Eighteen Times She Chose the Mortal Chapter 09
Aresion’s POV
“Look! It’s Lord Aresion!”
“Gods above. His power… it’s immense!”
I walked down the steps of light, descending from the sky.
Pure starlight power formed a visible silver storm that swept across the entire mountain.
Every god and guard in the grand square was forced to bow their heads, unable to breathe under the overwhelming pressure.
Only the High Priest and my old friend, Damon, remained standing, and only barely.
The casual familiarity in their eyes was gone. Replaced by awe and shock.
“Welcome back, my Lord.” The High Priest bowed his head low, his voice trembling.
I gave a slight nod, retracting my aura. I calmly surveyed my surroundings.
This square. I had stood here countless times, a humble shadow, watching her chariot fly away, waiting for a scrap of her attention.
Now, all of Olympus was looking up at me.
“Aresion. What in the hell happened to you these last three years?” Damon walked up, his voice filled with disbelief.
He glanced around, then lowered his voice. A complex mix of pity and grim satisfaction flashed in his eyes.
“You know, don’t you? That woman. Cassia. She’s finished. Utterly,”
I paused and turned my head to him.
The strange woman who used to cry outside my door on the Isle.
She had vanished in the second year. I assumed she’d given up or moved on.
“What happened to her?” My voice was flat. No emotion.
“It happened during a fleet escort mission, in your second year away.” Damon took a deep breath, as if the memory still shook
him.
“She spent that whole first year going to the island, looking for you. The blood oath backlash was eating her alive, her divine power was almost gone. The constant heartbreak was shattering her soul.”
“Then, out on the Endless Sea, the fleet was hit by the worst chaos storm in a century.”
Damon swallowed hard, pointing up at the sky. His voice rose.
“To cover the fleet’s retreat, she burned out the last of her power. She was struck head-on by a bolt of divine lightning from the Furies. Her golden godhood, the very core that made her the goddess of war… it was shattered in mid-air.”
I listened, my heart a calm sea.
So that’s why she stopped coming.
Her godhood was broken. She couldn’t fly to the Isle of Oblivion anymore.
“The council was furious. They stripped her of her divine rank,” Damon continued, a hint of mockery in his tone. “The once- great goddess of war is now a nobody. Less than a minor god. They banished her to the deepest vaults of the library. She is
nothing bilt a servant now. She can’t even afford a simple healing potion now.”
I nodded. I said simply,
“I see.”
That was her fate to bear.
It had nothing to do with me.
I walked past the crowd, heading alone toward the great hall of the gods.
A grand ceremony was waiting for me there, to crown me with the honor of the Seat of Stars.
But just outside the magnificent doors of the hall, I stopped.
In a shadowed corner stood a woman. So thin, she looked like she might fall apart.
It was Cassia.
She was holding a bouquet of starlight flowers.
The kind that only grow on the cliffs near the Isle of Oblivion.
She stood hunched, utterly broken. Her spine was slightly stooped, and her right shoulder looked twisted, an old injury that never healed. The fierce, proud Goddess of War was gone.
She looked up. The moment she saw me, her entire body began to tremble.
“Aresion…”
Her voice was a broken thing, laced with a familiar, yet foreign, humility.
I stopped.
I looked at this woman. The one who had supposedly wronged me. The one who had paid a terrible price.
Her eyes were brimming with tears. And in them, a tiny, fragile flicker of hope she barely dared to feel.
My heart was still a placid lake. Not a single ripple.
Her trembling hands stopped in mid-air, offering the flowers.
When I made no move to take them, that last, faint ember of hope in her eyes was finally extinguished by a silent, crushing despair.
I did not take the flowers.
I just looked at her, and the corner of my mouth lifted in a faint, polite smile.
I spoke to her in the gentlest, most proper tone.
“The flowers aren’t necessary.”
Her tears fell, splashing onto her dry, chapped hands. Her shoulders began to shake.
“I still do not remember you. But I was told we already said our goodbyes.” I gave a slight, polite bow. “I wish you peace in whatever life you have left.”
She stood frozen, as if her soul had finally been torn away.
The starlight flowers fell from her hands, scattering on the cold marble floor, gathering dust.
I didn’t look back at that crumbling, despairing face.
I turned, clean and sharp, and strode through the doorway toward my endless glory and my freedom.
