Artemis looked at who had spoken, and her eyes widened in fear and surprise.
"You should be dead," Artemis muttered in a frightened tone. "Is this a nightmare?"
"You're right about the first part and wrong about the second," the woman said with an amused tone as her hair spread in the wind. "I am dead, and this is definitely not a nightmare."
"How are you here?" Artemis asked, confused. "What is happening?… Zeus is changing, what the hell is going on?"
"Exactly what you're thinking," the woman laughed playfully. "Zeus changing is the answer, and he tried to change you without thinking about the consequences."
"What are you talking about?" Artemis whimpered, confused. "What do you mean, change me?"
"He chose the wrong day. The sovereign of the domain of the moon was me… you were just one of many divinities with lunar domains," the woman laughed louder, more unhinged. "You were the sovereign of the domain of the hunt, not the moon. Zeus summoned me."
"Domain? What the hell is that?" Artemis grew more and more confused. "I don't understand."
"You really shouldn't," the woman said coldly. "You are nothing but an insignificant echo of your true self."
"I am the true self!" Artemis roared as she drew her bow and fired the arrow. "You won't fool me, demon!"
The arrow struck the woman's chest and turned to dust.
"Wow, already cursing? Cruel," the woman said sarcastically, still showing no intention of attacking.
"How…?" Artemis was even more shocked. That weapon was capable of killing divinities.
"Simple. That weapon isn't real… it only works to kill echoes," the woman laughed and pointed at Artemis, who was instantly teleported into the woman's hand, her neck now being held. "I am the real one. I could use your body to return to the world, escape death, but… I'm happy in my illusion of death, with my beloved fucking me every day and giving me thousands of children. I will fix the mess Zeus made, adapt your access to the domain like any lesser god, and limit it so that even an echo like you can use it without destroying yourself. And you will not remember what was discussed here."
Artemis woke up gasping and felt a strange power within herself. She looked at the moon as if it were responding to her.
"What the hell is happening?"
__
Zeus' eyes widened in shock. In that moment, he felt a sudden, instinctive fear.
"A primordial awakened?" He looked around fearfully, then shook his head.
"No… it's just my imagination."
__
Elsewhere, inside a tomb, a goddess lay beside a skeleton.
She stared at it with sorrow mixed with madness, gently stroking the skull.
"You're pathetic," a voice said. The goddess looked up and saw something that made her depressed, crazed eyes widen. "I would be the same if I were without my beloved…"
The voice was sad.
"Is there a world where he still exists?" the depressed goddess asked in a dead tone.
"Yes. He's with me. We fuck every day and have already had more than a thousand children. I'm aiming for two thousand in a hundred years," the voice said playfully.
"I see. That's good, that's good, that's good," the goddess cried while stroking the skull. "Thank you for showing me that at least one of us has happiness."
"Bring your beloved's soul back," the voice said cruelly. "You just have to do something for me."
"What do I need to do? Tell me, tell me," the goddess knelt and begged, crying.
"Simple. Switch places with me," the voice said. The goddess nodded. She knew she would go to the place where the other was still happy with her beloved.
"You will abandon him?"
"No. That world will disappear, and thanks to an idiot, I will not disappear along with my beloved."
"I understand… I accept," said the goddess called Selene, the original born in this world. A light shone.
__
Zeus woke again, and beside him was a woman sleeping peacefully. She had a strange, almost transparent body.
Zeus had been fucking a ghost.
He woke fully and snarled. "Again? This doesn't seem like a primordial. What the hell is this? An archangel corrupted by divinity? Or did a primordial have a child?"
No, that wasn't possible… Even if a primordial had a child, it would still only be an avatar. Zeus clicked his tongue and went back to sleep.
__
Michael was furious as he walked through the sky in all his glory.
"What the hell happened?" he roared at the angels and second-generation archangels, who recoiled.
"Lord… a soul was taken," one of the most powerful second-generation archangels
The return was not gentle.
_
Heaven — Onceh, as the oldest angels still called it in dead tongues — was not invaded with trumpets or epic battles. Selene, the true one, entered like a logical error. A point that should not exist there, yet did.
The conceptual walls did not react. Not because they failed, but because they did not know what they were reacting to.
She walked barefoot across clouds that burned saints. Nearby wings recoiled on their own. Angels did not fall — they knelt without understanding why. The seals did not break; they simply accepted.
Selene was not hostile.
She was determined.
"Greek soul," she murmured, and the true name echoed in languages that were never meant to be spoken aloud.
Heaven tried to hide the man.
It tried to purify him once more, wrap him in glory, erase memories of the love that bound him to the moon. Too late. The bond already existed. Not by divine contract, but by emotional insistence — the most irritating force in the universe.
Selene crossed the lake of eternal memory and found him.
He was serene. Whole. Too clean for someone who had been loved by a broken goddess.
"You came," he said, as if he had not died for the second time.
"I promised," she replied.
Heaven finally reacted.
Lights ignited. Names were shouted. Orders that never failed began to fail. An archangel tried to interpose his spear.
Selene looked at him.
The spear turned into conceptual dust.
She touched her beloved's chest and pulled out his soul, not with violence, but with intimacy. Like someone pulling another from an embrace that had already lasted too long.
Heaven screamed.
Not in pain. In loss of authority.
___
Selene avatar began to die.
The false sky cracked like thin glass. The beloved she held began to fade before even understanding why. The children — those who should never have existed — evaporated in silence.
She screamed.
There was no bargaining. No last-minute exchange. The choice had already been made the moment she said "I accept."
The world collapsed without spectacle.
Nothing exploded.
Everything simply ceased to be sustained.
The Selene avatar fell into the void, realizing too late that borrowed happiness charges impossible interest.
___
Back in the human world, Selene the true one crossed reality like a nocturnal tide.
She chose carefully.
An ordinary woman. A healthy body. A simple life. No ties to gods, prophecies, or heroic destinies. Just someone who wanted a child, but could not have one.
Selene knelt beside the bed.
"I'm sorry," she whispered — not out of guilt, but out of respect.
She placed her beloved's soul into the human woman's womb, not as possession, but as a seed. A perfect fit between human desire and divine insistence. The soul curled inward, adapted, accepted.
The heartbeat began.
Weak. Human.
Selene felt something she had not felt in ages: relief mixed with fear.
He would return.
Not as a god.
Not as a memory.
But as something new.
She withdrew before any entity could trace the act. The moon covered the sky for one second longer than it should have.
In Heaven, Michael felt it.
This time it was not confusion.
It was certainty.
"That was not a theft," he said quietly. "It was a precedent."