The story has always been told as a warning.
As if it were a fable about pride, divine punishnt, and monsters who deserved the fate they received. As if the world needed a villain to justify its own cowardice. As if repeating the sa version, countless tis, could make it true.
But stories are weapons… And those who write them decide who bleeds in silence.
They say dusa was beautiful.
They say it as if that were the beginning of everything—as if beauty were an inaugural sin, as if the error lay in the eyes that observed her, and not in the hands that took her.
They say she was one of Athena's most faithful devotees, guardian of the temple, sworn to her vow, dedicated not only by faith, but by choice. dusa did not seek power. She did not seek glory. She sought belonging. Order. A place in the world that made sense.
She believed in the gods.
She believed that devotion was a shield.
Then ca Poseidon.
Not as a romantic temptation, not as a tragic encounter between equals, but as what it always was: a force that doesn't ask, doesn't wait, doesn't respect.
A god who confused desire with right. A king of the seas who decided that the body of a mortal—even consecrated, even protected by oath—was just another territory to be conquered.
There was no consent.
There was no choice.
There was no rcy.
The temple of Athena, a place of vows and sacred silence, beca the stage for a violence that would echo for ages. dusa scread to gods who didn't hear. She cried to walls that didn't answer. And when it was all over, it wasn't Poseidon who carried the sha. It wasn't Poseidon who lost sothing.
It was her.
Because the world of the gods never punished the aggressor. It only rearranged the guilt.
Virginity, that concept molded to control other people's bodies, was taken by force—and transford into the victim's cri. dusa, once pure in the eyes of the gods, beca "impure" because of sothing she never chose. And Athena… Athena looked.
Not with hatred.
Not with compassion.
With discomfort.
The goddess of strategy, reason, and order, did not see a wounded devotee. She saw a broken symbol. An unsettling reminder that chaos had touched her domain. dusa's appearance changed—not because Athena wanted to punish her directly, they say—but because the divine does not tolerate that which confronts it with its own flaws.
Snakes took the place of her hair.
Her gaze beca a curse.
Her beauty turned grotesque.
And the world breathed a sigh of relief, because now there was a monster to point out.
Athena did not kill dusa.
That would be too rciful.
She isolated her.
She exiled her far from the temples, far from mortals, far from any mory of what had happened. No longer a devotee. No longer a spiritual daughter. Just… a mistake that needed to be forgotten.
And so was born the most comfortable lie in history:
dusa fell because she defied the gods.
dusa was punished for her pride.
dusa deserved it.
No one asked what she felt when she woke up every day in absolute solitude. No one asked what it was like to exist knowing that a single glance from her ant death. No one asked what it was like to be feared by sothing she never asked to be.
Monsters don't receive questions.
Only swords.
Perseus ca later, guided by divine blessings, ard with sacred gifts, protected by those sa gods who had failed before. He didn't face dusa. There was no duel. There was no honor. He used reflexes, tricks, tools granted by gods who never soiled their own hands.
And when the blade fell, it was swift.
History says the hero won.
That evil was eradicated.
That the monster's head beca a weapon, a trophy, a symbol.
Even in death, dusa was useful.
Her body fell.
Her consciousness began to unravel.
And her soul was pulled into the Spirit Realm, like all the others, to dissolve into eternal oblivion.
It was ant to end there.
But Artemis saw.
The goddess of the moon, of the hunt, of won running free in the night, observed what the other gods refused to see. She didn't see a defeated monster. She saw a survivor who never had a choice. She saw a victim transford into a convenient narrative.
And Artemis, unlike the others, hated poorly told stories.
On the threshold between existence and oblivion, she intervened. She broke the flow. She snatched dusa's soul from the spiritual current before it completely dissolved. Not out of empty pity, but out of recognition.
"You don't belong to oblivion," she told her.
"You belong to mory."
dusa did not return to life. Not as a mortal. Not as a goddess. Artemis transford her into sothing different: a familiar spirit. A being that exists between worlds, that serves not through submission, but through a pact. A chosen bond, not an imposed one.
For the first ti since the temple, dusa could say yes or no.
And she said yes.
Not to serve the gods… But to never again be silenced.
As a spirit, dusa learned to observe. Learned to wait. Learned that ti is the cruelest—and most just—weapon that exists. She saw generations repeat lies. She saw Athena exalted as a symbol of justice. She saw Poseidon continue to be venerated as an indomitable force of nature.
And she never forgot.
Because monsters don't forget… They only learn to survive the weight of mory.
The portal still closes behind dusa, the echoes of the Spirit Realm dying like an ancient sigh. Her presence changes the air—not with explosions or imdiate terror, but with sothing worse: condensed mory. Each step she takes makes the space seem to rember what it tried to forget.
Athena remains motionless within the sealing circle.
Not due to physical incapacity.
But because, for the first ti since ascending to Olympus, she doesn't know what expression to use.
dusa stops a few ters from her and tilts her head slightly, observing her as one might assess an ancient work, cracked by ti, but still too proud to fall on its own.
"Funny," dusa says, her voice low and controlled. "I always imagined this mont… but I never thought you would seem so small."
Athena doesn't answer. Her eyes follow dusa with strategic attention, trying to calculate, trying to understand which piece on the board was moved without her noticing.
dusa sighs and then turns to the side.
"Vergil."
He raises an eyebrow, interested.
"Lend Yamato."
For a second, the entire coliseum seems to hold its breath.
Vergil observes dusa, then the sheathed blade in her hand, and then smiles in a relaxed, almost amused way. He extends the sword without hesitation.
"You can use whatever you have," he says. — Today I'm just watching.
dusa's fingers close around the hilt.
Yamato vibrates for an instant, reacting to the shift in domain, to the presence that is neither demonic nor divine, but sothing in between, ancient, spiritual. Vergil doesn't release the blade forcefully—he simply allows it.
dusa raises the sword to face level.
And then, she looks.
There is no beam of light.
There is no explosion.
There is no sound.
Her eyes gleam with a deep, dull green, and the blade begins to change. Vergil's demonic energy is not destroyed—it is pushed to the bottom, temporarily replaced. Yamato petrifies completely, from tip to guard, transforming into an extension of pure, sealed, silent spiritual power.
Undead stone.
Observing stone.
Vergil lets out a low laugh.
"Interesting…" he comnts, crossing his arms. "You really don't ss around. dusa smiles slightly."
"Jokes are for those who have lived a carefree life."
She then turns back to Athena.
Now, nothing exists between them anymore.
dusa takes a step forward, firmly holding the petrified Yamato, and stares directly into the goddess's eyes.
The eyes that once looked away.
The eyes that chose not to see.
The petrification tries to act.
The power extends like invisible roots, seeking to transform, impose, end.
But Athena is not human.
The veins of divine energy beneath her skin react, the symbols of wisdom and war burn in response, and the effect is incomplete. The stone tries to rise—and stops. Cracks. Stagnates.
dusa watches, unsurprised.
"I know," she says calmly. "Petrification never worked properly on beings like you."
She takes another step closer.
"In humans, it's easy. In heroes, it takes a little longer." A slight, cruel smile appears. "In gods… it's a different story."
Athena finally speaks, her voice firm but tense:
"dusa. This doesn't need to—"
"It does," dusa interrupts, without raising her voice. "Because you called this an order. You called that justice."
She raises the Yamato, resting the blade on the stone floor, as if it were a sentencing rod.
"Then let's play by your rules."
She leans slightly, bringing herself to Athena's eye level.
"First, I'm going to strip you of everything that makes you comfortable." Her voice is cold, thodical. "Not physically… yet. But of control. Of certainty. Of narrative."
dusa's eyes gleam with sothing deeper than anger.
"I'm going to break you slowly enough for you to understand every choice you've made. I'm going to take you to the edge… and stop."
She straightens up.
"And then I'll repeat it."
The silence that follows is not empty.
It's heavy.
Vergil observes the scene from his makeshift throne, clearly satisfied.
"Good," he comnts, relaxed. "This will be educational."
The sealing circle pulsates.
And Athena, for the first ti in millennia, realizes sothing she has never had to face before:
She is not being challenged.
She is being judged.
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