Athena

Athena is an Awakener Association operative, author, and Child of Mana whose dreams sometimes draw information from the Records. Although she presents herself as detached and private, her decisions repeatedly place her between institutional duty and knowledge that no one around her possesses. Her most consequential choice comes after forty-three attempts to defeat Neo Hargraves: when every workable victory still kills nearly all of her allies, she turns the Association's prototype Space-Time Cube against its own force and ends the battle.

Biography

An author among the Association's Myths

Before Athena enters the story directly, survivors know her as the B-rank Awakener called the Myth of Wisdom and as the author of Son of Zeus: The Lightning Thief. Ares assigns her to accompany Apollo and Emma on a mission to Arzew, where Anomaly #33 has reportedly been killed. The Association wants to identify and recruit whoever achieved it. Athena initially appears uninterested, but Neo's claim that he already knows the visitors' Traits immediately makes her vigilant. She privately challenges Apollo's willingness to disclose their abilities, showing that her quiet manner is caution rather than passivity. Away from formal duties, she becomes intensely absorbed in writing. Most of her fiction is inspired by dreams later understood as information from the Records; because that discovery wounds her pride as an author, she resolves to keep writing until she can publish a work that is entirely her own. (Chapters 213, 216, and 220–222)

During the party's confrontation with the corrupted Jack Hanma, Athena serves as both defender and finisher. She summons a shield and spear, anchors layered barriers against the approaching bone sea, and prepares a concentrated holy strike while Apollo's summon weakens their enemy. When the Necromancer shields himself with the souls he consumed, Apollo hesitates rather than risk harming them. Athena fires anyway: the souls are already dead, whereas restraint would endanger the living. Her spear breaks the soul barrier and becomes a pillar of light amplified by Apollo's holy power. The attack destroys the first body but exhausts much of Athena's mana, leaving her unable to repeat it when the countless bone phylacteries restore the Necromancer. Neo ultimately returns Jack to human form, but Athena's choice establishes the practical ethic that guides her later actions—she accepts morally painful measures when the alternative is the preventable death of people still alive. (Chapters 228–230 and 234)

On the journey to Association headquarters, Athena searches ruined cities for books and quietly avoids Neo's efforts to question her about her connection to the Records. That reserve does not mean she is indifferent to him. Neo knows her as the author of a story that described his future, while Athena gradually realizes that he is a reincarnated reader who encountered her work before its world came to pass. Their eventual private conversation therefore forces her two lives—as author and prophetic witness—into the same room. (Chapters 237–239 and 245–247)

Forty-three loops and a break with the Association

At headquarters, Neo tells Athena that he came from the future and that her novel helped him survive it. Athena answers his questions without pretending to know more than she does: she offers several abandoned explanations for why the gods failed to descend in her story, admits that none satisfied her, and cannot explain his reincarnation. Their shared history as author and reader briefly makes the exchange personal, but the immediate crisis is political. The Association has decided that rescuing another Child of Mana could wake Typhaon, while Neo intends to attempt the rescue regardless. When he asks for help because he does not want to kill Association members, Athena recognizes both his resolve and the confidence behind it. She agrees only to see what she can do, preserving her own judgment rather than promising allegiance. (Chapters 245–247)

Athena initially fights on the Association's side. When Neo's Black Dawn of Despair traps hundreds of awakeners in mental anguish, her holy light dispels its whispers and shelters the force. The battle repeatedly ends in catastrophe, but the prototype Space-Time Cube allows her to rewind thirty seconds at a time. She endures forty-three regressions while searching for a survivable strategy. The Association defeats Neo in eighteen of those loops, yet every such victory leaves only Ares and Emma alive. By the forty-third failure, repeated time travel without a Time affinity has left Athena pale, bleeding, and barely steady. Her decision to stop is consequently not a sudden betrayal or easy surrender; it follows exhaustive proof that continuing the fight merely chooses different versions of the same massacre. (Chapters 248–249)

Athena uses the Cube's second function to teleport the Association force away, leaving herself alone with Neo. She still refuses blind trust: before letting him continue, she demands assurance that he can stop Typhaon and warns that she can take them both down if he cannot. Satisfied enough to avoid another slaughter, she expends the Cube's last power to send herself after her allies and tells Neo that she has cleared only the opposition she can control. The prototype shatters. In Australia, more than seventy percent of the Association calls for her execution, Emma presses her for an explanation, and Gaia—Athena's master—promises punishment. Athena remains silent. Her refusal to defend herself leaves her institutionally isolated, but her intervention has saved the very comrades condemning her and has ended a battle no tested strategy could win at an acceptable cost. (Chapters 249–251)

The last defense and the legacy of the Records

Athena continues serving during the final calamities. She and Ares are sent against the Five Emperors, rebels who worship Typhaon and try to sabotage the Association's defense of the world. They return victorious, removing one of four simultaneous threats, but the world's countdown does not stop. When the Angel's assault later prevents normal mana use, Athena and Ares retain only the weakened power of their Concepts. Both work to heal injured awakeners until Ares leaves to hold back the attacking maggots and orders Athena to remain with the wounded. The division reflects necessity rather than subordination: they are the only two who can still act, and spending both defenders on the same task would abandon either the casualties or the headquarters. In the failed future that follows, Typhaon's conquest kills Athena alongside many other high-ranking awakeners. (Chapters 276, 281, 284, 291, and 309)

Later time-altered history gives Athena a different legacy through Professor Daniel Caelum. Daniel seeks her knowledge because the erased soul of his sister Selene never reached the Underworld. Athena knows no resurrection method and carefully describes her understanding of the Records as probable rather than certain. When Daniel finds an account of the ancient Child of Mana Euphemia in Athena's Archives of Wisdom, the two compare her fiction with the limits of Record access. Athena challenges his theory, confirms that Children of Mana can retrieve but not insert information, and helps test whether a part of each Child remains within the Records. Their attempts to locate Selene fail, yet Athena's writings provide the clue that redirects Daniel's search. He later looks through Athena's future and transfers those memories into his developing Akashic Record. Thus her incomplete, involuntary knowledge becomes useful not because it is infallible, but because Athena records it and subjects it to doubt. (Chapters 326–328)

Appearance and personality

Athena first appears as a young woman of about twenty. Her passive expression seems disinterested, although Neo notices concealed curiosity. She is later described with long hair, but the text inconsistently calls her eyes both gray and golden during the same extended conversation, leaving their canonical color unresolved. Repeated Cube use visibly strips away her composure: she becomes pale and unsteady, with shallow breathing, trembling hands, and blood running from her nose. (Chapters 221, 246, and 249)

Her outward laziness contrasts with intense creative focus. When an idea arrives, she types furiously or works amid notebooks, damaged novels, coffee cups, and plot notes. Athena is proud enough to be hurt by the possibility that her best ideas are borrowed from the Records, yet that pride becomes persistence rather than denial. She is guarded about her powers, sparse with explanations, and willing to remain silent under threats. At the same time, she is intellectually cautious: with Neo and Daniel alike, she separates confirmed knowledge from possibilities and openly admits when her dreams or theories cannot provide an answer. Her battlefield choices can appear cold, but they consistently prioritize preventing irreversible harm to the living. (Chapters 222, 238, 245–247, 251, and 326–327)

Powers and limitations

Child of Mana and the Records

As a Child of Mana, Athena sometimes receives information about the future through dreams. She and others initially describe this as knowledge given by the World, and she calls the information store the Records. The ability also lets her retrieve a person's “Status,” including information about powers, though the corpus does not establish that every field is always complete. Her future-derived dreams inspire much of her fiction, allowing books written as fantasy to preserve real people and events. Daniel later uses this connection more directly by looking into Athena's future and extracting the resulting memories for his Akashic Record. (Chapters 222, 237–238, 246, and 326–328)

The ability is sharply limited. Athena cannot access the Records at will, cannot insert or edit their contents, and cannot reliably distinguish a genuine Record from an ordinary dream. She is not omniscient: she lacks answers about Neo's reincarnation, knows no method for restoring an erased soul, and fails to locate Selene even when deliberately cooperating with Daniel. Her fiction may preserve evidence, speculation, or a merely imagined idea, so both Athena and Daniel must test patterns rather than treating every written detail as prophecy. (Chapters 238, 246–247, and 326–327)

Holy combat, defense, and healing

Athena fights with a summoned spear and shield. By striking the ground with the spear's butt, she spreads an ethereal field that produces multiple dome-shaped barriers. These shields can delay a large bone sea but are not absolute: the Necromancer's conjured spears break through them, and maintaining the defense visibly strains her. For offense, Athena channels surrounding mana and holy power into her spear, then throws it as a high-speed projectile. Against Jack's corrupted form, the weapon pierces a soul barrier and expands into a pillar of light, with Apollo's summoned holy radiance increasing the attack's destructive force. The cost is substantial enough that Athena cannot immediately prepare a second strike. (Chapters 229–230)

Her holy light also functions defensively against mental and Darkness effects. A short chant lets her suppress the despairing whispers of Black Dawn of Despair and protect hundreds of affected awakeners. Later, after ordinary mana becomes unavailable, an unnamed Concept allows Athena to retain a small portion of her power and heal the injured. The Concept's element, formation, and exact mechanics are never named, and its output without mana is explicitly much weaker than normal. (Chapters 248 and 284)

Intent and telepathy

Athena can communicate through Intent-based telepathy. She uses it for private coordination during the Arzew mission, and Ares can transmit the substance of an entire meeting to her almost instantly. Later narration identifies Athena and Zeus as the only known Association figures able to use Intent this way. Her demonstrated mastery ends at communication: unlike Neo, she is not shown compressing Intent into independent physical bodies. (Chapters 221, 246, and 278)

Space-Time Cube

Athena's control over time during the Association battle is borrowed from the prototype Space-Time Cube, not an innate Time ability. Its first function sends its user thirty seconds into the past, while its second can teleport a large group across an intercontinental distance. Athena uses the first function forty-three times and retains enough knowledge of previous outcomes to compare strategies, losses, and victories. She then uses the second to remove the Association force from Neo's path. (Chapters 245 and 249–251)

The prototype is finite and dangerous. Athena lacks Time affinity, so repeated regressions impose severe physical strain and destabilize nearby Time elementals. Cracks spread across the Cube as its reserves fail, and the final teleport destroys it. The loss ends Athena's temporary access rather than representing a decline in her innate power. (Chapters 249–251)

Power progression

Relationships

Neo Hargraves

Neo first knows Athena as the author of a novel that described his future. Their relationship moves from mutual suspicion to an unusually personal author-reader exchange, then to open conflict over rescuing a Child of Mana. Athena helps him only after repeated evidence proves that continued resistance kills her comrades; even then, she demands a credible assurance that his plan can work. Her choice is conditional trust, not allegiance. (Chapters 220–222 and 245–251)

Ares and Apollo

Ares is Athena's Association leader and recurring operational partner. He assigns her missions, entrusts her with the Space-Time Cube, protects her from immediate retaliation after the Neo battle, and shares the final defense of headquarters. Apollo is her earlier field partner. He trusts Athena to deliver decisive force, while her pragmatism challenges his reluctance to harm the dead when living allies remain at risk. (Chapters 216, 228–230, 245, 248–251, and 276–284)

Emma and Gaia

Emma serves beside Athena and reveals her Child of Mana status to Neo, but their relationship turns hostile when Athena evacuates the Association instead of continuing the fight. Gaia is explicitly Athena's master. Athena's decision saves Association lives while defying Gaia's orders, and Gaia responds by promising to punish her after dealing with Neo. (Chapters 221–222 and 248–251)

Professor Daniel Caelum

Daniel seeks Athena as a knowledgeable witness to the Records rather than treating her as an infallible oracle. She explains what Children of Mana can and cannot do, opens her writings to examination, challenges unsupported conclusions, and helps test his theory across years. Their collaboration does not immediately recover Selene, but Athena's work and future memories become part of the path by which Daniel creates the Akashic Record. (Chapters 326–328)

Items

Space-Time Cube

The Association's first working Space-Time Cube prototype is assigned to Athena for her protection. She uses it to retry the battle with Neo, evacuate her allies once continued resistance proves fatal, and teleport herself away. The repeated regressions and final long-distance transfer exhaust the artifact, leaving Athena with its shattered pieces and no continuing time-travel access. (Chapters 245 and 249–251)