Moonlit Vows Of Vengeance

Chapter 127: The Girl Who Became No More

The Cradle was no longer just a place.

It had become a pulse, alive and ancient, wrapped around my bones like a second skin, watching, waiting. It wanted something from me now. Not my strength. Not my loyalty.

It wanted a piece of me that I could never get back.

I stood barefoot in the center of the final chamber, surrounded by obsidian pillars glowing with silent fire. Every echo that bounced off the walls sounded like a version of my own voice — younger, softer, broken.

This was no longer a trial. This was judgment.

A pool of starlight shimmered before me — no water, no reflection, just magic. Raw and knowing.

Willing sacrifice, the voice of the Cradle whispered.

The same phrase I’d heard a hundred times, but this time... the words coiled like a blade around my soul.

"What do you want from me?" I asked aloud.

No answer came, only a sudden memory. My brother’s laughter. My mother’s voice calling me in the dark. Lucas’s fingers brushing my cheek.

The pool responded to memory, not speech. And it showed me the root of my strength — not power, but love. The people who tethered me. The emotions that shaped me.

I dropped to my knees.

Because I understood then.

What it meant.

What the Cradle was asking for.

I wasn’t being asked to give up a person.

I was being asked to give up myself.

"Please," I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. "Not that."

But the magic pulsed again, one slow, inevitable beat.

Love had fueled my journey.

And now love had become the price.

Not romantic love. Not Lucas.

But every feeling that made me human.

"You want my emotions," I choked.

A hum. Affirmation.

"And my memories."

Because if I remembered love, the sacrifice would never be clean.

A scream built in my throat. "You can’t ask that of me! You can’t! I’ve already lost everything. Don’t make me, don’t make me kill what little of me is left!"

The starlight flared white-hot, blinding.

My hands trembled. The floor cracked beneath me.

I could feel the goddess inside me, the ancient, forgotten part. She was screaming too. Not out of pain, but awakening.

I could not be both.

I could not be Athena and the Moon.

Unless I paid the price.

I stood.

Shaking. Silent. Numb already, because part of me knew it had to be done.

"I give it freely," I whispered, voice hollow. "Take my memories. Take my emotions. Take the girl who bled for this realm. Leave only the goddess."

The Cradle answered.

It did not howl this time.

It wept.

A thousand voices cried out at once — voices from every lifetime I’d forgotten, every child I’d once been, every future I’d never have.

And then pain.

My chest exploded open in agony as the Cradle tore through me. I felt each memory burn as it left: the warmth of Lira’s laughter, the ache of my brother’s death, the trembling joy of Lucas’s kiss. All gone. Torn from me. Consumed by the Cradle.

Emotion bled out next not with fire, but ice. My pulse slowed. My tears stopped.

I could still see Lucas’s face in my mind.

But I couldn’t feel him anymore.

Not love. Not longing. Not regret.

Just... silence.

I collapsed.

Not from pain. From emptiness.

And in the hollow where my soul had been

Power erupted.

Divine. Endless. White-hot moonlight crashed through my body, rebuilding me, rewriting me.

The Cradle cracked open beneath me.

I rose , a flame wrapped in flesh.

No heartbeat. No fear. No tears.

The sacrifice was complete.

And when I looked up...

He was there.

Lucas.

Standing just outside the Cradle’s threshold, eyes wide with horror.

His voice was a rasp. "What did you do?"

I tilted my head, blinking slowly. "I fulfilled my purpose."

"You’re not." His voice broke. "You’re not her anymore."

"No," I said softly. "I am not."

His body trembled. "Athena, please. Don’t do this. You don’t need to be a goddess. You just needed to be... you."

"I can’t remember being her," I replied, stepping forward. "I only know she loved you."

Lucas looked like the sky had fallen.

"You gave up everything for power."

I didn’t flinch.

"I gave up everything to save this realm," I corrected.

He reached for me, but I stepped back.

The distance between us wasn’t just space. It was eternity.

"Goodbye, Lucas."

His lips parted like he might say more.

But then he closed his eyes.

And let me go.

The Cradle crumbled behind me.

I turned toward the mountains.

Toward war.

Toward destiny.

Toward silence.

I no longer needed love.

I no longer felt love.

But the moon followed me anyway.

The light was blinding. Not golden, not amber—this was something ancient and raw, a pure white fire that peeled back the layers of the world and left only truth.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t breathe.

I watched Athena collapse, her body arching with the surge of power that shot through her like lightning through steel. Her scream wasn’t one of agony, it was the sound of something being torn from the soul, willingly. noveldrama

Her fear.

Her chains.

Her humanity.

I staggered forward just as the basin of moonlight shattered, flooding the chamber with divine flame. My boots skidded on the cracked stone. The ground was pulsing beneath us, responding to her. Bending to her will.

Athena knelt there, her shoulders trembling, her eyes wide and unfocused. For a moment, she looked small again. Just a girl. The girl I remembered on the bloodied battlefield, the one who had held the line even after her gods had died.

But then she rose.

And I couldn’t breathe all over again.

She wasn’t the Athena I knew.

She was something more and something less.

Her eyes were the color of starlight. Her hair moved like it was underwater, or caught in the wind of some otherworldly realm. And her face, there was no trace of pain or doubt or longing. Just stillness. Serenity.

She looked at me like I was a story she’d once read and forgotten.

I asked the question anyway. "What did you give up?"

Her voice was calm. Clear. "I gave up my emotions. And every memory that tied me to this world."

The words hit like a punch to the chest.

"No," I said, even though I’d felt the moment it happened. Even though I’d known something was slipping. "Athena, no. You can’t,"

She stepped toward me, and for the first time, I realized her footsteps didn’t echo anymore. As if even sound was afraid to touch her.

"I had to," she said. "To claim the Moonfire fully, I had to become more than mortal. I had to let go of what made me... her."

"You were never just her," I whispered.

But she didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. "This realm gave me power. But it demanded a price. Emotion clouds judgment. Memory creates doubt. I offered them both."

I could feel my throat tightening. "Do you even remember me?"

There was a pause. The first pause since she’d awakened.

She tilted her head, studying me like I was a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve. "I remember... a presence. A loyalty. A promise kept. But I don’t feel anything when I see your face. Not love. Not sorrow. Not anger."

My knees almost gave out.

This wasn’t what I wanted.

This wasn’t what I fought for.

"You sacrificed your soul, Athena."

"I sacrificed my weakness," she replied softly.

Behind her, the air shimmered, and a new archway opened, this one inscribed in lunar runes I’d only seen in the most forbidden texts of the temple. The door to the world beyond the Cradle. The exit from the Trial.

Kieran emerged from the shadows then, his face pale, eyes sunken. He’d watched it too. Maybe even understood it better than I did.

But even he looked shaken.

"Athena..." he said, hesitating at the name. "You don’t have to leave the person you were behind."

"I already did," she said.

The air was colder now. The Cradle, which once felt like a heartbeat, was still.

The trial was over.

And we were alone with the aftermath.

Hours Later – Edge of the Cradle

We walked in silence. Or maybe I walked. She didn’t seem to walk anymore so much as glide, a breath away from the ground.

Her skin glowed faintly in the moonlight that filtered through the veil above. Her aura crackled with energy that bent the air around her.

But not once did she turn to me.

Not once did she smile, or frown, or even look uncertain.

I spoke, just to try and find something left. "Do you remember your brother?"

"I remember his name. Matteo."

"Do you remember what happened to him?"

"He died," she said simply. "His loss shaped the path that led me here. But I do not mourn him."

It was like watching someone dissect their own heart.

"What about your mother? Your people? Your childhood?"

She blinked. "I have context. But not attachment."

I stopped walking. "What about me, Athena?"

That got a pause. A faint tilt of the head.

"You mattered," she said. "You still do. But I no longer need you."

It was the worst thing she could have said.

Because that had always been the line I feared, being loved, but no longer needed. Being remembered, but never felt.

And now... I was both.

Flashback – The Night Before She Entered the Final Trial

I stayed awake that night, curled near the broken wall of the Cradle’s southern chamber, pretending not to hear her breathing change when I whispered her name.

"Athena," I’d said. "If this place tries to take you from me... fight it."

She hadn’t answered.

But I’d felt her fingers brush mine in the dark.

That had been enough.

Now, I stared at her hands, divine, glowing, untouchable.

No trace of warmth.

Present

"I want to believe you’re still in there," I said.

She turned to me fully now, haloed by the last veil of the Cradle’s glow. "I am."

"Then why can’t I feel you anymore?"

She looked down at her own hands. "Because you’re still seeing me with your heart. And I no longer have one."

I clenched my fists. "Then let me remind you. Let me be your heart."

But she stepped back. Not in fear. Just... distance.

"I can’t lead the world if I’m bound to it," she said. "That’s what the curse always meant. That if I loved too deeply, I would destroy everything trying to protect it."

"But what is power without love?" I snapped.

Her eyes flickered for the first time. Just a spark. A glitch in the silence.

"I don’t know," she whispered. "But I’m about to find out."

At the Cradle’s Exit – The Final Seal

A final altar waited at the mouth of the exit. Silver chains hovered above it—memory binders. One last test.

If she stepped through, the magic would seal her sacrifice forever. No reversing it. No way back.

"Athena," I said, voice hoarse. "Please. If you walk through that door... I lose you."

"You already did," she said.

Then she stepped through.

The chains wrapped around her arms.

A flare of light erupted.

And the woman I loved vanished into godhood.

Later That Night – Lucas Alone

I remained inside the Cradle, long after the archway closed.

Kieran found me eventually, standing where she’d stood.

"She chose the world over herself," he said.

I didn’t look at him. "She chose silence over pain."

He hesitated. "That’s not weakness."

"No," I said. "But it’s not living, either."

Kieran knelt beside me and placed a scroll on the stone floor. "She left this. Told me to give it to you if you stayed."

I took it with shaking hands and unrolled it.

It wasn’t long.

Only two lines.

"I do not feel you.

But if I could, I know I would miss you."

I folded it, tucked it against my chest, and let myself fall forward.

For the first time since I was a boy, I cried until I couldn’t anymore.