Eighteen Times She Chose the Mortal Chapter 05
The communication stone trembled in my palm.
I didn’t listen to whatever excuse she was sending. My fingers clenched.
A sharp crack echoed in the wind.
The stone that connected our minds turned to dust, scattering into the churning waters of the Styx.
The ferry docked.
The mists of the Isle of Oblivion wrapped around me like cold hands.
I stepped off the boat. I walked toward the heart of the island without hesitation.
The Waters of Lethe were crystal clear, glowing with a faint silver light.
The black veins on my neck were spreading wildly, bringing a tearing pain.
The Tartarean poison was about to consume my divine essence.
I knelt by the spring. I cupped the cold water in my hands and drank.
An icy chill shot through me.
Black, poisonous blood evaporated from my skin.
And along with it, torn from the depths of my soul, was the golden thread that had once bound me to Cassia.
Eight years of memories. Her tears for me in the snow. Her back, turned to me again and again. All of it shattered in the cold,
clear water.
The pain was gone.
So was the love.
Cassia’s POV
“Lady Cassia, does it hurt a lot?”
In Apollo’s temple, Lycus was propped up on a golden couch, delicately holding up his finger.
There was only a tiny red scratch on it. Not even a drop of blood.
I patiently dabbed the priceless healing salve on his fingertip.
“It’ll feel better soon. Be more careful next time,” I soothed.
Just then, a violent, crushing pain exploded in my chest. No warning.
It felt like the golden thread of fate woven into my very soul had been brutally, savagely snipped in two.
A dull roar echoed in my head.
I clutched my chest, collapsing to the floor in agony.
“Lady Cassia! What’s wrong?!” Lycus cried out, rushing to help me.
I ignored him, my eyes locked on my palm.
The communication stone, the one that connected me to Aresion, was turning to dust right before my eyes.
The powder slipped through my fingers and vanished.
Our Soul-Binding… was severed.
His last words echoed in my mind.
I’m on my way to the Isle of Oblivion now.
No. Impossible.
The Isle of Oblivion is the ultimate forbidden land. It erases everything.
Aresion loves me so much. The smallest frown from me would break his heart. He would never, ever erase eight years of us!
He’s just angry. He’s trying to force me to go back to him. To complete the binding.
I shoved Lycus aside and ran, a madwoman, out of Apollo’s temple and straight to the grand hall of the gods.
The High Priest stood in the center of the hall.
“Where is Aresion?!” I ran to him, grabbing his sleeve. My voice was so shrill I barely recognized it.
“Did he come to you? Where did he go? This is a joke, right?!”
The High Priest turned and looked at me.
His weathered face held none of its usual respect for the goddess of war.
Only deep, undisguised disappointment. And contempt.
He ripped his sleeve from my grasp and slammed a scroll into my chest.
“The dissolution of your union.” The High Priest’s voice was a low, furious rumble.
“He has formally stripped you of all command over him.”
My hands trembled as I took the scroll. Aresion’s signature was perfectly neat. Not a single trace of hesitation.
“He went to the Isle of Oblivion! How could he go there to erase his memories?!”
I screamed, the tears finally breaking free. “I just postponed the ceremony! I just took Lycus to get a scratch looked at! How could he do this to me?!”
“A scratch?” The High Priest let out a cold, bitter laugh. His eyes were like daggers.
“You ask why he went to the Isle of Oblivion? Because your mortal had a scratch, and Aresion was dying!”
My breath caught in my throat. “What do you mean?” My face was ghost white, my voice a thread.
“He took a fatal blast of Tartarean poison for you in the arena! He desperately needed the healing nectar to live, and what did you do?” The High Priest advanced on me, his every word a death sentence. “You poured it down the throat of a mortal with a scratch!”
I was frozen. Struck by lightning.
In the arena… he had stood in front of me… his face had been so pale… he could barely stand.
I thought he was just tired. I thought a high god didn’t care about little injuries.
“He didn’t get the nectar, and you didn’t complete the binding.” The High Priest’s eyes were red with fury as he roared. “The abyss poison invaded his body. If he didn’t break the bond with you, if he didn’t go drink from the Waters of Lethe to wash away
the poison and his memories, he would have been dead by tonight!”
My legs gave out. I collapsed to iny knees.
“It was you, Cassia.” The High Priest stared down at me.
“You were the one who forced him down this path. You were the one who forced him to erase every part of your eight years together!”
The severed bond in my chest felt like shattered glass piercing my soul.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
Aresion went to that place I feared most… to live.
He hadn’t just left me.
The suffocating, soul-crushing terror was this: no matter how much I screamed, no matter how much my heart broke, the Aresion who had loved me for eight years… was gone.
He had already forgotten me.
