I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

“HYAAAAHH—!!”

But right at that time, the shriek tore through the garden’s quiet like something physical — sharp, high and panicked, coming from somewhere inside the castle’s upper levels with the force of a sound that had no interest in being contained by walls.

Both of them went still.

Nathan’s head turned toward the castle in the same instant as Rena’s.

The shriek tore through the garden’s quiet and Nathan was already on his feet before the echo died.

“What’s happening?” Rena asked, the words coming out with an unsteadiness she hadn’t fully controlled — the shift from one kind of breathlessness to a completely different kind happening faster than her composure could manage.

Nathan was already looking up at the castle’s face — reading the windows, the moving light in the upper level, the quality of the shout and where it had come from.

He reached down, grasped Rena’s hand and pulled her upright in one motion.

“Stay here,” he said.

“I am not weak,” Rena shot back immediately, the familiar sharpness returning like a reflex, her glare fully operational despite her still-flushed face. “Not like I was before. I have grown.”

Nathan looked at her for a single second.

He put both hands on her cheeks — brief, warm — said nothing, and launched himself upward.

The jump cleared the garden wall and the lower facade in one arc, landing him through an open upper window with a controlled impact that made no more sound than necessary. He straightened inside a darkened corridor, the night air replaced immediately by the indoor smell of lamp oil and stone and something sharper underneath — copper, recent and unmistakable.

He closed his eyes for three seconds.

The sake’s softness had retreated almost completely, his focus sharpening into the particular quality it took when something real required it. He pushed his awareness outward, reading the castle’s sounds the way he read a battlefield — filtering the distant noise of the feast still winding down on the lower floors, the confused voices of servants woken by the shriek, the running footsteps converging from two directions.

The voice had been Haruka’s. He was almost certain.

He moved.

The corridors blurred. He outran the servants, outran the guards who were still orienting themselves, and arrived at the source before anyone else had reached the door.

He pushed through the men crowding the threshold without ceremony, stepped inside, and stopped.

Ryuuki stood in the center of the room in sleeping clothes — a loose yukata, plainly cut, the kind of thing worn by someone who had not expected to need anything else tonight. The fabric was dark with blood from the collar downward, soaked through in patches, the red vivid against the pale linen. His hands were at his sides, chest rising and falling with the unsteady rhythm of someone whose body was still running on the aftermath of violence even after the violence had ended.

He was physically unhurt. Nathan registered this in the first second — no wounds, no favoring of any side, the blood belonged entirely to the man on the floor.

The man on the floor was dead.

He was dressed in black — plain, unremarkable, the clothes of someone who had intended not to be seen. A kitchen knife jutted from his throat at the precise angle of something that had gone in fast and final, the blood pooled dark and wide beneath him across the stone floor.

Behind Ryuuki, pressed against the far wall with her back to it and both arms locked around the bundle against her chest, was Haruka.

She was crying — not loudly, the shriek had already spent itself, but the silent continuous kind, tears running without pause down a face that had gone completely white. Her arms around Ryuuji were so tight the infant had woken and was making the small indignant sounds of someone whose sleep had been interrupted by incomprehensible pressure.

Ryuuji was alive. Unharmed. Entirely unaware of what had almost happened in the dark three feet from where he slept.

More people arrived behind Nathan — the sound of running footsteps resolving into faces, classmates in various states of half-dressed urgency, some still in formal clothes from the feast, others clearly pulled from sleep by the noise.

“Ryuuki! Haruka!” Yumiko was through the door first, her eyes sweeping the room and landing on both of them worried. She crossed to Haruka immediately.

Kazuto stepped in behind her, adjusting his glasses. His eyes moved from the dead man to Ryuuki’s blood-soaked clothes to the knife and stayed there for a moment.

“Hey.” He moved to Ryuuki’s side and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ryuuki-kun. Are you hurt?”

Ryuuki pulled back from whatever place his mind had gone and looked at Kazuto.

“No,” he said. The word came out hollow and too small for the room. “I’m — no. I’m fine.”

“What happened?” Yumiko asked, one arm around Haruka’s shoulders now.

Haruka shook her head slightly — not refusing to answer, just needing another moment before the words were available.

“That man.” Ryuuki’s eyes went to the body. His voice was steadier now, something hardening underneath it as the shock retreated and left anger in its place. “He came through the window. I woke up and he was already across the room, heading toward—” He stopped. His jaw worked once. “Toward Ryuuji.”

The room absorbed this in silence.

“He wasn’t coming for me or Haruka,” Ryuuki said, each word precise and deliberate, like he was building something out of them. “He went straight for the cradle.”

“Damn…That’s sick,” Teiji said from the doorway. “Who sends someone to kill a baby.”

“Well.” Ayaka stood beside Akane with her arms folded, her expression composed but her eyes carrying something cold and specific. “The baby who was designated heir today. And there is one man who would benefit directly from that heir not existing.” She paused, letting it sit without naming it. “I’m not making accusations. But the conclusion is not difficult to reach.”

No one argued with her.

No one named him either.

Haruka’s hands tightened further around Ryuuji, which had seemed impossible a moment before. Ryuuki took one step toward the door and stopped when her hand found his arm — her fingers wrapped around it with the desperate grip of someone who had already lost enough tonight and wasn’t willing to lose more to anger.

She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and said nothing.

He looked back at her, at Ryuuji, at the blood on his own hands.

“We go to Kaguya,” he said finally. Quiet, controlled.

Everyone nodded.

Nathan crouched beside the body and rolled it with his boot — unhurried, unceremonious, the same indifference he gave to obstacles — and looked at the dead man’s face.

Ordinary. Completely ordinary. The face of someone hired for a specific purpose and given the clothes to match the job, with nothing on him that pointed anywhere except away from its origin point.

Professional. Clean. The work of someone who understood that evidence was a liability.

Nathan stood.

His eyes moved to the window the man had come through, the angle, the approach, the specific room chosen out of all the rooms in a castle full of people celebrating tonight.

Someone had known exactly where Ryuuji slept. Exactly which window could be reached. Exactly which hour of the night left the fewest guards between the garden wall and a three-week-old infant’s cradle.

He said none of this.

“Let’s go,” Ryuuki said, and led them toward the throne with Haruka close at his side and Ryuuji held between them, alive and squirming and entirely ignorant of the fact that tonight had been the first attempt on his life.

°°°°

The throne room at this hour wore a different character entirely from its daytime self.

The ceremony’s decorations remained — the banners, the ceremonial rope, the residual smell of incense soaked into the stone over the course of the day — but the warm festive light had been replaced by the sharp, functional illumination of torches lit in haste, throwing hard shadows across faces unprepared for this kind of night.

Kaguya stood at the front alone, exactly as she stood in every difficult situation — composed, still, already past the worst of the news and arrived at whatever version of herself the moment required. Her white eyes moved across the assembled room, missing nothing, commenting on nothing yet.

On her left, the Heroes of Kastoria stood in a loose bloc — some still in formal kimonos from the feast, others half-dressed, all carrying the raw-edged energy of people pulled from sleep or celebration into something that had sharpened the night into an entirely different shape. Ryuuki stood at their front, Haruka close beside him, Ryuuji held against her chest. Her face still bore dried tear tracks she hadn’t bothered to address. Ryuuki’s sleeping clothes were still dark with blood.

On Kaguya’s right — Takehiko and his samurai. A dozen of them, armor already on, which was its own statement given the hour. Takehiko stood wearing an expression of genuine puzzlement, approaching the situation openly, reasonably, as though he had been woken from sleep and was managing the inconvenience with patience.

“Kaguya-sama.” His voice was pleasant, measured. “May I ask why we have all been summoned here at this hour?”

“Don’t you have even a guess?” Yumiko’s voice came out clipped, each word bitten short by the effort keeping the anger beneath it from arriving ahead of the sentence. “Your little sister’s scream echoed through every corridor in this castle tonight. Unless you sleep considerably more deeply than the rest of us.”

“How dare you address the Prince—” One samurai stepped forward, hand going to his hilt immediately.

Yumiko’s weapon materialized in her grip in the same instant.

Around her, summoned weapons and drawn blades filled the throne room simultaneously — Heroes and samurai both, two groups who had been watching each other since the feast and had been waiting for a reason. The tension snapped into physical readiness and the room became a very small space very quickly.

“Enough.”

Kaguya’s voice didn’t rise. It landed nevertheless — absolute, complete, filling the throne room’s corners without effort. Every hand stilled. Every blade held. The room went silent the way rooms go silent when the person speaking has authority that doesn’t require volume to function.

Her expression was cold. Not her usual composed serenity — genuinely cold, the expression of someone whose patience had been specifically and personally damaged tonight.

Ryuuki stepped forward into the silence.

“Someone entered our room while we slept,” he said, voice controlled through visible effort, each word chosen for precision rather than heat. “Through the window. In darkness.” His eyes fixed on Takehiko across the throne room’s width. “He went directly to Ryuuji’s cradle. Not toward me. Not toward Haruka.” He paused. “Toward my son.”

“Is he unharmed?” Takehiko’s brows rose immediately. His eyes moved to Haruka, genuine-seeming concern, complete and quick.

Haruka shifted further behind Ryuuki without a word. Her arms tightened around Ryuuji and her shoulder turned, a movement so instinctive it required no explanation — her body simply placing itself between her child and whatever she didn’t trust.

Takehiko held his gaze on her for a moment.

Then he gave a short, quiet laugh.

The temperature in the room dropped.

“I understand,” he said, without apology for the laugh, without explanation. “You think I ordered it.”

“Who else,” Ayaka said flatly, arms crossed, “would want a baby dead?”

Takehiko’s gaze moved to her — slow, the warmth cooling several degrees as it settled on her face.

“That baby is my nephew,” he said. “My blood. My family.” Quiet, edged. “You think I would raise a hand against him?”

“You didn’t raise a hand,” Yumiko said. “You sent someone else’s.”

The samurai shifted. The Heroes shifted in response. The room’s equilibrium held at the thinnest available margin.

“Present your proof then,” Takehiko said, spreading his hands in invitation. “Accusations without foundation are noise. I have been in my chambers since leaving the feast. Any one of my men will confirm it.”

“The man is dead.”

Nathan’s voice came from the entrance.

He crossed the floor without hurry and released the body from his grip. It rolled and landed on the stone in front of Kaguya’s position — face-up, kitchen knife still planted in its throat, black clothes unmistakable under torchlight.

Kaguya looked down at it. Her expression held, but something behind her eyes sharpened.

Takehiko looked at the body.

Then, instead of further protest or indignation, he tilted his head slightly.

“Those clothes,” he said. “I recognize them.” His tone had shifted — less defensive now, more considering, as though something had occurred to him. “Only one group dresses this way. For concealment. For night work specifically.”

“What group?” Ryuuki asked sharply.

Kaguya’s eyes had already moved to the body and then back up. Her jaw was set.

“Shinobis,” she said quietly.

“Ninjas?!” Teiji’s voice broke across the room.

“I thought they were gone,” Kazuto said, glasses catching the torchlight as he frowned at the body.

“They didn’t disappear.” Takehiko’s voice had taken on a different quality. “Before my time they served the royal family directly. Five years ago my father executed their chief. After that they scattered, abandoned their oaths, vanished from court.” He paused. “My father was later found poisoned. The Shinobis were responsible.”

Silence moved through the throne room.

“Is that true?” Yumiko asked, turning toward Kaguya.

Kaguya held for a moment before answering.

“The King was killed by Shinobi poison,” she said. “Yes.”

“And tonight,” Takehiko said, almost gently, “they attempted to kill the grandson of the man who had their chief executed.”

He let the implication settle across the room, the alternative explanation, clean and complete, laid out without defensiveness or drama.

“But why kill a baby?” Yumiko asked, the anger in her voice pressing against its restraints. “If they wanted revenge they already got it. The previous King is dead.”

“Who knows how these cowardly barbarians operate,” Takehiko said. “You could ask them directly.” He turned toward Ryuuki, his expression shifting into something that looked genuinely concerned. “I am willing to help you find and eliminate them. As long as they exist your son will never be safe.”

Ryuuki stood uncertain, reading nothing clean in the offer. None of them had context for the history between the Shinobis and the royal family — no framework to measure Takehiko’s words against.

He looked at Kaguya.

Kaguya was silent, thinking, her white eyes moving between the body on the floor and Takehiko’s face and the general shape of a situation that had too many possible explanations and not enough proof to eliminate any of them.

Then she spoke.

“Everyone leave,” she said. “Except Hero Ryuuki and Princess Haruka.”

Chairs scraped. Feet moved. The room began emptying in the particular uncomfortable silence that follows a command nobody wants to follow quickly enough to seem eager.

Takehiko spoke before he reached the door.

“I will leave the capital immediately, Kaguya-sama.” He bowed his head, composed and gracious. “My life feels threatened here. I shall return to my estate at once.” His samurai closed ranks behind him and he turned for the exit.

“Take the body.”

Everyone stopped.

Nathan stood where he had been standing since throwing the dead man down — slightly apart from both groups, unhurried, his golden eyes on Takehiko’s back.

Takehiko turned.

His orange eyes were cold now, all the warmth gone in an instant, the pleasant mask laid aside completely for the first time since he’d arrived at the castle.

“What did you say, Lord Commander of Tenebria?” he asked, his voice precise and quiet.

“Killing your own blood for a throne,” Nathan said. His tone was flat, almost bored, contempt delivered without heat. “A baby. I have encountered genuine trash in my life — people who broke every floor I’d previously set for how low a person could go. You’ve just taken a high seat among them.”

The silence in the room was total.

Then Yoshiteru, the Samurai moved.

The katana cleared its scabbard in a single clean motion — fast, practiced, the draw of someone who had performed it thousands of times and had stopped thinking about the mechanics of it. The blade swung for Nathan’s neck in one horizontal arc that covered the distance between them in a fraction of a second.

Nathan’s hand came up.

He caught the blade with his hand.