Chapter 783: [The Rewritten Lost Past] [23]

The climax of the Blood Moon War had come at last, and it was unfolding across the plains of Valachia.

Anyone with eyes could see it. The coming hours would decide everything. The long struggle had reached its final threshold, that terrible point beyond which there would be no retreat, no pause, no second chance to recover what had been lost.

The Resistance had gathered the full strength of its remaining forces to confront the Vampire Witch and the army she had unleashed upon Sancta Vedelia. Never before had the fighting been this savage. The battlefield had become a place of torn earth, shattered steel, and screams swallowed by the roar of monstrous things. All across the plains, the Witch’s blood-born abominations rampaged through the lines like living nightmares, crushing formations, tearing through mounted ranks, and staining the ground beneath them with fresh ruin.

And yet the knights of the Resistance did not break.

They were terrified, any fool could see that but they still fought. They fought because there was nothing else left to do. Behind them lay their homes, their families, their children, their dead, and everything that would be devoured if they failed here. That knowledge was what kept their hands strong when fear threatened to overcome them. It was what drove them forward even as the monstrous summons of the Vampire Witch seemed terrifying.

But courage, however great, could only do so much.

Slowly, the Resistance was being forced back.

From high above the slaughter, Athena and Anuket watched in silence.

They hovered over the battlefield while below, Valachia drowned in chaos. Athena’s expression was tense. Anuket, by contrast, looked almost entirely resigned. There was no panic in her face, no visible grief, only the expression of someone who had already accepted the outcome.

"It’s over, Thena," Anuket said at last. "Sancta Vedelia is doomed."

Athena turned toward her. "What are you saying, Anuket?"

Anuket gave her a faint smile, one devoid of warmth.

"Don’t pretend not to understand. That does not suit you, Thena." She tilted her head slightly. "Look at the Tree."

Athena did not want to.

But after a moment, she forced herself to turn her gaze toward the Holy Tree of Eden, far in the distance yet still visible from Valachia’s plains. Under ordinary circumstances, the Tree stood with an ancient and sacred stillness. Now it looked different. It was glowing.

Not gently.

Its light pulsed with a growing intensity that seemed to disturb the very world around it. The ground carried a faint, continuous tremor beneath it, and even the air had begun to vibrate with a strange rumble, as if something buried deep beneath reality itself was starting to stir.

"It’s just like three hundred years ago," Anuket said.

Athena’s grip tightened around the lance in her hand.

Anuket’s green eyes flicked briefly toward the gesture before returning to the distant Tree.

"There is no Freyja left to sacrifice this time," she said. "She has already been used once. I will not stay here to witness what they choose to do now in order to save Sancta Vedelia." Then she looked directly at Athena. "You should leave as well. Unless, of course, you intend to offer yourself to the Tree in her place."

At the mention of Freyja, Athena’s expression shifted at once.

"Freyja... Freyja gave her life—"

"She did not," Anuket cut in coldly. "She was thrown into it. Used by Nihil and Fenrir to contain the Tree." Her gaze hardened. "At the very least, honor her with the truth, Athena."

Pain passed over Athena’s face hearing that.

"It should never have happened," she said quietly.

"No," Anuket replied. "But it was always going to happen the moment that Vessel of Samael took control of the Guardian Spirit."

Athena fell silent.

There was no easy answer to that.

"And Freyja paid the price for it," Athena said at last. "The birth of the Guardian, the Apostle, and the Prophetess... they were meant to unite Sancta Vedelia."

"It was meant to end the war," Anuket corrected. "That was the purpose."

Her voice softened only slightly, though it lost none of its severity.

"Nihil and Freyja chose them from among humans for a reason. Humanity was already losing. Their extinction was no distant threat, it was approaching. They needed symbols, powers, figures who could rally the realm and alter the balance."

"And Freyja made the right choice," Athena said, lifting her eyes with renewed seriousness. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

"She did," Anuket admitted. "But no one knew what he was. Not until it was too late."

Everyone knew Nihil had wanted to identify the Vessels as early as possible, ideally from birth. But wanting something and accomplishing it were not the same. The search had never been simple, and when it came to something as specific and unique as the Vessel of Samael, only one being could truly have helped them find him with certainty.

Nevia.

And Nevia had not.

So they had waited.

And when they finally learned the truth, they made the worst mistake possible, they convinced themselves he could still be controlled. They left things as they were, hoping to contain what should have been confronted at once.

Freyja had paid for that mistake.

Anuket’s expression grew distant then, her eyes no longer on the present battlefield but on another memory entirely.

"I will never forget the look on her face that day," she said quietly. "When the Tree just—"

"Anuket."

Athena stopped her.

Anuket glanced at her.

Whatever Athena had seen in her expression made her stop.

For a brief moment, neither of them spoke. Below them, the war raged on without mercy. The sky itself seemed darker than it should have been with the blood moon hanging over darker by hours.

At last, Anuket sighed softly.

"I will not watch that happen again," she said. "You should leave. Sancta Vedelia is finished."

And with that, she vanished.

Athena remained alone above the battlefield, her lance in hand, the cries of war rising from below and the distant light of the Holy Tree growing steadily more terrible with each passing moment.

-BOOOOOM!

At that very moment, something slammed into the battlefield.

Athena’s head snapped forward at once. Far ahead, perhaps several thousand meters into the chaos of the plains, the earth had burst open beneath a storm of dark purple fire. Flames spread violently across the ground, devouring everything in their path, their color so unnatural and dense that they looked less like fire and more like some abyssal force given shape.

Her eyes followed the destruction upward.

And then she froze.

A massive dragon tore through the sky above Valachia.

Its scales were black, yet not entirely black; beneath the shadow of them ran a deep purplish sheen, like bruised night lit from within by cursed fire. Its wings carved through the heavens with terrifying force, and each beat sent tremors of pressure across the battlefield below. From its jaws poured torrents of burning breath, that same dark violet blaze crashing down not upon the Resistance, but upon the Witch’s own ranks.

Upon her knights.

Upon her monstrous summonings.

Entire clusters of blood-born creatures were swallowed by the flames, their twisted bodies writhing as they were consumed. Even the Witch’s soldiers scattered in shock, their formations breaking beneath an attack no one had expected.

For one brief, disbelieving second, Athena could only stare.

A dragon?

Here?

In Sancta Vedelia?

In Valachia, of all places?

Her confusion sharpened at once into suspicion. Narrowing her eyes, she focused more carefully on the creature’s back despite the distance and the smoke rolling through the sky.

There were figures standing atop it.

Three of them.

One man.

Two women.

Athena’s breath caught.

Even from afar, she recognized the man almost immediately.

Amael Falkrona.

Horus’s grandson. Belle’s son. Nihil’s son.

The Vessel of Samael Eveningstar.

Her jaw nearly dropped as the full sight of him settled in her mind, standing upon the back of that black dragon as though he had emerged straight from some picturesque portrait.

What in the name of Eden was happening?