gauntleted hand trembling despite its strength.

“You are not mine,” he said. “You never will be.”

“I know.”

“And yet ”

“Yes,” the moon whispered.

And for the first time 

They kissed.

It was not warm.

It was not mortal.

It was something stranger: a meeting of endlessness and stillness, of hunger and restraint. Alric felt the vastness of the sky, the quiet pull of tides, the unbearable distance the moon carried within him.

And the moon 

Felt the weight of a life that could not end, the relentless, aching persistence of a heart that refused to stop.

They parted, but not far.

“We cannot continue,” the moon said, though his voice lacked conviction.

“We will,” Alric replied.

“And it will hurt.”

“It already does.”

So it went on.

Battles and meetings.

Death and return.

Light and shadow intertwined in a rhythm that defied the world beyond the forest.

The moon found joy in it pure, piercing joy that frightened him more than any darkness.

Alric found something like peace.

And both knew

It could not last.

One night, the light did not descend.

The forest remained dark.

Alric waited.

And for the first time since the moon had revealed himself 

He understood that even immortality does not guarantee reunion.

Some distances cannot be crossed, even by gods.

Some loves exist only in the space where they are forbidden.

But still

He looked upward, through the tangled black branches.

And though he could not see it

He knew the moon was there.

Watching.

Longing.

Enduring, in his own distant way.

Just as cursed.

Just as bound.

And just as in love.

The forest remained unchanged, a wound in the world that refused to heal. But beyond it, the world did not stand still.

Kingdoms rose where dust had once settled. Banners unfurled in colors Alric did not recognize. Languages shifted, fractured, were reborn in unfamiliar shapes. Armies marched, always marched, as though war itself were the only constant mortals could cling to.

There were new heroes. New tyrants. New gods whispered into being by desperate prayers.

And always 

War.

The clash of steel, the cries of the dying, the endless churn of ambition and ruin.

Alric walked through it all like a ghost.

Blades pierced him; he rose. Arrows struck him down; he rose. Entire battlefields swallowed him, and still he clawed his way back into the world, black armor slick with blood that never seemed entirely his own.

He became a rumor. A curse. A dark omen glimpsed at the edge of slaughter.

The Obsidian Knight.

But none of it mattered.

Not the kings. Not the wars. Not the shifting map of a world that would forget him as surely as it forgot everything else.

Because every so often 

The forest called him back.

And the moon was waiting.

The contrast between them never lessened.

Alric, clad in blackened steel that drank what little light touched it, a figure carved from ruin and endurance.

And him

Clothed in white that seemed woven from silence itself, his long dark hair flowing like a night sky unbroken by storm, his skin luminous, untouched. Neither fragile nor strong in any mortal sense simply other, as though he belonged to a truth the world could not quite hold.

Where Alric was weight, he was absence.

Where Alric was scarred, he was untouched.

Where Alric burned, he remained still.

And yet

When they stood together, something balanced.

“You reek of war,” the moon said once, not unkindly, as Alric stepped into the clearing, armor dented, dark with fresh violence.

“It is all the world knows how to do,” Alric replied.

“And you?” the moon asked. “Is it all you know how to do?”

Alric paused.

Then, slowly, he removed his gauntlet, letting it fall into the grass that was not grass.

“No,” he said.

He reached for him.

The moon did not step away.

To touch him was to remember.

Not just the vision he had once been given not just the fleeting glimpse of a finite life but something deeper. A feeling that did not belong to eternity or curse or duty.

Joy.

Simple. Impossible. Real.

Alric had fought through endless nights without purpose, without hope, without end. But this this fragile, repeating moment gave shape to his existence in a way nothing else ever had.

He did not fight for kingdoms.

He did not endure for redemption.

He endured 

For this.

For him.

“Do you ever wish,” the moon said quietly, as they stood close enough that their breaths almost met, “that you had never found me?”

Alric let out a low, humorless breath. “Every moment I am not with you.”

The moon’s gaze flickered.

“And every moment you are?”

Alric’s voice softened, something almost human breaking through the centuries of ruin.

“Then I would choose it again. Every time.”

The world beyond the forest burned and rebuilt itself in cycles that meant nothing to them.

Empires rose like waves and shattered just as easily. Faiths clashed. Names of gods changed. Mortals loved, fought, died, and were forgotten.

Alric watched it all with distant indifference.

Once, he might have cared.

Once, he had fought for something larger than himself.

But that man had died on a field of ash and iron.

What remained did not belong to the world.

What remained belonged to a clearing of pale light and a being who should never have mattered and yet became everything.

The moon, for his part, felt the change within himself deepen.

Joy was no longer a fleeting fracture. It lingered now, growing roots where none should exist. It altered the way his light touched the forest, softened its edges, bent its stillness.

He began to wait.

Not as a distant observer, not as an eternal constant but as something dangerously close to a lover anticipating return.

And when Alric stepped into the clearing

That joy bloomed, bright and undeniable.

“You are smiling,” Alric said once, almost accusingly.

“I am not meant to,” the moon replied.

“And yet.”

“And yet,” he echoed.

But even joy, in a world like theirs, carries its shadow.

“You ignore the world,” the moon said one night, his voice quieter than usual.

“The world ignores me,” Alric answered.

“That is not the same.”

“No,” Alric admitted. “It is not.”

A pause.

“You could change things,” the moon continued. “You could end wars. Break kings. Become something more than”

“Than what?” Alric cut in, his tone sharper than intended. “A weapon? A symbol? Another force the world bends around?”

He stepped closer, his presence heavy, unyielding.

“I have no interest in saving a world that will tear itself apart again the moment I look away,” he said. “I have seen too much of it. It is endless. Meaningless.”

His voice dropped.

“But this” his hand lifted, not quite touching, but close enough to feel the faint, cool light “—this is not.”

The moon studied him for a long moment.

“You would abandon everything for this feeling,” he said.

Alric did not hesitate.

“Yes.”

There it was.

Simple. Absolute.

The truth mortals spend entire lives circling without ever quite grasping:

That love... real love, the kind that makes existence itself sharper, brighter, more present outweighs everything else.

Duty.

Glory.

Even the world itself.

“You are selfish,” the moon said softly.

“I am,” Alric agreed.

“And you do not regret it.”

“No.”

Another pause.

Then, quieter still:

“Do you?”

The moon looked at him truly looked, as though trying to memorize something that could not be kept.

“Yes,” he said.

And then

“No.”

They stood together in the clearing, black and white, shadow and light, curse and divinity intertwined in a way the world beyond could never understand.

War would continue.

Kingdoms would fall.

History would turn, indifferent and relentless.

But here

In this impossible place, at the edge of all things

An immortal knight and a moon-bound deity chose, again and again, the same fragile, painful, perfect truth:

That to feel alive, even in a cursed eternity

Was worth everything.

Each time they met, something within Alric changed.

What once felt like endless suffering now felt like waiting. And waiting, strangely, began to feel like hope. Every moment beside the Moon became sharper than any lifetime he had lived apart each glance, each breath shared in silence, more real than centuries of war and wandering.

To him, the world no longer mattered. Only the clearing. Only the Moon.

And for the Moon, something impossible was unfolding.

He, who was meant to be distant and eternal, who belonged to the sky and not the earth, began to feel the pull of something stronger than divinity. If it meant being with Alric, he would have abandoned the heavens, the sky itself, and even his immortality without hesitation.

Love had made the infinite willing to fall.

On one of their final nights within the forest, the Moon stepped closer than ever before. The pale light around him trembled, as though even the stars above were listening.

Without a word, he raised his hand and gently cut a strand of his own long black hair. It did not fall like ordinary hair it drifted like night breaking apart.

He placed it into Alric’s hand.

“This is my promise,” the Moon said softly. “I will always return to you.”

Alric held it like something sacred, something fragile enough to end the world if dropped.

But the forest was not yet finished with him.

Deep within its heart lived the last weight of his curse the Black Dragon, a shadow made from all his pain, rage, and endless battles. It was not separate from him. It was everything he had ever endured, given form and teeth.

The Moon looked at him, steady and calm.

“You cannot leave while it still lives inside you.”

Alric understood.

To be free, he would have to face himself.

For the first time, he did not hesitate.

He walked into the deepest part of the forest alone.

The trees had grown strange here tall as sorrow, thin as broken prayers. Their bark whispered when he passed, repeating his name in voices that did not belong to him. The ground was soft, as though the earth itself had been worn down by centuries of waiting.

And then the forest stopped pretending.

There was no path anymore.

Only a hollow space beneath the world, wide and silent as a forgotten grave.

Alric stepped forward and fell without falling.

At the bottom of that endless hollow, something stirred.

At first, it was only darkness folding in on itself. Then the darkness remembered shape. Then shape remembered hunger.

And the Black Dragon opened its eyes.

It was vast beyond meaning, its body coiled from shattered kingdoms, broken swords, and every battlefield where Alric had once died and risen again. Its scales were not scales, but fragments of his own history each one a moment he had survived when he should have ended.

It breathed, and the breath smelled of old wars.

The Black Dragon rose from the darkness, vast and terrible, formed from broken armor, forgotten wars, and endless death. It spoke with his own voice every doubt, every wound, every reason to stop living.

But Alric no longer listened.

For he was not fighting to survive anymore.

It moved like the world ending slowly.

A claw descended, and with it came the memory of a thousand deaths. Alric leapt between broken fragments of stone and memory alike, each step a refusal, each breath a defiance. His sword struck the dragon’s arm, but the blow rang hollow like striking a bell that had forgotten sound

It struck again.

This time, the world shattered like glass.

Alric fell through memories: burning castles, endless wars, a crown he never wanted, a name he no longer answered to. He saw himself dying in every possible way and rising in all of them.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Until even death grew tired of him.

He was fighting to reach the one who waited for him.

With a final act of release, he struck.

Not with hatred but with acceptance.

He remembered the light.

Not the world above.

Not the wars.

Not even the curse.

Only the Moon.

White as silence. Black hair like falling night. A gaze that did not turn away.

I will always return to you.

Something in Alric broke not into ruin, but into release.

He let go.

Not of his sword.

Not of his life.

But of the need to endure as suffering.

And in that letting go, the dragon rushed him.

It should have ended him.

It did not.

Because Alric did not meet it as a prisoner anymore.

He met it as its equal.

As its origin.

As its end.

He walked into its open jaws like a final prayer spoken without fear.

And drove his blade down not with rage, but with understanding.

The Black Dragon did not roar.

It unraveled.

Like a story being told for the last time.

Like a nightmare finally allowed to forget itself.

Its body broke into falling light shards of memory, pain, and endless repetition dissolving into something almost like peace.

 And the dragon fell apart into silence.  And as it faded,

The curse that had chained him for eternity finally broke.

When he returned, the forest no longer held him.

At the edge of the clearing, the Moon was waiting.

For the first time, there was no barrier between them.

No curse. No distance. No endless return.

Only two beings who had chosen each other across impossible worlds.

The Moon stepped forward, and Alric met him halfway.

“Is it true?” Alric asked softly. “You will stay?”

The Moon smiled, small, trembling, real.

“I will always come back to you,” he said. “And now… I can remain.”

And so, with a final, gentle kiss true and unbroken the last of the curse dissolved.

The forest released them.

The world opened.

He had fought eternity with iron and fury, yet it was in letting go that he finally became free.

Together, they left the dark forest behind and traveled far north, where the winters were long and the nights stretched endlessly across frozen lands.

There, beneath vast skies, they saw it the lights dancing across the heavens, green and gold and shifting like dreams.

In a place where the nights stretched long and gentle, they learned that love could finally stay.

And for the first time in eternity and suffering alike, the Obsidian Knight and the Moon were no longer bound by separation.

Only togetherness.

Only peace.

The sky danced above them in colors of dream, and for once, neither of them had to leave.

And they lived happily ever after. The End.