Moonlit Vows Of Vengeance-Chapter 56: Syvera’s New Stitch

Athena’s pov

A scream shattered the air.

One orb bypassed the front line and shot straight toward me. I dove sideways, hitting the dirt as it struck the space I’d just been in leaving a crater of warped ground and smoking roots.

I rolled, came up panting, and grabbed the short blade one of the guards had left behind.

I couldn’t shift. My body still trembled from the last time. But I wouldn’t be dead weight either.

The orb came again.

I stepped aside and slashed, my blade passed through it like water, and the orb shrieked but didn’t die. It spun, faster now, building momentum.

"Hit the core!" Thalen barked. "Center of the mass, strike where it pulses!"

I waited.

Waited—

There. A flicker of light in its center. I stabbed forward, driving the blade into it with a snarl. The orb howled and convulsed—and burst in a wave of cold that numbed my skin.

Another down.

But they weren’t stopping.

The forest shook with the sound of the battle. More orbs poured in from the treetops, dozens of them. The recruiters formed a ring around me. Every movement was clean, brutal, beautiful.

But I could see the strain now.

Even they had limits.

Aeryn was bleeding from one temple. Vael’s arm trembled slightly with each shadowstrike. Thalen moved like a storm but even storms pass.

And the orbs just kept coming.

"Why are they here?" I shouted, dodging another.

"I’ll explain later!" Aeryn called. "But it seems you’re bleeding divine essence like bait! It’s calling them!"

I gritted my teeth.

Then use me.

I ran forward—not away from the fight, but into its heart. Toward the densest swarm of orbs.

"ATHENA!" someone shouted.

I didn’t stop.

Let them come.

If I was a beacon, I would burn them all with me.

The first orb lunged. I met it head-on with a snarl—and something snapped inside me.

Magic. Power. Like ice cracking through my veins.

But it wasn’t wolf-form this time. It wasn’t rage.

It was something else.

The orb collided with my outstretched hand—and stopped.

Time slowed. My fingers sank into the shadowstuff like silk. The core pulsed.

And then I ripped it out.

The orb disintegrated in my grip.

I stood, heart pounding, eyes wide, staring at the glowing fragment in my palm.

The others saw it too. Every orb froze in the sky. Trembled. Then, like smoke in wind, they scattered—fleeing into the trees with high, shrieking wails.

Silence returned.

The battle was over.

I dropped the core. My legs gave out.

Thalen caught me before I hit the ground.

For the first time, his expression wasn’t unreadable.

It was wonder.

"You didn’t just destroy it," he whispered. "You unwound it. Unmade it."

I stared at my hands.

What the hell was I?

And what had I just done?

We didn’t speak for a long time.

The forest was quiet again. The air still. No more orbs. No more shrieking. Just the sound of my breathing—fast, ragged, sharp in my ears. My legs were still too weak to stand on my own, so Thalen lowered me gently to sit against the trunk of a tree that hadn’t been blackened by orb-burn.

My fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

I looked down at them. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

They were empty now. Normal. No glowing shard, no pulsing core. Just my hands—trembling like leaves.

"I didn’t shift," I murmured, almost to myself. "That wasn’t my wolf."

"You...." Thalen said, crouching beside me.

Vael approached slowly, shadows curling around his shoulders like a cloak. "You reached into the orb’s essence. Into its weave. That’s not lycanthropy."

"It’s not mortal magic either," Aeryn said, standing a few feet away, her face pale but composed. "I’ve seen a thousand variations of arcane force, but that... that was raw pattern manipulation. It shouldn’t be possible."

"It’s older than the magic we know," Vael said softly. "And more dangerous."

They were all staring at me now.

I hated it.

"I didn’t mean to do anything," I said, voice cracking. "It just happened. I was trying to survive. That’s all."

Thalen’s expression softened. He reached into his satchel and handed me a flask of water. I took it, swallowing greedily, trying not to drop it.

"You weren’t just surviving," he said. "You unmade something unnatural. That takes intention. Power. Instinct."

Instinct.

That word sat heavy in my chest.

I’d always relied on instinct. My wolf. My training. My ability to read danger, to anticipate moves before they happened. But this... this wasn’t instinct. It was like something else had reached through me.

Or maybe out of me.

"Do you know what that shard was?" I asked.

Vael nodded. "A soul fragment. A corrupted one. The orb was built around it. Usually, it takes a full ritual to separate it from the shadowform. You did it with your bare hand."

"It didn’t feel like a soul," I whispered. "It felt like—like string. Like I could pull it apart and watch the whole thing unravel."

Aeryn knelt across from me now, her sharp green eyes fixed on mine.

"Have you ever touched a Weave Thread before?"

"No," I said, bewildered. "What’s a Weave Thread?"

She exchanged a look with Vael. With Thalen.

Then she turned back to me and said, carefully, "It’s the foundation of all existence. Reality is stitched from countless threads—life, time, memory, identity. Mages manipulate the surface. Gods bend the pattern. But only a few beings have ever been able to see the threads beneath."

"And even fewer can pull one without unraveling everything connected to it," Vael added.

I stared at them, numb. "You think I can do that?"

"You did," Thalen said. "Whether you meant to or not."

A sick feeling coiled in my gut.

"So what does that make me?"

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then Thalen looked me dead in the eye.

"We don’t know."

And somehow, that was worse.

Because if they didn’t know—these powerful, ancient, terrifying beings who could tear through monsters like cloth—then what the hell was I?