Moonlit Vows Of Vengeance

Chapter 133: The Battle Continues

The forest shattered around us.

He moved like I did—every strike a mirror of mine. Blade against blade. Thought against thought. For every blow I delivered, he knew the counter. For every flicker of magic I summoned, he had already stolen it from my shadow.

"You cannot win," he hissed. "You severed half your soul to survive. Now I am whole. And you,"

"Are dangerous," I finished for him, swinging low, letting rage sharpen the arc of my blade.

He dodged effortlessly, using my old training against me. The trees we once used as sanctuary now exploded into splinters beneath our clash. Every movement echoed across the gods’ realm, rippling through its magic, turning divine stillness into a battlefield.

"Don’t you see?" he sneered, locking blades. "The cradle didn’t cleanse you. It cracked you. You are not divine—you’re a fracture pretending to be whole."

I gritted my teeth. "Then let’s see which piece bleeds first."

A pulse of magic shot from my hand, a blast of white flame that should have incinerated anything in its path—but he twisted, turned, caught the fire in his palm like it belonged to him.

Because it did.

He was made from me. My fear. My pain. My refusal to break. The girl who had clawed her way out of the abyss only by carving out the weakness and calling it sacrifice.

He was what I left behind in that moment of "ascension."

And he hated me for it.

"You left me," he spat, his eyes flashing black. "In the dark. In the silence. You took the light and walked away. I was the rage. I was the sorrow. I was what you refused to carry."

"You are what I outgrew."

He screamed.

We collided in midair, weapons clashing with a sound that cracked the sky. My blade split his shoulder, but not before his claws raked across my ribs, sending blood spiraling into the air. I rolled, landed on one knee, breath heaving, magic blazing through my veins.

He charged, dark wings spreading wide—wings I had once dreamed of but never claimed.

"Why are you fighting me?" he shouted, striking fast, forcing me back step after step. "We were gods together. Whole. Beautiful. I remember every heartbeat you tried to forget."

I spun, flipping over him, slashing down. He blocked just in time, but sparks flew between us—one streak of gold, one of black.

"I remember being broken," I snarled. "I remember bleeding under Caelum’s blade. I remember praying for death because I had no one left."

"And now you’ve traded that for what?" he hissed. "A throne built on forgetting? You’ve lost everything that made you real!"

I drove him back with a scream, slamming a fist into his gut, then an elbow to the jaw. He staggered. I raised my blade—

He vanished.

Shadow coiled around my arms.

"Too slow," he whispered from behind, voice in my ear. "You’re always too late, Athena."

Pain seared through me as his dagger plunged into my side.

I dropped, gasping.

He kicked me forward, sending me crashing through an ancient tree trunk. Bark exploded. I rolled, blood in my mouth.

"You know what your problem is?" he asked, stalking closer. "You still think power will save you. That becoming something more will erase what you were."

He raised a hand. Dark lightning flared.

"You forgot me. But I remember everything."

He struck.

The world detonated.

My body slammed into the ground, magic unraveling at the edges of my control.

But in the center of that pain, something ancient stirred.

Something that wasn’t light. Wasn’t divine.

It was older than gods. Deeper than rage. The shadow I didn’t cut away. The one I buried beneath the bones of the girl who’d once been hunted.

My knees cracked as I stood.

"You’re wrong," I whispered, my voice low and not entirely my own.

He narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"I didn’t forget you."

The shadows bent to me now.

"You’ve always been there. The part I feared. The part I hated. The part that survived when nothing else did."

I opened my hand.

A second blade formed. Not of moonfire—but of obsidian shadow, rippling with void energy.

"You aren’t my failure," I said. "You’re my reckoning."

He lunged.

This time, I didn’t dodge.

We clashed with a sound that split the mountain behind us. Magic exploded outward in a ripple of silver and black. I pressed in, my dual blades spinning in arcs too fast to follow. He countered, but now I was not just light.

I was light and shadow. Fire and void. Rage and reason.

"Stop!" he screamed, desperation bleeding through his fury. "You’re not meant to be both!"

"But I am."

Blow after blow, we danced through the dying forest—through ruins older than memory, through temples long consumed by vines and silence.

He struck high.

I caught it with my shadow blade.

He jabbed low.

I sidestepped, slashing across his chest. Blood spilled—not ichor, but mine.

Because he was still me.

And I was still bleeding for this.

"You can’t kill me," he gasped, staggering. "You’ll never be whole."

"I don’t need to kill you," I said, stepping close.

He raised his blade—

And I embraced him.

His body stiffened.

"I needed to face you," I whispered. "Not to win. To remember."

For a moment... he was still.

Then, slowly, the shadows poured off him like water, flowing into my own. The rage, the pain, the memory of loss... it didn’t vanish.

It became part of me again.

And when he faded, all that was left... was me.

Whole.

Alone.

The forest quieted. The stars above blinked slowly back into view. The sky healed—but the world had changed. noveldrama

So had I.

Behind me, someone stepped out from the trees.

Lucas.

His eyes locked on mine. "Athena?"

I turned.

And for the first time in a long time... I didn’t look away.

"I’m here," I said.

"But are you...you?"

I stepped forward.

Took his hand.

"No. I’m more."

He smiled faintly, though his eyes still brimmed with questions.

"There’s more coming, isn’t there?" he asked.

I glanced at the sky.

A rift was forming—dark and bright at once, stitched with prophecy and blood. Something waited beyond it.

Something older than even the gods.

"Yes," I said. "This was only the beginning."

And as the stars aligned in patterns long forgotten, a voice—not my own—whispered through the wind:

"She is awake. She is whole. And now... she is hunted."

The air shimmered as I stepped forward, the weight of divinity coiled around my spine like a serpent. It wasn’t just magic anymore—it was something older, darker, wild as a god’s rage and quiet as a lie. The power I’d taken into myself in the Cradle whispered with a thousand voices, most of them mine. And yet... none of them sounded like me.

The shadow coiled around my fingertips even now, restless. Unfed. Hungry.

I heard the child scream before I even turned.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d only meant to conjure light, a soft warmth to heal a scraped knee and ease a mother’s fear. But the magic inside me had other plans. It surged forward, unrestrained, cloaked in the black flame of the fallen god who had whispered his name into the cracks of my heart.

The child’s scream tore through me. The magic recoiled, too late.

Lucas was there in an instant. His hands caught mine, forcing them closed, forcing me to look at what I’d done.

Smoke curled from the stone wall beside the boy. Charred. Splintered. A breath closer and the child would’ve been ash.

The mother clutched her son and backed away, her gaze filled with the kind of terror I remembered from war—when monsters didn’t need fangs to kill.

My hands trembled. My skin was cold.

Lucas’s voice was low. "You have to get it under control."

I stared at him, aching. "It doesn’t want control. It wants out."

He didn’t flinch. "Then we find someone who can help you cage it. Before it cages you."

The Temple of the Broken Flame was exactly what its name promised—nothing more than jagged pillars jutting from a blackened valley, half-swallowed by earth and time. It wasn’t listed on any map. Most gods had forgotten it existed. But Lucas hadn’t been entirely mortal in this realm—not anymore. And he remembered.

"You’re sure this place will help?" I asked, watching the sky swirl crimson above us.

"No," he said, and offered a broken smile. "But it’s the only place left that might."

The temple doors opened without touch. As if the stones themselves remembered me. Or feared me.

Inside, the air was thick. Not just with dust, but with memory. Ancient oaths. Blood-tied promises. Fire that had once bowed only to gods.

Lucas stayed back as I stepped into the center of the altar.

I felt it immediately—a pulse, a thrum, like a heartbeat beneath the rock.

Something in me woke up.

And the darkness surged.