Chapter 1325. So Heaven Finally Picked Up the Phone. Took Them Long Enough.

Chapter 1325: 1325. So Heaven Finally Picked Up the Phone. Took Them Long Enough.

Evelyn pressed her lips together until they went white, her teeth grinding against the bitter taste of fear and fury. She closed her eyes tight, forcing herself to swallow the sob rising in her throat.

When she opened them again, she didn’t look at the Goddess; she stared into the infinite, pearlescent haze until the blurred edges of her vision sharpened into something cold, hard, and lethal.

The girl who had been broken in the plaza was dying; something else was being forged in this white void.

The Goddess continued, her voice carrying the detached, clinical precision of a teacher reciting the terrifying rules of a final examination. There was no encouragement here, only the laying bare of a burden.

"My blessing is not a gift of power but a set of instruments," the Goddess said. "It has four parts..."

"Understand them as intimately as you understand your own pulse."

The golden scales above them shivered as she spoke.

"First: Judgment Lightning."

"This is no ordinary elemental strike... It is a bolt of white gold fury whose physical weight is determined by the sins of its target."

"The more guilt a soul carries, the more crushing the strike becomes..."

"Against a saint, it is a spark; against a monster like Rex, it will fall like a collapsing star."

Evelyn’s grip tightened on her own arms. She could almost imagine the sky tearing open to deliver a punishment that matched the scale of his atrocities.

"Second: The Scales of Retribution," the Goddess continued. "Pain is a currency."

"Every wound you suffer every broken bone, every laceration, every ounce of agony inflicted upon your flesh will be cataloged and stored within the scales."

"When the moment comes, you may return all of that accumulated suffering in a single, devastating blow to the one who dealt it..."

"A debt paid in full."

’A debt of blood,’ Evelyn thought bitterly. ’I want every broken rib he gave me to shatter his spine. ’

"Third: Open Court." The Goddess gestured vaguely to the space around them. "Upon activation, you will project a domain—a circle of absolute clarity."

"Within this space, illusions shatter, false shapes dissolve, and all forms of mind manipulation and deception lose their power..."

"In my court, there are no lies."

"And the fourth?" Evelyn asked, her voice steadier now.

"Verdict," the Goddess said, and the word seemed to echo endlessly. "This is the ultimate authority."

"It is a true statement spoken with the full, crushing weight of the scales behind it."

"Once spoken, it cannot be silenced, cannot be countered, and cannot be ignored..."

"Everyone who hears the Verdict will not merely believe it; they will see it as an undeniable truth written into the fabric of reality."

The great golden scale above them stirred violently, one pan dipping as if reacting to the sheer gravity of the power being described.

"However," the Goddess said, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop. "There is a condition."

"And it matters more than any of these gifts combined..."

"These blessings function only as long as you act in pursuit of what is true."

"Should you twist them, should you use them for petty vengeance, for personal spite, or to feed your own hatred, the needle will turn."

"The scales will cease to judge him and begin to weigh you."

The Goddess leaned forward slightly. "I am not giving you the right to kill, Evelyn Astralight... I am giving you a scale."

Evelyn stared at her. "What does it cost?"

The question was immediate, instinctive. Nothing this absolute came without a price.

"Responsibility," said the Goddess simply. "The burden of knowing exactly what you are doing and the consequences of every strike you land."

"Nothing more, and nothing less."

Evelyn turned her gaze toward the golden pans hanging in the void. One held a warm, steady light that promised hope; the other held a patient, consuming darkness that promised retribution.

Her mind flashed through the images that would define her new existence: she saw Elliot, pale and bloodied, sleeping fitfully on a cot with a makeshift bandage wrapped around his skull; she saw Apollo falling through empty air, his fingers grasping at a sky that offered no salvation; she saw the horrified faces of the civilians in the plaza, their eyes turned upward toward the pillar of light, praying for a god who had been silent for too long.

The choice wasn’t between good and evil. It was between being a victim who died in the rubble and becoming the instrument that ensured the monster could never smile again.

She drew a breath so deep it felt like it filled her entire soul, and when she let it out, it was cold as steel.

"I accept."

Deep within the sanctum of her consciousness, the Tempest Vanguard System screamed.

It wasn’t a sound of pain but of catastrophic structural failure. The third stage: the sealed core that had remained an impenetrable fortress of locked data and dormant potential began to fracture.

Under the relentless, crushing pressure of Evelyn’s newfound resolve, the seal didn’t just break; it shattered. The metal hard barriers of her own limitations split along their entire length like ice cracking under a sledgehammer.

Then came the flood.

The blessing of Justice poured through those psychic cracks like a torrential river through a broken dam. It was molten, white gold, and terrifyingly pure.

As the divine designation collided with her system, the two forces didn’t fight; they fused.

They spiraled around each other in a violent embrace before settling into her core with a sound that resonated through her very bones—the deep, reverberating chime of a massive bell struck underwater.

Clang.

The golden scale above her rocked violently, swinging in wide, erratic arcs as the two powers synchronized.

Then, with a sudden, eerie stillness, it came to rest.

Perfectly level.

Balanced.

A searing heat erupted in the center of her chest. Evelyn gasped as a mark burned itself into her skin, a perfect, symmetrical pair of scales.

The sensation wasn’t the agony of fire but something more profound: it felt like being struck by a bolt of lightning that refused to burn her flesh, instead rewiring her soul.

The white room began to dissolve, the marble floor turning to mist, the infinite haze bleeding into blinding radiance. The Goddess’s final words hung in the air, absolute and prophetic.

"Then stand," the Goddess commanded, her voice fading into the light, "and weigh him."

...

In the plaza below, the pillar of white gold light remained motionless for one more long, agonizing breath. The city held its collective breath.

Then, with the suddenness of a candle being snuffed, the light vanished.

But Evelyn did not fall.

From the twisted wreckage of stone and rebar, she rose. Her body didn’t just stand; it ascended, lifting half a meter off the debris-strewn ground as if gravity had lost its grip on her.

Her hair streamed upward in an invisible updraft, and when her eyelids flickered open, her pupils were gone, replaced by twin furnaces of burning, molten gold.

For one suspended moment, she hung there like a marble statue of vengeance, divine and terrible.

When her feet finally touched the broken stone, the impact sent a shockwave through the rubble.

As she took her first step forward, the lightning that crackled across her skin—the familiar blue sparks of her old power—had transformed.

It was now white and gold, crackling with the deadly brilliance of morning sunlight reflecting off the edge of a freshly honed blade.

Rex’s Divine Perception caught the signature the exact millisecond it stabilized. His breath hitched.

He recognized that frequency. He recognized the terrifying architecture of that power.

It had the same fundamental bones as Xavier Xenworth’s blessing, but this was different.

This was more refined. Sharper. Harder. It felt like something that had been forged in the heart of a supernova only seconds ago.

A slow smile pulled at the corner of Rex’s mouth, a predator’s smile, hungry and twisted. It wasn’t a smile of fear, but one of perverse delight.

Watching Evelyn rise felt less like watching a survivor and more like watching a ghost claw its way out of the grave of the man he had murdered, only to inhabit the body of the girl he had just been breaking.

"So you finally moved," Rex said quietly, his voice carrying across the silent, blood-stained plaza. "You finally decided to play, Goddess of Justice."

His eyes locked onto hers, the gold meeting his dark certainty. "I remember what Lustia warned me about."