Chapter 145 You Crown the Gods, I Tear Down Their Temples

Cold sea wind swept past with the sharp tang of brine. In the moonlight after the ebbing tide, the black reefs resembled the exposed, jagged skeleton of an ancient beast.

At the center of that deathly stillness, a deep whirlpool turned without a sound, like the pupil of the sea.

Gideon reached into its heart.

Bone-chilling seawater crept up his arm, but his fingertips touched a warm piece of metal.

He curled his fingers slightly and slowly lifted it from the water.

It was a palm-sized bronze fragment with sharp edges, covered in ancient, intricate spirals identical to the Amazons' forging style.

It was not a physical object, but a crystallization of pure energy within the currents. At the heart of its veins lay a black feather-trace finer than a hair. Born from the mingling of Princess Diana's blood with Gideon's divinity, the plague of thought scattered through the North Sea had found its root here and now.

This was no coincidence.

Gideon's fingertip brushed the patterns on the fragment. An almost invisible wisp of Silent Flame kindled with the touch.

In an instant, the spirals seemed to come alive. Light flowed through them, projecting a hazy yet precise three-dimensional map before him.

It pointed to a bottomless underwater canyon beneath Themyscira.

In the canyon's deepest reaches, a cavern sealed behind three wards glowing with sacred light was giving off a faint heartbeat.

"No coincidence..." The luminous map reflected in Gideon's black eyes. A cold smile touched his lips. "This resonance in the blood... It is calling to me."

Before the words had faded, he cast aside all hesitation and hurled himself into the bottomless whirlpool like a falling black meteor.

Water roared!

His black Wings of the Fallen snapped open behind him, their edges gleaming like blades.

They did not paddle through the water like ordinary wings. Like two unstoppable swords, they instantly sliced apart the dense layers of water ahead, defying physics and creating a passage of absolute vacuum around him.

He fell faster and faster, like a meteor piercing the earth's crust, plunging straight toward the divine prison beneath the sea, forgotten for countless ages.

Meanwhile, on Themyscira, in the Heart of the Gods.

Within a crystal array suspended above an underground lake of lava, Autonoe, the ley-line priestess, meditated with her eyes closed.

On her pale face, the rune on her forehead that signified communion with the earth flickered at an unprecedented rate, like an oil lamp about to go out.

Hum... Hum...

It was not a sound, but a tremor from deep within the ley lines, passing through lava and rock to act directly upon her soul.

The flow of energy throughout Themyscira became chaotic and frenzied.

"Something is wrong..." Autonoe's eyes flew open. Eyes that perceived the movement of energy now filled with horror and confusion. "Something... Something is waking the sleeping spirit of the artifact!"

She could clearly sense a domineering, cold, yet profoundly familiar energy approaching the divine vault at astonishing speed.

But it was not an invasion. There was no hostility, no desire to destroy.

It felt more like... a response. A sovereign calling to his lost authority.

"It is... that spear..." she whispered involuntarily, her voice trembling with fear. "The spear that never existed... It is breathing!"

Deep inside the divine vault, before the final stone door leading to the central sacred case.

Brise knelt on one knee, her right hand clenched around a family dagger set with moonstone.

Its blade was already covered in fine self-destruction spells.

Her grandmother's dying words seemed to echo in her ears again, hoarse and despairing:

"Remember, Brise... When the black feather touches the sacred case, our guardian bloodline will end. What we bear is not glory, but a curse... the curse of guarding a lie for the gods!"

The ground shook ever more violently. One by one, the golden runic chains sealing the stone door pulled taut and groaned under the strain.

Brise could feel that presence had already broken through the outer mist ward and the barrier of divine might.

"Black feather..." She lifted her head. Beneath her silver hair, the inverted-cross brand on her left cheek seemed about to burn. An utterly obsessive resolve flashed in her eyes. "My duty is to keep you from... touching it!"

She bit through the tip of her tongue, spat a mouthful of vital blood onto the dagger, and began shrieking the final incantation.

"Blood as the guide, soul as the offering—collapse!"

A thunderous crash!

Countless runes prepared in advance detonated across the rock walls, which began oozing great streams of molten-gold sealing fluid.

The fluid possessed the dual properties of purification and destruction. It could melt the entire divine vault and everything within it, then solidify into a single tombstone of divine metal.

At that very moment, Gideon tore through the final barrier of water pressure and stepped into the vault's heart.

It was silent as a tomb from the dawn of the universe.

There were no forests of sacred weapons, no mountains of treasure as one might have imagined.

At the center of the vast cavern, only an empty black spear case floated in silence, supported by a six-pointed array of light.

A cold maxim was engraved on its surface in ancient Hebrew:

[The bearer of the spear shall become the sacrifice.]

Gideon's gaze passed over the words. His expression did not change.

He did not hurry closer. Instead, he lifted his left hand and lightly drew a long fingertip across his palm.

A drop of black blood containing his primal memories as an angel of judgment silently fell.

It did not reach the floor. An unseen force caught it in midair and guided it precisely into the center of the six-pointed array.

A resonant hum burst forth!

A roar that seemed to come from the primordial past filled the underground chamber.

The ley lines shook violently. Countless afterimages made of flowing light appeared across the cavern walls, like a film being projected.

They were five entirely different fragments of history, yet their protagonists were strikingly alike.

The first image showed a sacred, golden-haired seraph wielding a spear that burned with white holy flame, judging ancient gods among the stars.

His codename was Gideon.

The second showed a cold-faced, silver-haired divine envoy holding the same spear. Its point was stained with the gray aura of chaos as he drove it through a demon god's heart in a single strike.

His codename was still Gideon.

The fifth showed a fallen angel whose presence was strikingly similar to the present Gideon's. The spear in his hands had become pure darkness. A demonic realm burned behind him.

His codename was again Gideon.

But every scene ended on the same chilling instant—

All five, without exception, were ambushed from behind at the height of their success and renown. The comrades they trusted most, or the gods they protected, killed them in various ways with a single strike through the heart.

At the instant they died, the spears in their hands dissolved into nothing, awaiting the birth of the next Gideon.

It was a deception played out in a cycle.

The fate of a tool used to clear obstacles for the gods, then offered up as a sacrifice.

"So that is it..." Gideon whispered. There was no anger in his black eyes, only the absolute coldness of complete understanding.

Just then, a furious shout came from a concealed doorway.

"Blasphemer! Perish with the vault!"

Brise rushed out like a woman possessed. Behind her, the torrent of molten gold roared forward like a great beast of magma bursting through a dam, determined to engulf the chamber that had revealed the truth.

A crashing splash!

Almost simultaneously, a powerful figure broke through the water above and descended. Diana had rushed to the scene.

At the sight of that world-destroying devastation, she moved to intervene, only to stop in midair, stunned by what she saw.

Facing the golden torrent capable of melting gods, Gideon did not even turn his head.

He merely raised his hand and poured a wisp of pure Silent Flame into the ancient patterns at the bottom of the empty spear case.

The hum rose again!

This time it was no echo of history, but the prelude to creation.

A shadow-spear made of the purest black Silent Flame slowly condensed out of nothing.

Its three-meter shaft burned soundlessly, giving off no heat, yet horribly warping the space around it. It was as though the battle afterimages of every generation of Gideon had been compressed into the spear's shadow. Time around it fell into a chaotic backward flow.

"You crown the gods. I tear down their temples."

Gideon gripped the shaft and lightly tapped the spear's butt against the ground with a backward motion.

Boom!

Invisible fire surged in reverse along the ley lines in an inconceivable counterstrike.

As though someone had pressed Rewind, the rushing torrent of molten gold was forcibly redirected to its source by a higher power of law.

Crack, crack, crack...

Amid the teeth-grating sound of solidification, the golden flood capable of destroying everything froze three meters from Gideon, becoming a strange, magnificent golden sculpture, forever fixed in the second before its collapse.

The dust settled.

Brise slumped among the ruins, staring in despair at the broken guardian's dagger in her hand.

Everything she had, her duty, her sacrifice, had become a joke before this man.

Gideon walked slowly toward her. The spear of black flame in his hand had quietly dissipated.

He crouched and gently placed a long-rusted family badge in her palm. The outline of an inverted cross could still faintly be made out.

In the final vision, he had seen the betrayed fallen angel Gideon tear it from his assailant and clutch it tightly just before he died.

"Your family has borne the shame of stealing a sacred artifact for generations. Have you ever considered..." Gideon's low, calm voice struck like a hammer, shattering the last of Brise's faith.

"The real betrayal was not stealing the spear... It was that certain beings needed an eternally recurring scapegoat to conceal this lie."

Through a distant crack in the trench, the first ray of dawn pierced ten thousand meters of water. Like a sacred spotlight, it shone upon the newly quiet ruins, the pale afterglow of a funeral for the old gods.

On the third day after the incident at the divine vault, deep inside Brise's long-dusty family shrine on Themyscira.

Brise huddled at the foot of a cold stone statue. She had not closed her eyes for three days and nights.

Again and again, mechanically, she rubbed the rust-covered badge in her palm. Its cold touch seemed ready to burn through the bones of her fingers.