CHAPTER 136: THE FIGHT

We clashed in a flurry of steel and sorcery that burned entire galaxies to ash around us. Time itself broke. We fought across frozen seas of memory, over burning fields of forgotten prophecy, through the screams of unborn gods.

Still, we did not stop.

Until finally—I slipped.

He twisted my own magic, the shadow half of me, and shoved it down my throat. It tried to consume me from the inside.

"You never should’ve come back," he said, standing over me. "This world was never meant for you."

I gritted my teeth. "No."

The blade slipped from my fingers—

And then my shadow roared.

Not the part he had stolen.

But the one I had hidden.

Behind every scream. Every sob. Every betrayal.

The core of me.

It rose like a serpent, wrapping around his throat, dragging him back. He staggered, cursing, slashing at it—but the shadow laughed.

"You tried to erase me," I whispered, rising. "But you taught me to survive."

I raised both hands, channeling everything. Moonlight and midnight. Rage and rebirth. The grief of centuries and the power of what I had become.

And I struck.

A beam of pure essence exploded from me. It pierced the battlefield, shattering everything between us. It slammed into his chest—and for a moment, I saw him. The real him.

Caelum.

Scared. Broken. Young.

The boy who once loved me.

Then it was gone.

And so was he.

The light faded. The battlefield cracked and crumbled. I stood over the place where he had fallen.

But something was wrong.

The silence was too quiet.

And in the silence—I heard it.

A whisper.

Not Caelum’s.

Something older.

Something beneath the cradle of gods.

A voice like the end of all things.

"You opened the door, little goddess. Now we are watching."

My breath caught.

From the cracks beneath the realm, a dark mist curled upward. Eyes blinked open. Hundreds. Thousands. Not gods.

Not shadows.

Something else.

Something that remembered before even the Moon existed.

The enemy wasn’t Caelum.

He’d just been the first offering.

I took a step back.

But the ground no longer listened to me.

The divine realm was tilting again. Warping. The cracks weren’t healing. They were spreading.

Behind me, a portal tore open.

Lucas.

He looked wild-eyed, bloodied, holding a weapon I had never seen before. "Athena—!"

But I couldn’t move.

I turned back to the voice.

And in the smoke...

I saw a shape.

Not human. Not god.

But it wore a crown made of every soul I had ever lost.

"You were made to be our vessel," it said.

And I remembered the prophecy carved into my bones as a child.

When the goddess remembers her name... the world will remember fear.

Lucas grabbed my wrist, pulling me toward the gate.

"Athena! We have to go now!"

But even as I stepped back...

I looked at it.

And it smiled.

Like it had been waiting.

The forest had long stopped resembling a place of life.

Ash blanketed the ground where grass once grew. Trees, gnarled and blackened, stood like broken teeth. The sky above seethed with violent clouds, swirling around the rift where Caelum had fallen and risen again.

But he wasn’t the same.

His body was forged anew—taller, darker, wrapped in twisting shadows that moved like living armor. Veins of molten silver pulsed beneath his skin. His eyes were no longer his own. They glowed with an ancient hunger.

"You look surprised," Caelum said, his voice deeper now, echoing like it had been torn from the throat of a dying star. "You didn’t think you were the only one who could sacrifice everything and survive."

He raised his hand.

The world cracked.

A wall of shadow surged at me, fangs and claws emerging from the smoke like beasts hungry to devour light. I thrust my palms forward, calling the Moonfire. White-hot radiance flared from my core, searing through the darkness. The blast split the ground, but Caelum walked through the inferno untouched.

"You’ve grown," he said, almost admiringly. "But so have I. Your goddess heart is only half of what I carry now."

I lunged.

Our blades collided with a thunderclap, sending tremors rippling through the scorched forest. My sword—a weapon reforged from divine crystal and lunar flame—should have cleaved through him. But his own blade, dark and serrated like it had been pulled from the maw of a dying god, met mine with perfect precision.

Sparks rained down.

He twisted his wrist. I ducked beneath his swing and drove my elbow into his ribs, but he didn’t flinch. He spun, slammed his foot into my chest, and sent me flying through a tree trunk.

I rose before the splinters hit the ground.

We clashed again.

Every movement was mirrored. Every strike matched. My magic sparked with starfire and shadow—his did too. He knew my forms. My spells. Even my weaknesses.

Because he was them.

"You cannot win," Caelum hissed, as our blades locked again. "You severed half your soul to survive. That half lives inside me now. I am the piece you abandoned."

"I didn’t abandon it," I growled. "I sacrificed it."

"And now you are incomplete."

He struck harder. Our blades scraped. Lightning cracked the sky. I felt his magic probing mine, trying to pull me apart from the inside—like two pieces of a puzzle being slammed into each other backwards.

I broke the hold, leapt back, and hurled a storm of silver shards. Caelum raised a shield of pure dark. The shards passed through it like whispers. Illusions. I was already behind him, blade aimed for the hollow beneath his ribs.

He caught it without turning.

His fist drove into my stomach.

Pain exploded through me. Not just physical—emotional. Memories. My old pain. My father’s betrayal. Lucas walking away. My own blood on the altar.

Caelum was feeding off it.

I stumbled.

He loomed over me. "Do you feel it? This is what you left behind in the Cradle. All of it. All of *you*. I am every part you tried to kill to become a goddess."

I gritted my teeth. "Then I’ll kill it now."

I flared my wings.

They weren’t light anymore.

The Moon’s fire bled into a deeper, colder hue—like dusk frozen in time. The shadows that had once haunted me surged to my command. Not twisted. Not evil. Mine.

A spear of midnight formed in my palm. I hurled it with a scream that shattered the trees. Caelum raised his hand—but this time, it pierced him. Straight through the chest.

He gasped.

I flew forward, blade raised for the final blow.

But the forest—the forest shifted.

Time cracked.

Suddenly, we were elsewhere. A place outside of place.

The world between gods.

A dome of floating debris and shattered moons. Water floated in spheres. Gravity pulsed in waves.

Caelum stood across from me, wounded but smiling.

"Now you understand," he whispered. "This fight was never about the mortal realm. It was never about wolves or curses. It was about who would control the Throne of Origins."

I blinked.

"What?"

"You think the gods summoned you to fight me?" He laughed. "No, Athena. They were afraid of you. Afraid of what you’d become. So they locked you in trials, made you break yourself, hoping you’d shatter."

My pulse thundered.

"They crowned you because they had to. Because when you killed me in the first world, you ascended higher than any of them could reach."

He opened his arms.

"All of this was to test whether you’d replace me,.or become worse."

I was shaking.

Not with fear. With fury.

"You betrayed me. Lied. Killed my people. Took my soul. And you dare say this is a test?"

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"No." Caelum’s expression softened, for a moment. "This is a prophecy."

And then the stars around us began to fall.

One by one, they descended like burning tears, striking the dome with a sound that bent the air. With each star, a memory returned. Not mine.

Caelum’s.

"He was never meant to be a god either."

I saw it in flashes. A child born of two warring lineages. Cursed by both. Chosen by neither. A boy who clawed his way to divinity only to be exiled. Alone. Mad. Determined.

"I wasn’t your enemy, Athena," he said as we circled each other in the storm. "I was your mirror. You just didn’t like the reflection."

The next blow came faster than thought.

I parried, ducked, but he was relentless. Not just with strength. With grief. With sorrow. His magic whispered my worst memories back to me like lullabies turned to poison.

But I learned from pain.

I spun, using the momentum to draw power from the collapsing stars. I drove my blade into the ground. A wave of celestial flame erupted, forming a circle between us.

"No more tricks," I said. "No more mirrors."

I stepped into the center.

My divine magic flared—not borrowed, not inherited, but owned. Threads of shadow and light wove around me, forming a new weapon—not a sword.

A staff.

Moon at one end. Star at the other.

I twirled it once. "I’m not the girl you cursed."

"No," Caelum said.

"You’re something far worse."

We charged.

Magic collided in silence. No sound, only impact. Energy tore across the dome, breaking time. Pieces of different worlds flickered in and out of the air—past lives, futures that never were.

I struck true. Caelum fell again.

But something was wrong.

His body flickered.

He was laughing.

I looked down.

The staff in my hands... was cracking.

Not from Caelum’s power.

From inside me.

"What did you do?" I gasped.

Caelum’s smile was broken and bloody.

"You took back too much, Athena. Shadow and Light. God and Monster. Soul and Vessel. You should not exist. But you forced the world to let you."

"No—"

"You broke the cycle. And now, it’s unraveling."

He vanished in a storm of ash.

And I stood alone in a world without gravity.

Without time.

Without rules.

Behind me, a new gate shimmered into being.

Not the Cradle. Not the gods’ realm.

Something else.

I didn’t know if it was home, or the end, or the true beginning.

But I stepped toward it.

Uncertain.

Burning.

Alive.