CHAPTER 164: SHADOW FORGED

From her outstretched palm, fire spilled—not flame but memory. Moonfire, the kind that remembers your pain before it burns you alive. It caught one of the attackers mid-charge, turning his scream into a thousand voices.

Kaelen stood unmoving, staring at the chaos.

"You fought for power," Athena shouted, "but this is what it costs."

He looked at her.

Then at the coffin.

And growled, stepping forward. "Then let me pay."

He shifted.

Not fully—but enough.

With fangs and claws of obsidian-tinted steel, he lunged into the fray, colliding with a masked figure bearing a staff carved from bone. They wrestled into the mirror corridor—and vanished.

Lucas reached her side, breath ragged. "There’s too many—"

"I’ll seal it." Athena turned back to the sarcophagus. "Even if I have to bind it with my own blood."

But just as she raised the blade—the tomb cracked again.

Not by her hand.

By its own will.

The figure inside twitched.

Cassius cursed, dragging two unconscious cultists into a ring. "She’s waking. The tomb’s responding to the blood in the room!"

"I’m not ready," Athena whispered. "She’s not ready—"

Lucas pulled her against him. "Then we fight. We survive. And if she wakes, we greet her together."

Another explosion rocked the chamber. Smoke filled the air. Something enormous howled—not from this plane.

And from behind the altar, more figures emerged. Not cloaked. Not human.

Constructs.

Bodies built from bones, wrapped in wolfskin, animated by ash and will. Their mouths stitched shut. Their eyes empty.

"Shadowforged," Cassius said. "From the Old Rituals."

Athena summoned her fire again—but it flickered.

The room was rejecting her magic.

Turning to Lucas, she gripped his wrist. "I need your blood. Your bond."

His jaw clenched—but he nodded.

He dragged a claw across his palm, pressing it into her open one. Cassius followed suit.

Power surged.

The triad bond ignited.

Flames shot outward, sealing the tomb with a burning rune carved into air.

The constructs stopped.

The shadows howled.

And every Cultist still breathing fell to their knees—screaming, as if the sound of the bond itself shattered something inside them.

Then silence.

Thick. Unnatural.

The temple, breathing.

And then... a whisper from the coffin:

"Sister."

Athena’s heart skipped.

Cassius reached for her hand.

Lucas stared at the seal.

The Cult was broken for now—but the tomb had heard them.

And the one inside... was waking.

The temple trembled beneath Athena’s feet, not with destruction, but with awakening.

Not a sister.

Not salvation.

But something built in her image. Something not meant to survive.

She staggered back from the sarcophagus as light bled through the cracks in the glass, not divine light, not anything holy. It was too old. Too deep. Too hungry. It churned in colors the world had forgotten how to name.

Lucas pulled her back. "That’s not a person," he said, voice low, eyes locked on the figure inside. "That’s a vessel."

Cassius’s breath was ragged. "They made it look like you."

Kaelen was silent. Still. Eyes locked on the trembling runes now melting from the walls.

Athena didn’t blink. "Because they couldn’t control me. So they tried to recreate me."

And they’d failed. But not in the way she hoped.

Because the thing inside the coffin was moving. Not waking—but tearing. Its fingers cracked like stone under pressure. Its face twitched, like a mask that didn’t fit.

Then came the voice.

Low. Guttural. Spoken not through a mouth, but through the walls themselves.

"Moonbearer. You split the world once. Now finish the fracture."

Lucas shoved Athena behind him. "We need to leave. Now."

Cassius was already moving, blades drawn, dragging Kaelen by the arm. "This place isn’t collapsing. It’s shedding its skin."

The floor cracked in a spiral. Dust shot into the air like smoke signals to unseen gods.

Athena turned to follow them—but her feet froze when she saw the shadow crawling up from behind the sarcophagus. No body. No eyes. Just a shape.

And from it... a voice she recognized.

Caelum.

"You thought death was an end? I was the key to something far older. The First Howl was never mine. It was ours."

She threw fire at it. Shadowfire. Moonflame. Everything she had.

It passed through it.

And the shadow only laughed.

Lucas grabbed her arm. "Athena—run."

She turned, and together they sprinted through the collapsing corridors. The temple peeled back like a dying flower. Behind them, the thing in the coffin shattered the last of its restraints—not with movement, but with intention.

A command from something ancient.

Cassius carved a path through a wall of crumbling runes with sheer force, claws glowing. "Exit’s this way!"

Kaelen followed close behind, bleeding, limping. "We sealed it. We sealed it!"

But Athena already knew.

They were never meant to seal it.

They were meant to open it.

And she had.

The moment they hit the outer threshold of the temple, the sky split with a noise like teeth grinding across bone. The stars above turned red. Not with blood—but with memory. As if even the sky remembered what had once slept here.

They threw themselves onto the ground as a pulse shot from the temple—exploding upward in a pillar of ash and silver-black light.

It didn’t touch them.

But it didn’t need to.

Because where the temple once stood, there was now a scar across the land—burnt into the earth like a claw mark across a god’s face.

And etched at its heart, in glyphs no human had spoken in a thousand years, was a phrase:

"She will burn. She will bind. And when the wolves fall silent, she must choose who howls next."

Later...

They made camp in silence.

Far from the ruins. Far from the Cult. But not far enough.

Lucas sat watch, blade across his lap, his aura still humming with battle tension. Cassius stood at the edge of the glade, arms crossed, head bowed.

Athena stood between them, staring at her hands.

They didn’t shake.

They burned.

The runes from the sarcophagus hadn’t just exploded—they had latched onto her skin, winding up her arms like brands. Divine and shadow, bound together in spirals of fate.

"She was never alive," she whispered. "She was a construct. A vessel for something older than the gods."

Lucas stood. "They called it the First Howl."

"And they’ve been trying to bring it back through me."

Cassius approached. "Why you?"

"Because I’m both," she said, voice distant. "Divine. And wolf. Light and darkness. They needed someone who could split the veil."

Lucas’s expression tightened. "And now they’ve done it. Through you."

Athena turned to them slowly. "No. Not through me."

She looked back at the burn in the earth where the temple had once been.

"They used me. But they didn’t finish it. I felt it. Whatever that fragment was—it’s still dormant. Half-formed."

Cassius frowned. "Then we stop them before they wake the rest."

Lucas asked the question none of them wanted to say aloud. "And if we can’t?"

Athena closed her eyes.

And when she opened them, they burned.

Not just with power.

But with choice.

"Then I become what they fear. The lock. The blade. The fire."