Chapter 1324. Divine Covenant Loophole: Hire a Mortal

Chapter 1324: 1324. Divine Covenant Loophole: Hire a Mortal

"Sit, Evelyn Astralight," the woman commanded.

The words didn’t carry weight so much as they carried inevitability, as if the command itself was a physical law she was enforcing. "Your body still draws breath among the ruins below..."

"I have merely borrowed a few moments of your consciousness to conduct this hearing."

Evelyn didn’t move. Her legs felt strange, weightless, yet anchored by something deeper than muscle.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

Her jaw was set so tight it ached, a reflex born from months of fighting for every inch of ground she held. "And what did you do to the plaza...? What did you do to him...?"

The woman didn’t flinch at the hostility. "I am the one you summon in the darkest chambers of your mind when you wish for someone to pay for what they have done."

"I am the retribution you crave when mercy fails." The woman’s blindfolded gaze seemed to pierce through Evelyn’s skull. "I am... the Goddess of Justice."

Evelyn stood frozen. The silence in this white void was deafening.

Her mind raced, trying to categorize this. Was it an illusion?

A sophisticated mental attack by Rex?

A hallucination born of blood loss?

But the clarity of the marble beneath her feet felt more real than the pain she had just endured.

She had grown up reading tales of divine intervention, but she had spent her adulthood learning that true power didn’t come from gods; it came from steel, blood, and survival.

She refused to kneel. She would not give this specter the satisfaction of her submission.

Instead, she folded her arms across her chest, bracing herself against the metaphysical chill of the room. Her voice came out flat, hardened by the trauma of the fight.

"Why now? Why show yourself when I’m already broken?"

"Because I cannot intervene any other way." The Goddess’s tone remained eerily placid. "There exists an ancient covenant between the divine, a boundary that even I cannot breach without shattering the balance of existence."

"We do not touch the mortal world with our own hands..."

"To do so would be to unmake the very world we govern... We act through conduits."

"We act through those who carry our designations, and only through them."

The Goddess stepped closer, the hem of her grey robe whispering against the marble like the sound of distant sand. "If I could descend into that plaza, if I could reach down and pluck the life from that man’s throat with my own fingers, I would have done it days ago."

"But I am bound by law..."

"So, I have called upon the only vessel capable of holding my fire."

"Called me," Evelyn repeated, her voice dripping with skepticism. "You have the wrong person."

"I’m not some chosen saint... I’m a soldier who barely survived a massacre."

"No," the Goddess agreed, "you are not one of mine..."

"Not yet." She lifted her chin a fraction, the white cloth over her eyes catching the ethereal light. "But you will be if you choose to accept the burden."

"But before you decide to become a weapon, let me show you the truth of why you have been summoned."

The golden scales above them suddenly lurched. One pan dipped lower than the other, the movement sending ripples through the air.

"There was once an Apostle of mine," the Goddess continued, her voice taking on a rare note of something resembling sorrow. "A man named Xavier Xenworth."

"He carried these scales for nineteen years..."

"He was the instrument of balance, the hand of righteous fury..."

"Then, he died... But he did not die a natural death."

"He died in a manner that defies divine record, a death so absolute that I could not name it."

The scale trembled violently.

"His soul left his body in a place where my sight could not follow, a void that swallowed his essence."

"His blessing has been hanging suspended between the realms of the living and the dead ever since, adrift because I cannot find where he fell."

"The thread that severed his connection to the divine, the hand that ended his service and left my scales incomplete..." The Goddess paused, and for the first time, the air in the room grew charged with a terrifying, static tension. "...is the same hand that has been breaking your bones for the last hour."

The color drained from Evelyn’s face so completely she felt as though she might dissolve into the white marble beneath her.

That cold, gnawing suspicion, the one that had been burrowing into her gut since the northern corridor, the one she had tried to dismiss as paranoia or exhaustion, finally had a face.

It had a name.

It had a body.

Her voice didn’t just drop; it withered into a broken whisper.

"Rex killed Xavier." A pause. "And Apollo."

"He killed Apollo Brightsoul," the Goddess confirmed, each name falling like a stone into a deep well. "He killed Veylor, Calivara, Eryndra, and Theo Morr, Nightwing."

"And so much more..."

"He has left a trail of broken legacies and extinguished lights in every chaos he has orchestrated."

The scales above them groaned, the golden pan containing the light swaying violently.

"And he took something that was never meant for mortal hands," the Goddess continued, her voice gaining a razor-sharp edge. "He seized the Right of Kaeleth, the authority over Time itself within your city."

"I felt it shift... I felt the gears of reality grind against something foreign."

"I do not know who holds it now, or how he maintains its grip, but every time I attempt to weigh the true shape of his soul, the needle shakes."

"It spasms without direction, as though an invisible hand were pressed against mine, forcibly obscuring the truth."

She spoke without rage. There was something far more terrifying about her delivery: she spoke as though she were stating the weather or the inevitable decay of all things.

It was simply a fact she had been forced to endure.

"That is my limitation," the Goddess said, turning her sightless gaze toward the infinite haze. "A skill he possesses; something ancient and wrong hides the true architecture of his soul from my perception..."

"I cannot weigh him as a whole... I cannot see the sum of his being."

"I can only weigh the corpses he has left behind, the screams he has summoned, and the havoc he has wrought... And that alone is enough for a verdict."

Evelyn swallowed hard. Her throat felt like it was full of glass.

The memory of Rex’s laughter, echoing through the plaza as he stood over her broken body, flashed through her mind like a lightning strike.

"Can I even... win?" she asked. The question was raw, stripped of all pretense.

"I do not know."

It was the most honest answer Evelyn had ever heard.

In a world of false prophecies, system promises, and heroic lies, the Goddess’s blunt uncertainty acted as an anchor.

For the first time since the fight began, Evelyn felt she could actually trust the being standing before her.

Evelyn let out a long, shuddering breath, trying to steady her racing heart.

"Why me?" she asked, her voice gaining a sliver of its old steel. "I’m no saint..."

"I’ve spent months hiding my system from everyone... Even from Elliot."

"I’ve lived a lie every single day."

"I am not looking for saints, Evelyn Astralight," the Goddess interrupted. "Saints are easy to break because they believe in the goodness of the world."

"I am looking for someone who refuses to believe a comfortable lie."

The Goddess took a step forward, the space between them humming with power. "You doubted him from the moment he stood among your friends and smiled that perfect, practiced smile."

"You carried that doubt like a wound for weeks, without proof, without certainty, yet you did not let it turn into reckless accusation."

"You waited... and you observed."

"You sought the truth rather than the satisfaction of being right." The Goddess’s voice softened, almost reverently. "That is not hatred... That is patience."

"And in this age of madness, patience is rarer than divinity."

Evelyn’s composure finally fractured. A single tear traced a path down her cheek, but her eyes remained fierce.

The thought of the people she cared about, the ones Rex had dismantled like toys, burned in her chest.

"Elliot," she choked out, her voice cracking. "Is he... did he..."

"He lives," the Goddess said firmly, cutting through Evelyn’s panic. "He breathes..."

"But he is broken in ways you cannot yet imagine..."

"And he will need you."