Moonlit Vows Of Vengeance

Chapter 103: A Goddess Unbound

The realm of gods trembled as I stepped away from the dying embers of the guardian’s bones.

My skin shimmered with sigils I didn’t recognize but somehow understood—markings not of worship, but of warning. A language older than this world, etched into me like scars. My blood burned with the fire I had claimed, but I felt no pain anymore. Just purpose.

I had walked into this place half of who I was.

Now I walked out divine.

The Flame Gate still stood behind me, quivering with the aftershocks of my awakening. I approached it, silver light bleeding from my hands as I touched the arch. The stones pulsed in recognition. It would open again, now that I commanded it. Now that I had become what I once was—and more.

"Take me home," I whispered.

The portal obeyed.

Wind and light collapsed inward, and with a final pulse of power, I stepped through.

The wind howled like a warning through the twisted remains of the battlefield. I didn’t wait for applause or prayers. I didn’t need their cheers or their tears. I had already made my decision the moment I looked into the king’s shattered eyes and felt nothing.

The broken throne behind me was no longer mine to sit upon. Not yet. Not like this.

I walked alone across scorched earth, past the corpses of demon wolves still steaming with dark magic. My steps left trails of silver light, the power within me stirring like a living storm, caged just beneath my skin. I could feel the gods calling me—not as a queen, not even as a wolf, but as one of them. One of their own.

I didn’t look back.

Not even when I passed the wreckage of the old temple where I first awakened. Not even when I felt Lucas’s presence hovering somewhere in the distance. I didn’t need a goodbye.

This wasn’t an ending.

This was the beginning of what I was meant to become.

Ahead of me, nestled within a dead forest swallowed by shadow, stood the passage I had always feared. The Divine Gate. Not the portal I came through. This was older—primordial. A jagged arch of black stone, veined with molten silver, humming with an energy so old it made my bones ache.

The entrance to the world of the gods.

I bled a single drop of my divine blood across my palm and pressed it to the arch. The gate trembled, then screamed open—stone splitting with a sound like thunder cracking through eternity. Wind burst through the gap, silver and crimson and violet light swirling like a galaxy made of chaos.

The air tasted of stars and memories.

I stepped through.

And the world tore itself apart around me.

I fell through the veil like a flame swallowed by a void. My body disintegrated. My mind fractured. And then, I opened my eyes.

The realm of the gods was not just beautiful. It was raw.

Skies of broken constellations stretched above a dead ocean made of stardust and shadow. Jagged peaks of crystal and obsidian jutted into the sky. This was where time went to die. Where thoughts could eat you alive. And where gods came when they were no longer worshipped.

I had no solid form. My skin shimmered, translucent, divine. The only thing grounding me was my rage.

Memories slammed into me without warning.

Caelum.

His face—beautiful and monstrous—flashed in my mind. The blade he drove into my heart wasn’t just steel. It was a god-killer, forged to scatter me across planes, to trap my soul between worlds. He was once my equal. My rival. The one who whispered promises of immortality while sinking the knife deeper.

And he had help.

The Binded King wasn’t just a servant. He had been Caelum’s puppet all along. The trap, the lies, the sealing—it had all been orchestrated. They feared me.

I now understand why.

Because I was never meant to be gentle.

I was a destroyer of illusions.

A being of judgment.

Lightning cracked across the sky, and the ground opened beneath me. Figures crawled from it—old gods, twisted beyond recognition. Some reached for me with claws of mist and bone. Others bowed in silence, whispering in dead tongues.

One spoke clearly.

"You have returned."

I looked down. The speaker was nothing but a head on a spine of light.

"You seek the full power that was taken."

"Yes," I said, my voice echoing like a command written in creation itself.

"Then face the trial."

My hands lit with silver fire as the world shifted again, dragging me toward a trial only the divine could survive.

The trial was not a test of strength.

It was worse.

It was memory.

A wall of mirrors rose around me, infinite in all directions. Each one reflected a moment—my betrayal, my fall, my failure.

Then came the final mirror.

Me.

"Is this what you want to become?" the mirror asked in my voice.

"No," I said. "It’s what I have to become."

My hand burst with divine light. I shattered every mirror with a scream.

The darkness receded. The world held its breath.

And then came the light.

It poured from the sky, from the broken stones, from within me. The silver glow consumed me. My old wounds sealed. My scars glowed like constellations. My eyes burned like moons.

Power hummed under my skin like an ancient melody I had forgotten how to sing.

The wasteland was silent now, the trial shattered, the illusions burned. The jagged obsidian peaks no longer towered over me like sentinels—now they bowed, just slightly, like even this world remembered who I was.

No.

Who I had become again.

My feet touched the ground without touching it. Silver light curled up my ankles, whispering along my limbs like a lover’s kiss. Every breath I took was laced with starlight. Every heartbeat cracked through the realm like a thunderclap. My senses expanded, stretching beyond this place, beyond the veil. I could feel the pull of tides from other worlds, the sorrow of prayers whispered under moonlight by wolves who no longer knew my name.

Caelum had tried to destroy me. The other gods turned their faces away when I screamed for help, bleeding across a dozen shattered planes.

Because I had been born with more power than any of them dared to dream of.

And I wasn’t afraid to use it.

I raised my hand. Light sparked at my fingertips—no longer the fractured bursts of borrowed strength, but true creation. Moonlight laced with wrath. Magic that could split time open and rewrite the end of any war.

I tested it.

With a flick of my fingers, a mountain in the distance crumbled to silver dust.

With a whisper, the dead ocean rippled into storms.

With a breath, stars blinked into existence above me, drawn by my will alone.

This was what had been stolen from me.

And now, it was mine again.

A voice stirred behind me. Not spoken aloud—carried on the wind like a ghost.

"She awakens."

I turned.

Shapes moved at the edge of the realm—figures I remembered in pieces. Other gods. Not all enemies. Not all allies. Some stared at me in awe. Others in fear.

None dared approach.

One, however, did.

He had no face. Just a body made of shifting dusk and broken promises.

"You’ll burn this world to find him, won’t you?" it asked, voice soft as ash.

My gaze didn’t waver. "Yes."

Caelum was still out there. Hiding. Plotting. Pulling strings like a coward behind the veil. And he had dared to think I would stay broken.

He was wrong.

So wrong.

The faceless god bowed and dissolved into light. The others vanished too, scattered like dry leaves.

I stood alone in the realm of gods—and then, I reached.

With my will alone, I pushed my presence outward, searching the threads between worlds. Magic answered. The stars opened. I could feel the places where Caelum had once walked. I could feel his stains—small smears of cold, arrogant divinity still clinging to time and memory.

And then I found it.

A wound in the fabric of existence.

The trace of his power.

He was building something.

Preparing.

For what?

I saw it in pieces. Golden chains. A crown made of fallen god-bones. He wasn’t done. But he was close.

I clenched my fists.

The realm around me crackled in response, lightning arcing from sky to stone. noveldrama

"He thinks I’ll wait," I whispered to the stars.

I wouldn’t.

But I wasn’t going back yet—not until I learned how to bend this new power to my will without burning myself to ash.

So I walked forward, deeper into the light. Into the Temple of Origins, rising now from the ash at my command. Built of moonlight and memory. Its spires reached higher than sight. Its doors opened for me alone.

The war hadn’t even begun.

But I was ready.

I was whole.

And the Moon Goddess was no longer hiding in shadows.

She was preparing to set the world on fire.