h4Chapter 131: The Vision Of The Enemy/h4

    I stood slowly, my voice distant. "How did you enter here?"

    He held something in his hand—glowing faintly. "I made a deal. One I probably shouldn’t have."

    The gods bristled.

    Lucas kept his gaze on me. "I had to see you. To warn you. There’s something elseing. Something worse than Caelum. I saw it in the breach. It’s already begun."

    My spine stiffened. "What is it?"

    "I don’t know. But it knew you. It called your name like a curse and a prayer."

    The gods murmured.

    Lucas stepped closer.

    But I didn’t move.

    "I don’t remember you," I said softly. "Not the way I want to. The way I did."

    "I know," he whispered. "But I’m not here for that."

    A beat of silence.

    "I’m here to fight. Beside you. Even if you don’t remember us. Even if you never love me again."

    I stared at him, the throne pulsing behind me.

    He was real.

    And so was the storming.

    I turned to the gods. "Then send us where we’re needed. If the realms are cracking, we won’t wait for the pieces to fall."

    The throne red once more. The sky fractured.

    The war had only just begun.

    The throne room of the gods’ realm still trembled with residual power. The breach behind Lucas had begun to seal, but the memory of it pulsed in my chest like a fractured heartbeat. The other gods watched us, silent and still. No god or goddess dared move. All their patience and vignce cracked in that moment.

    But I waspelled forward.

    The throne’s light dimmed but remained warm beneath me. The seal upon the air high above flickered in raw energies that spelled imbnce.

    A voice echoed rom mortal memory.

    Athena.

    So soft it could have been a dream.

    I rose, fist clenching.

    "Show me," I said.

    A ripple in the realm’s fabric pulsed, and the floor faded like water evaporating. I found myself walking through shifting clouds of reality, toward something ancient at the start of time.

    It first showed me a vision of fire

    I stood on charred earth. The ground beneath me cracked and smoldered. Giants of smoke rose into skies the color of hurt.

    A city in ruin sprawled before me—spires toppled, streets swallowed, wolves howling among the rubble.

    Among the ruins, men and wolves fought intertwined. I watched as one wolf-mage struck a colossal shadow serpentine creature with sts of moonlight—and it shattered, only to reform and strike again. The creature fanged into her chest. The wolf fell.

    Beyond them, armies of wolves shed with impossible beasts: moon-eaters shaped like molten steel, horned creatures pulsing with dark lightning, skeletal dragons wreathed in violet fire.

    A banner flew above twisted stone fortresses. The sigil: a crescent moon—but etched with deep cracks and ck veins.

    It pulsed with a message: It is your turn.

    I whispered my name—and the beasts paused. Thousands of eyes turned toward me. Then, with a scream, they surged.

    I didn’t run. I lifted my hand, and a pulse of cold night broke through the battleground. Steel and shadow met moonfire. Light cut darkness, and beasts dissolved like ink in water.

    Then came the vision’s end—not with triumph, but with loss.

    I saw Lucas fall among them. I heard his roar of agony. Ash drifted down from the silver sky.

    And augh rang out.

    Athena.

    The realm flickered again, and I stood before an endless throne, carved from obsidian ripping into silver light. Seated upon it—not seated, but woven into it—was a monstrous silhouette.

    It had no face. Only shape. A body carved of rivers of starlight and void, des where arms should be, teeth of whitened bone. Wings made of cracked reality.

    A voice burned in my mind: Wee back.

    I whispered my name.

    The creature rose. Wings snapped reality. des shed the air. Augh that shattered allws of time cut from the void.

    You called me.

    It’s my turn now.

    A wave of anti-magic erupted. Thews of the realm bent. The gods’ seats cracked. shes of everything unraveled.

    I felt both powerless and all-powerful—like the universe saw me, recognized me as its bnce point, andughed at me for thinking I could choose.

    The thing lunged.

    Reality distorted. The throne crumbled. But I stood with both shadow and moonfire in my arms.

    And I breathed.

    The vision shifted again.

    Now I stood alone in a tomb of stars, a corridor of dust and forgotten gods. The walls shimmered with carved faces—ancient deities who had fallen in wars before this one began.

    They spoke.

    Their voices threaded into mine.

    She has the power of bnce. You fear her strength. But she fears more what she can destroy.

    She must destroy it first — or be destroyed.

    We tried to whisper the way, but she was born deaf after what Caelum taught her.

    Another voice, cracked by time, said—

    Beware the memory you gave up. There lies the tether.

    I lunged for the nearest wall—etched with the ancient sigil of the original Moon Goddess. My fingers brushed it. It glowed hot like molten silver.

    And then it exploded into fractals. Reality cracked behind me.

    I stood before Kieran and Lucas in the real world—though "real" felt distant. The memory faded behind me.

    Lucas’s voice was torn: What did you see?

    I heard him, but I couldn’t speak.

    Within me, the thing that called my name from the future—a primal echo—woke again.

    It whispered: Either you will lead me... or I will finish you.

    I stumbled. The floor beneath cracked.

    I staggered toward the old throne tform I had vacated, still projecting power through the seal that existed only because I allowed it.

    I lifted a hand to hold it together.

    I opened my mouth. Words came.

    I am both the key and the lock.

    Lucas looked down at me. Fist clenched.

    I breathed.

    I will lead this new war.

    Augh echoed behind me—not cruel. Sad.

    We always thought there would be a war. But none thought you would lead it.

    I turned then to them.

    But I still don’t know if that makes me Athena... or what I fear.

    The final vision struck me a momentter:

    A dark-robed figure, face veiled, walking through a corridor of bone-white webbing. In her hand: a de of cracked moonstone.