Chapter 133: The Battle Continues
The forest shattered around us.
He moved like I did—every strike a mirror of mine. Blade against blade. Thought against thought. For every blow I delivered, he knew the counter. For every flicker of magic I summoned, he had already stolen it from my shadow.
"You cannot win," he hissed. "You severed half your soul to survive. Now I am whole. And you,"
"Are dangerous," I finished for him, swinging low, letting rage sharpen the arc of my blade.
He dodged effortlessly, using my old training against me. The trees we once used as sanctuary now exploded into splinters beneath our clash. Every movement echoed across the gods’ realm, rippling through its magic, turning divine stillness into a battlefield.
"Don’t you see?" he sneered, locking blades. "The cradle didn’t cleanse you. It cracked you. You are not divine—you’re a fracture pretending to be whole."
I gritted my teeth. "Then let’s see which piece bleeds first."
A pulse of magic shot from my hand, a blast of white flame that should have incinerated anything in its path—but he twisted, turned, caught the fire in his palm like it belonged to him.
Because it did.
He was made from me. My fear. My pain. My refusal to break. The girl who had clawed her way out of the abyss only by carving out the weakness and calling it sacrifice.
He was what I left behind in that moment of "ascension."
And he hated me for it.