Moonlit Vows Of Vengeance
Chapter 130: Between The Realms

Chapter 130: Between The Realms

The moment Athena disappeared, the world fell quiet.

Not physically though. Werewolves still howled in panic. Gamas still stumbled across battlefields soaked in blood. But something deeper had gone silent. A pulse, maybe. A tether. A presence.

And I felt it snap like a bone beneath pressure.

She was gone.

Not dead.

Just... no longer reachable.

The moment I realized that, I couldn’t breathe.

I had always known Athena wasn’t fully mine. She moved like someone always listening to a higher voice. Even when she smiled, there was a sadness behind her eyes—like she already knew the ending and had made peace with it long before we could. But knowing she was meant to go didn’t stop the hollow bloom of rage in my chest when it finally happened.

Because I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Because I wasn’t enough to make her stay.

But I could follow.

Or I could try.

And so I did the unthinkable.

The Cradle was still glowing where she had vanished. Most wolves kept their distance, fearing that the burn of leftover godblood would scald them into madness. But I walked straight into it.

Not because I was brave.

But because something inside me was changing.

The closer I got to where she’d vanished, the more violently my body responded. My veins lit with fire. My heartbeat became discordant—off-rhythm with the pack but aligned with something else.

Something older.

I knelt by the smoldering soil where Athena had stood, and the moment my fingers touched it, the world split.

But not just the world.

Me.

Flashback

I never told anyone what Caelum whispered to me before he died.

It wasn’t a threat.

It was a warning—and a gift.

"You were not just her mate. You were my dog, too."

I thought he was trying to twist me. Manipulate me even in death. But as I stood inside the fractured light of the Cradle, I finally understood.

The night Caelum possessed Athena to force her awakening, he left a piece of his divinity inside me, too. Maybe because I was there. Maybe because I touched her while she still carried him. Maybe... because he chose me.

Whatever the reason, I wasn’t fully wolf anymore.

Something in me had cracked open.

And the crack became a door.

My body folded inward. I screamed as stars poured through my spine and pulled my bones inside out. My soul peeled off the world like parchment from fire—and I fell.

Not forward. Not up or down.

I fell between.

And then—

I landed in nothing.

At first, there was no sight. No sound. Just pressure. Like the womb of a forgotten god.

I drifted there for what felt like years. Or minutes. Or both.

Then I heard a voice.

Not Athena’s.

Not mine.

But familiar.

"You should not be here."

It echoed through me. Not in warning, but in grief.

"Then send me back," I shouted. "Or forward. Just let me find her!"

The nothingness trembled.

Then tore.

And the gods’ realm swallowed me whole.

THE DIVINE REALM

I hit the floor so hard, I tasted iron.

Pain exploded through every nerve. I coughed, choked—and rolled over in time to see seven silhouettes blur around me. Vast. Terrifying. Silent.

And then I saw her.

Athena.

Changed.

Her skin shimmered with pale starlight, her eyes colder than the moon’s heart. Her power was no longer restrained. She stood beside a throne with her name on it.

And she didn’t remember me.

"Athena," I rasped, dragging myself toward her. "Please..."

The gods didn’t speak. Not yet.

They watched me like I was an insect that had wandered into a vault meant for sacred beasts.

"What have you done?" one of them finally asked.

"I followed her," I managed. "Something followed me."

And that was when I felt it.

Not a presence.

A pull.

It tugged at the back of my spine. At the divine shard Caelum left behind. And I understood, too late, that I hadn’t come alone.

Something had hitched a ride.

THE SHADOW

It wasn’t Caelum.

It wasn’t god or wolf.

It was... absence. A hunger so ancient it had no name. Something that predated the gods. Something they locked away eons ago—buried under realms and myths and dust.

And Caelum, in his last unraveling act, had shattered its prison.

The divine spark in me had been the doorway.

And now the door was open.

A tear ripped through the sky above the gods’ temple. Black tendrils seeped through, trailing stardust and echoes of screams long buried. Time bent. Reality whimpered.

Athena stepped in front of me, power crackling at her fingertips.

But she still didn’t remember.

Her voice was steady. "Who are you?"

I wanted to lie.

I wanted to say nobody, and run.

But I couldn’t. My soul had already declared itself. I was part of this now.

"I’m the one who stayed when you left," I said quietly. "I’m the mistake Caelum made. And now... so are you."

The gods shouted.

Barriers flared.

But it was too late.

The crack widened.

And I felt the shadow pull at me again.

Not to destroy me.

To merge.

To become whole.

Because I wasn’t just a door.

I was the seed.

Caelum had planted it.

And now the end had bloomed.

MEMORIES IN REVERSE

As I collapsed again—bleeding, shaking, unraveling—I saw it all.

The first god, broken by doubt.

The wars they hid from.

The truths they silenced.

Caelum, once beloved by them, exiled for daring to name the shadow that hunted them from the start.

Athena, chosen not by prophecy—but by the absence of better options.

And me?

I was the afterthought.

The thread no one noticed until it unraveled the whole tapestry.

THE CHOICE

Athena stepped toward me as I writhed on the floor.

Something flickered behind her eyes. Not memory.

Instinct.

She knelt, placing her hand over my chest—and her eyes flared white.

She saw it then. The piece of Caelum. The root of shadow.

THE AFTERMATH

The thread of annihilation that pulsed inside me like a second heartbeat.

"You brought the end with you," she whispered.

I nodded. "I know."

She drew her dagger.

"I have to kill you," she said softly.

I closed my eyes.

But her blade did not fall.

Instead, her hand pressed tighter over my heart—and she screamed.

Not in pain.

In defiance.

"I won’t let this be the end," she snarled. And then—

She did something even the gods had feared to do.

She took the darkness into herself.

The realm screamed.

Reality buckled.

The gods fell to their knees.

And Athena—no longer wolf, no longer girl—stood reborn.

Her throne shattered behind her.

And in its place, a sword rose.

I don’t know what I am anymore.

Not wolf. Not man.

Just the witness. The flaw. The fuse.

But she’s still here.

Athena.

Not as my mate.

But as something new.

Something no one understands yet.

And whatever’s coming next?

It has her name carved into its spine.

And mine written beneath it in blood.

ATHENA – GODS’ REALM

The sky in the gods’ realm did not move like ours did. It rippled—veined with light like liquid crystal, constantly shifting between storm-gray and luminous silver. The land beneath my feet was silent, suspended between reality and something more eternal. Cold, still, vast.

And I stood in the center of it, no longer mortal. No longer cursed. No longer just a goddess.

But something more.

The darkness that had once hunted me, that had whispered behind Caelum’s eyes and coiled in the hollow of my bones, was now part of me. Tamed—not banished. I had not killed the shadow. I had learned its name.

And that was what changed everything.

I took a breath and the realm seemed to echo with it. The wind no longer pushed against me—it moved with me. Obeyed. I could feel the weight of stars watching. Listening.

The gods hadn’t spoken since I did that. They had been seated in their great silver thrones—twelve of them, ancient and unknowable, carved from elements that did not exist on Earth. Their faces were shadowed by veils of light and fire. I couldn’t see their expressions, but I could feel their judgment.

And still, one throne remained empty.

The one with my name.

Etched into the seat in runes that pulsed faintly. Athena.

"You wield both divine flame and the shadow that devours it," one of them finally said, his voice like thunder wrapped in silk. "You have done what none before you dared. What none survived."

I said nothing. Words felt small here.

"Do you know what you are now?"

I lifted my chin. "I am whole."

They murmured at that, some in approval, others with unease. The gods, I was learning, were not united in anything—not even their own realm. And perhaps that was why Caelum had been allowed to fall so far before any of them acted.

Another god stood, robed in seafoam and starlight. "You have not asked why your name was written before you arrived."

"I figured the answer would come," I said evenly. "I have no interest in false thrones."

"No," the goddess replied, descending from her dais. "Only in true ones."

She approached slowly, barefoot, her steps making the silver floor sing. "This seat has waited for you for thousands of years. We thought your line extinguished. But now..."

The others nodded.

"The first moon goddess was one of us, long ago," she said. "Before she fell in love with the mortal king who teared open the veil between our world and yours."

A wind tore through me, but I held steady.

"She gave birth to a daughter in secret. That daughter bore the same seal your body now carries. The shadow and the light. The balance."

"Me," I said.

"You."

I closed my eyes, briefly dizzy.

That struck something raw in me. I’d sacrificed my memories in the Cradle to reclaim my strength. But now... the knowledge of who I was, of what I was made for, seemed to rush in like floodwater.

I remembered pieces of her. My mother. Silver hair like moonlight on water. A lullaby she sang that never made sense until now—it was a spell. A protection.

And I remembered Caelum’s blade through my chest. The betrayal. The rage that shattered the sky.

The gods waited.

"You want me to sit on that throne?" I asked, voice hoarse.

The goddess nodded. "You are the Moon reborn. But also the Shadow’s Warden. Only you can wield both. And the balance is fracturing."

"What do you mean?"

The sky above us dimmed slightly. Far, far above, something cracked.

"Caelum was a symptom," another god said. "A sickness is spreading—through realms beyond even this one."

The Shadow stirred in my chest at the mention of it. Not with fear. With recognition.

"It wants to be free," I whispered.

The gods exchanged glances.

"You understand now why we waited," the seafoam goddess said. "Why we watched. You were not ready before."

I turned back to the throne with my name on it.

It didn’t shine. It wasn’t made of gold or fire or bone.

It was stone, rough and unpolished. Carved by hand. Strong and scarred.

Like me.

I walked toward it, power flaring with every step. My feet cracked the floor, shadows rising with light from beneath my skin. The gods did not stop me.

And when I sat, the entire realm shuddered.

It accepted me. The seat pulsed with recognition, ancient lines locking into place across the sky. A web, a seal, a warning.

The balance was restored—for now.

But the war hadn’t even begun.

Suddenly, a pulse.

Not from the throne. From the veil.

The gods turned as one.

And from the farthest edge of the realm, a breach opened.

Lucas was still on the floor.

Bloodied, exhausted, but alive.

My heart clenched but did not race. I didn’t feel it the way I once did.

But I remembered him now.

His eyes locked on mine, searching for the girl he loved.

The goddess who had once loved him back.