CHAPTER 90: THE SHATTERED GODDESS

The name almost shattered the enchantment right then and there. A crack zigzagged across the black sky, splintering one of the glowing runes. The voice came again, urgent now, "No, no, no... don’t remember him. He left you. He betrayed you. You are here where you belong—with your father."

Father.

No.

A new voice echoed behind the first. This one was older, deeper, cold as winter rivers.

"Rise, my daughter."

This wasn’t the king’s voice. This voice felt ancient, coiled around her very bones, hidden deep within the places she never dared look.

"You have been asleep long enough."

She gasped. The flowers beneath her feet rippled, their glow pulsing faintly with her heartbeat. Her fingers twitched, curling slightly into fists. For a moment—just for a breath—her reflection in the glowing petals wasn’t herself at all.

It was a wolf. Tall, regal, crowned in shifting silver light. Not fur—light.

The Moon Goddess.

The enchantment tried to close around her again like chains made of fog, but Athena’s memories started bubbling up, sharper and sharper now.

Running through forests on paws that belonged to something divine.

Laughter echoing under moonlit skies.

Holding someone’s hand tightly in a world of violence and lies.

Lucas...

Then—

Another sharp crack in her mind, but this time it was different. Not pain—anger. Betrayal.

Lucas’s voice again, clearer this time: "I didn’t have a choice."

Didn’t have a choice? He betrayed her. Traded her for the very reason he helped open the portal to her home world. To save her. Lira.

Lira.

Her friend’s name twisted bitterly through her mind like poison dripped into water. The sweetness of the air turned sour.

Athena fell to her knees, clutching her head as conflicting memories warred for dominance. Two versions of reality fought inside her mind—the soft lie and the jagged truth.

"You are my daughter," the false father said softly.

"No," she whispered, voice trembling.

The runes overhead shattered all at once like shards of glass falling into the sea. Darkness rushed toward her, roaring with the force of old storms.

And in that dark... a silver glow rose from her skin.

She was remembering now.

All of it.

Not just Athena.

Not just the girl who had been betrayed.

The Goddess.

And when she rose to her feet again, eyes glowing silver-white like newborn moons, the enchantment howled around her—but it could not hold her anymore.

Athena’s Memories Return

The cracks in her mind widened with every breath she took.

One moment she was standing in a silver field of glowing flowers—the next, she was standing on steps beneath a blood-red sky. It wasn’t a memory exactly—not yet—but a feeling, sharp and urgent, rising from the marrow of her bones.

Something important had happened here.

As if called by that thought, the scene shifted again. She was in a grand hall now, walls covered in swirling runes that hummed faintly with power. They pulsed in time with her heartbeat, like ancient beings whispering secrets in a language her mortal tongue didn’t yet remember—but her soul did.

Another flash— this one sharp and cruel.

A figure stood before her, robed in golden armor, face shadowed except for one thing: his eyes.

Eyes she could never mistake, even through the veils of time and shattered memory. Eyes full of envy, dark with greed and something worse—fear.

His name surfaced like something dredged from deep waters:

Caelum.

A god.

Not a king, not a mortal, but one of the divine. And once... her equal.

The betrayal came back in pieces, falling into her mind like broken glass assembling itself into a deadly blade.

He was the one who had feared her rise.

The one who whispered poison into the ears of others when she was crowned, whispering that the Moon Goddess’s growing power would eclipse theirs, that her love for mortals would corrupt the divine balance.

He smiled as he held the blade to her chest.

It wasn’t an ordinary weapon. It was the Eclipse Fang, a dagger forged from the bones of a fallen celestial, steeped in old immortal magic designed to do what nothing else could:

Shatter divinity.

"Forgive me," Caelum had whispered that day. "But you should have never tried to love them."

Then he drove the blade into her heart.

The scream that followed wasn’t human. It wasn’t even godly. It was something older than both—something raw, wild, and furious. And with that scream, her divinity had shattered, splintering into thousands of glowing fragments that scattered across realms, carried on rivers of magic like sparks from a broken star.

Her consciousness—her very soul—had been torn apart, cast into exile across the planes of existence.

And one of those fragments... one vital piece... had fallen into this realm. Into her.

Athena.

No wonder she couldn’t remember who she was fully when she arrived here. No wonder her powers felt locked, restrained by invisible chains.

She was incomplete.

Only now were those pieces beginning to drift back toward her, called by her pain, her fury, her betrayal.

More images rushed in like floodwaters breaking a dam:

The forests where she had first woken up, confused and weak.

The way her wolf had struggled to surface, half-formed, not because she was broken—but because she wasn’t whole yet.

Athena’s fists curled in the silver field of her dreamscape, and lightning crackled faintly between her fingers.

"I remember," she whispered, and her voice echoed deep.

But the knowledge came with a harsh truth: she couldn’t unlock all of herself.

Only fragments of her power were available to her in this form, like reaching for a weapon in the dark, fingers brushing steel but not quite grasping it. She could break enchantments. She could shift now. She could channel pieces of her celestial self—but the rest?

Still locked, scattered across planes of existence, waiting to be called back.

And Caelum—the one who betrayed her—was still out there.

But for now... it was this king she would deal with.

She opened her glowing eyes fully within the enchantment and stood tall, no longer collapsing under the weight of false memories. The flowers around her burned away, curling into ash that rose like smoke.

The false father’s voice whispered again: "No, stay, stay here with me. You are mine, daughter, mine—"

"No," Athena growled, and her voice sounded like thunder in the bones of forgotten mountains.

With one defiant step forward, the entire dreamscape shattered into silver shards, leaving only her standing alone in a sea of glowing nothingness.

But she wasn’t afraid anymore.