Page 64 of Crowned By the Shadow
“Remember,” I urged. “Remember who you were before the void claimed you. Remember the balance you maintained with your counterpart.”
The darkness trembled, and for a moment, I glimpsed something beneath the corruption. A flicker of silver light. It waspure and untainted, the essence of the Moon Goddess fighting to break free.
“Help me,” I whispered to my companions. “Help me reach her.”
Ronan and Volker joined our circle, adding their strength to the growing harmony. Together, we formed a conduit of power, channeling it through the Twilight Crown and into the Moon Blades I held before me.
With a deep breath, I plunged the blades into the prison and into the heart of the darkness.
Not to wound. Not to kill. But to separate, to cut away the corruption from the goddess beneath.
The void howled in protest, a primal, bone-chilling sound that reverberated through the very fabric of reality. It lashed out violently with writhing tendrils of pure darkness. The oily, viscous appendages whipped through the air with stunning speed. These shadowy extensions reached hungrily toward us, seeking to envelop and consume our essence, to drag us down into the endless abyss where light and hope could not survive. The corruption fought desperately against our intrusion, its ancient greed palpable as it tried to preserve its hold on the goddess’s captive spirit.
But the crown on my brow blazed brighter, creating a shield of perfect balance that the corruption could not penetrate. The harmonious light emanating from it pushed back against the darkness, creating a protective bubble around our group.
The corruption fought with a savage intensity, its darkness surging like a living entity desperate for survival. The void tendrils whipped around us, striking at the protective shield created by the Twilight Crown with increasing ferocity. Each impact sent shockwaves through my body, the strain of maintaining our protection threatening to tear me apart.
“It’s fighting back,” I gasped, my arms trembling as I held the Moon Blades steady. “The darkness doesn’t want to be separated.”
The void howled, a sound beyond hearing that resonated in our bones and souls. Black lightning crackled across the prison walls as the corruption rallied its strength for another assault.
“Hold steady,” Thorn urged beside me, his hand gripping my shoulder as his Sun Court magic flowed into me like a river of molten gold. “We’re making progress.”
He was right. Despite the corruption’s resistance, I could see the silver light of the Moon Goddess growing stronger within the darkness, pushing outward as our combined magic created a pathway for her true essence to emerge.
Van’s melody shifted, becoming more insistent, each note a beacon calling to the goddess trapped within the void. “She’s responding,” he called over the cacophony of the battle. “Keep going!”
The corruption surged again, this time targeting Wyn specifically, perhaps recognizing the twilight magic she now commanded. A tendril of pure darkness shot toward her like a spear.
“Wyn!” I shouted in warning.
She didn’t flinch. Instead, her hands came up, shadows and light intertwining around her fingers as she caught the tendril and transformed it, the darkness flowing through her and emerging as balanced twilight energy.
“I’ve got this,” she said, her starlit eyes blazing with determination. “Focus on the goddess!”
With renewed purpose, I drove the Moon Blades deeper into the heart of the darkness, channeling all the power I had access to through them. The blades no longer felt like weapons, but extensions of my will. They were surgical tools meant to separate corruption from essence with precision rather than violence.Their silver metal gleamed with an otherworldly light as they cut through layers of ancient malevolence, each stroke releasing wisps of purified lunar energy back into the goddess’s true form.
“I can feel her,” I whispered, sensing the Moon Goddess’s consciousness responding to our efforts. “She’s fighting from within.” Her presence flickered like a candle flame in a storm, weak but determined, reaching toward me through our connection. Each time our energies touched, I felt a jolt of recognition.
The corruption shrieked, a sound of primal rage and desperation that shattered several of the crystal prison walls. Shards of obsidian rained down around us, black as night and sharp as daggers, slicing through the air with deadly intent. The noise was deafening, like a thousand voices screaming in unison, their agony and fury vibrating through my very bones.
But Ronan and Volker created a protective circle, deflecting the dangerous fragments. Ronan’s hair whipped around his face as he moved with practiced efficiency, his pale hands weaving patterns of protection while his eyes remained focused and calm despite the chaos.
“The prison is breaking down,” Volker warned, his scholarly voice tense with urgency, sweat beading on his brow as he maintained the shield. “If we don’t complete this soon, the corruption will escape into the cosmos! The barriers are failing at an exponential rate. We have minutes at most!”
“Then we finish it now,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. My arms trembled with exhaustion, and I could feel blood trickling from my nose, the price of channeling such power, but I refused to falter when we stood at the precipice of success or catastrophic failure.
I closed my eyes, reaching through the Moon Blades and the Twilight Crown to the essence of the goddess herself. The connection burned through me like liquid silver, painful yetpurifying. In that moment of connection, I saw her, not as she was now, corrupted and twisted, but as she had been: radiant, powerful, her luminescence casting gentle shadows that danced and played rather than threatened. She was the perfect balance to Van’s solar brilliance, not his opposite but his complement, the silver to his gold, the gentle night to his vibrant day.
“Remember,” I whispered to her across the void, pouring every ounce of conviction I possessed into those words. As I spoke, I pulled on my own memories of my interactions with the fragments of her I’d met before. “Remember who you are. Not what they made you, but who you truly are. The night sky that cradles dreams, the tides that cleanse the shores, the silver light that guides traveler’s home. Return to us,” I called, feeling the goddess’s true essence responding to my plea. “Your counterpart awaits. The balance can be restored.”
Within the maelstrom of darkness, something shifted. The silver light grew stronger, pushing back against the void that had enslaved it for so long. I felt rather than saw the Moon Goddess fighting to reclaim herself, centuries of corruption unraveling beneath the touch of the Moon Blades.
“It’s working,” Wyn gasped beside me. “The darkness is separating from her true essence.”
“Keep going,” Thorn urged, his grip on my shoulder tightening as he poured more of his strength into me.
The strain was immense, threatening to tear me apart from within. The Twilight Crown felt like a band of fire around my temples, and the Moon Blades grew heavier with each passing moment. But I refused to yield, refused to fail when we had come so close.
