The Moonwell didn't just shatter—it exploded into light that illuminated the bones of time itself. I saw moments that never were, futures that couldn't be, all bleeding together as reality convulsed around my daughter. Ashara floated at the epicenter, suspended between the name I'd given her and the name that had been trying to claim her since before her birth.
Blood ran from my eyes—the cost of looking directly at divinity unmaking itself. But I couldn't look away. Not from her.
Then came the scream.
It started in frequencies only gods could hear, then descended through octaves of anguish until even mortal ears could comprehend the sound of something immortal learning what death meant. The false god—the Mirror-born thing that had haunted us through reflections and shadows—was trying to claw its way into flesh using the crack we'd made in reality.
"It's coming through," Dorian warned, raising a blade that seemed pitiful against what approached.
"No," I said, pulling Ashara against me despite the way her skin burned with competing possibilities. "It's trying to. But the choice has already been made."
The air before us split like rotting fruit, and through the wound in existence pressed something that should never have been. A being of mouths and eyes, each organ showing a different fate—Ashara crowned in starlight ruling worlds, Ashara burning in silver flame as she unmade reality, Ashara simply gone as if she'd never existed at all.
"LOOK," it commanded, and the word had weight, had claws, had the power to compel.
But I'd learned the power of refusal. Instead of looking at the futures it offered, I closed my eyes and began to sing.
The lullaby from that first night. When she'd been hours old and I'd been terrified of what we'd brought into the world. The simple melody my mother had sung to me, human and plain and carrying no power but love.
"Sleep now, my starlight, the moon's riding high..."
"YOU CANNOT IGNORE ME," the god raged, pressing closer. Reality bent around its presence, trying to accommodate something that violated every natural law.
But I wasn't alone in my defiance.
They came as they had before—the spirits of every woman who'd borne the Moon's prophecy. My ancestors in suffering, in love, in loss. But this time they didn't come to judge or plead. They came to witness.
They formed a circle around the thrashing god, translucent forms creating a boundary not of power but of memory. Each woman who'd died for prophecy. Each mother who'd chosen sacrifice. Each daughter who'd been consumed by divine purpose.
"We see you," they spoke in unison. "We remember what you cost us."
The god's form writhed, trying to find purchase in their acknowledgment. But witnessing wasn't worship. Memory wasn't prayer. They offered only the cold recognition of something that had fed on their pain for too long.
"I DESERVE TO EXIST," it screamed through mouths that opened in places mouths shouldn't be. "I HAVE BEEN IMAGINED. I HAVE BEEN NAMED. I DESERVE—"
"You were never born," I interrupted, still singing between words, still holding Ashara who burned and froze and shifted between states. "You were only imagined. A nightmare that thought itself into almost-being. A parasite living in the space between what is and what's feared."
"The child spoke my name—"
"The child spoke sounds that meant nothing. You gave them meaning. You tried to make yourself real through her voice." I opened my eyes then, meeting every one of its terrible gazes. "But she's already real. Already complete. Already chosen. There's no room in her for your hungry nothing."
That's when Ashara began to cry.
Not the wail of an infant in distress. This was deeper—the sound of rejection made manifest. Each tear that fell from her silver eyes struck the ground and flowered into tiny lights that ate at the god's form. Her refusal had become power, not through divine gift but through the simple, absolute certainty of a child who knew what didn't belong.
"No," she said between sobs. One word. Clearly spoken. Utterly final.
The god's scream changed pitch, no longer rage but recognition. It was being unnamed. Uncreated. Pushed back into the nothing it had come from by the will of a toddler who simply didn't want it there.
Its form began to splinter. Eyes closing one by one. Mouths sealing themselves shut. The futures it had shown collapsed into impossibility. With each piece that faded, reality breathed easier.
"Please," it begged at the end, reduced to a single mouth, a single eye. "I only wanted to be—"
"I know," I said softly. And I did. The hunger to exist, to matter, to be more than potential—I understood that drive. "But not through her. Not through any child. Find another way to be, or find peace in not being. But you don't get to use my daughter as your door."
The last eye closed. The last mouth whispered something that might have been gratitude or curse—I'd never know which. Then it was gone, pulled back into the space between spaces, sealed away by choice and love and the absolute refusal of a small girl to be anything but herself.
The sky, which had been cracked and bleeding light, slowly sealed itself. The ancestor spirits faded with expressions of... relief? Peace? They'd finally seen one of their line break the pattern completely. Not through death or ascension but through simple, stubborn refusal.
As the last echoes faded, I noticed something new. A scar across the moon's surface—thin as thread but visible to those who knew to look. A reminder that gods could die. That divine plans could be refused. That sometimes the greatest power was in saying no.
Ashara's tears stopped. She looked up at me with eyes that were purely her own—no silver light, no ancient wisdom, just my daughter tired from crying and ready to go home.
"All done?" she asked.
"All done," I confirmed, though I knew it wasn't entirely true. We'd won this battle, yes. Killed a god that should never have existed. But the scar on the moon would be seen. Questions would be asked. Power would take notice of the child who could unmake divinity with her tears.
Dorian wrapped us both in his arms, and for a moment we just stood there—a family that had faced down gods and chosen to remain merely human.
"What happens now?" he asked.
I looked at our daughter, already drowsing against my shoulder, then up at the scarred moon that would forever mark this night.
"Now we teach her to live in a world that knows she exists. A world that's seen what she can do." I pressed a kiss to her forehead, tasting mortality and eternity in equal measure. "She didn't just survive her prophecy. She rewrote it. And that's going to attract attention we can't refuse anymore."
But tonight, we'd proven something important:
Gods could die. Prophecies could break. And sometimes, a mother's lullaby was stronger than divine will.
It would have to be enough.
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