I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Chapter 668: Kaguya’s Decision

Nathan’s hand came up.

He caught the blade with his hand.

Bare-handed — palm against the flat, fingers closing around the edge — the katana stopping dead in his grip as though it had struck a wall rather than skin. The impact traveled outward in a visible shockwave, a pulse of displaced air that rippled across the throne room floor and hit every person present simultaneously, staggering several of the Heroes back a step and sending the nearest samurai stumbling.

The torches guttered.

Nobody breathed.

Yoshiteru stood frozen at the end of his own swing, the katana locked in Nathan’s grip, his arms trembling slightly — not from effort but from the sheer physical impossibility of what had just failed to happen. His helmet concealed his face but the rigid shock lived in every line of his body.

Nobody moved.

The throne room held its collective stillness — not the polite pause of a conversation suspended but the genuine, involuntary freeze that follows something the brain requires extra time to process. Every person present had watched Nathan reach out a bare hand and stop a full-force katana swing, and every person present was still quietly working through the implications of that.

The worst part wasn’t the act itself. It was what hadn’t accompanied it.

No bracing. No visible effort. No sharp intake of breath or tightening of posture. Nathan had reached out with the same casual extension he’d used to pick up his wine cup at the feast and caught a blade traveling at killing speed, and his expression hadn’t changed by a single measurable degree.

Anyone else in the room would have lost the hand. Most would have lost more than that.

Yoshiteru stood at the end of his own swing, arm locked, the katana absolutely motionless in Nathan’s grip, and the trembling that moved through him had nothing to do with his muscles. His helmet covered his face but his body communicated everything — the rigid shock, the instinctive recoil of every trained reflex encountering something they had no prepared response for.

He pulled at his blade.

It didn’t move.

He pulled again, putting real force behind it, and the katana stayed exactly where Nathan held it as though it had been set in stone.

Nathan’s golden eyes were on him directly — not the combat-ready attention of someone tracking a threat, but something quieter and considerably more unsettling. The gaze of someone looking through the surface of a thing and reading what was underneath without particular effort or interest. Yoshiteru had faced strong enemies. He had faced people who frightened him. He had never before felt his own survival instincts rise completely independently of anything conscious — the deep animal part of him whispering urgently that it was standing next to something on an entirely different tier.

The air around Nathan had begun to change.

It cooled first — not the natural drop of a night breeze but a directional cold, originating at Nathan’s position and spreading outward slowly. Then the space immediately around him began to distort at the edges, a subtle warping, the visual equivalent of heat shimmer running in reverse — reality bending slightly under pressure that had no visible source.

He hadn’t released anything yet. He was still compressed, still locked down. This was simply the ambient effect of what lived inside him when his patience ran out.

”Lord Commander Samael.”

Kaguya’s voice came out measured and quiet.

Nathan didn’t turn toward her. He didn’t need to. Her meaning reached him without requiring her face — the silent request carried in his name, in her tone, in the calculation she’d already completed and was asking him to accept.

Yoshiteru was Akamine. One blow here — even justified, even deserved — and three of Kastoria’s most ancient Samuraos houses would have a blood reason to tear the Tenebrian alliance apart at its roots. Every noble who’d been uncertain, every samurai clan watching which way the political wind blew — they’d have something concrete to point at. Kaguya’s careful diplomatic architecture, built over three years, damaged in thirty seconds.

Not what he was here for.

Nathan held the blade a moment longer.

Long enough for Yoshiteru to understand clearly that the decision to release it was Nathan’s and nobody else’s.

Then he opened his hand.

Yoshiteru snatched the blade back immediately and took a half-step backward — involuntary, the body moving before the mind could instruct otherwise — and sheathed it with hands that weren’t entirely steady.

Nathan turned toward Takehiko.

”Your life is genuinely threatened here,” he said flatly. ”You should leave now.”

Movement at Takehiko’s side.

The second samurai — the one who had stood near Takehiko throughout everything, silent and watchful, present at every moment since the feast without speaking — stepped forward. The posture had shifted, the stillness replaced with something coiled and ready. They held herself back through all of it, through the feast, through the throne room, through Yoshiteru’s failed draw. But Nathan catching that blade bare-handed and then threatening the Prince’s people appeared to have found her limit.

”Tomoe,” Takehiko said.

One word and they stopped.

He looked at Nathan for a moment — the orange eyes doing their recalculation, storing information, adjusting for a variable that hadn’t performed as expected tonight. His smile returned, thinner than its usual version, stripped of most of its warmth.

”I suppose this may be the last time we see each other for some time,” he said pleasantly.

”Likely,” Nathan replied.

Takehiko chuckled once — soft, genuine-sounding — and walked toward the door. His samurai fell in behind him.

Tomoe passed Nathan last, eyes on him briefly before following her Prince through the doors.

They closed.

The throne room released its breath.

Teiji stared at Nathan’s hand — unmarked, uncut, entirely undamaged — and opened his mouth.

”What,” he said.

Nobody answered him.

Ayaka came forward quickly, worry overriding everything else, and took Nathan’s hand in both of hers — turning it over, examining it, running her thumb across the palm where the blade had sat.

Nothing. Not even a line.

”Are you alright?” she asked, her voice lower than usual, stripped for a moment of its usual bright energy.

”We should go,” Akane said quietly, appearing at his other side.

Ayaka nodded, released his hand, and stepped back. She glanced at her sister once — a quick exchange that contained something private — and walked toward the door.

The Heroes followed, filtering out in ones and twos, the exhaustion and shock of the night settling into their footsteps. Kazuto paused at the threshold and looked back once before leaving. Yumiko was the last, her eyes moving between Kaguya and the door before she went through.

Nathan also moved toward the exit.

He stepped outside the doors and stopped just beyond them.

He didn’t leave. He waited — still, quiet, listening.

Inside, Haruka had held herself together through all of it. Through the throne room’s accusations and Takehiko’s smooth deflections and Nathan’s confrontation and the cold air and Yoshiteru’s blade. She had held Ryuuji and stood behind Ryuuji and kept herself upright through every second.

Now, in the sudden quiet, something in her gave way.

She crossed to Kaguya quickly and went to her knees on the cold stone floor, Ryuuji still held against her chest, her free hand pressed flat against the ground.

Ryuuki moved toward her instinctively, surprise replacing the careful anger he’d been managing all night.

”Kaguya-sama.” Haruka’s voice was steady for the first two words and unsteady for everything after. ”Please. May I speak?”

”You may,” Kaguya said.

”When you spoke to me after Onii-sama’s banishment — about becoming Queen, about my future son inheriting the throne — I was happy.” She pressed her lips together. ”Truly happy. It felt like purpose. And then Ryuuki-sama was summoned and you said I was to marry him and I was happy about that too. About all of it.” Her voice wavered and held. ”But I cannot do that anymore.”

Ryuuji stirred against her chest, making a small sleepy sound.

Haruka looked up at Kaguya, tears moving freely now, making no effort to stop them.

”I love Ryuuki-sama,” she said. ”I love my son. And I don’t want the throne anymore — not if wanting it means my child is threatened in his cradle. Not if it means tonight keeps happening.” She exhaled shakily. ”Onii-sama can have it. Let him have it. I want nothing from it. I only want to watch my son grow up without someone sending men through windows in the dark to kill him while he sleeps.”

Ryuuki was very still.

He looked at his wife on her knees on the throne room floor, holding their son, asking for permission to stop being afraid for him and something moved through his expression that didn’t have a clean name.

Regardless his silence was enough to say he supported Haruka’s words.

Kaguya looked at Haruka for a long moment — long enough that the only sounds in the throne room were Ryuuji’s small breathing and the torches burning low.

Then she spoke.

”You know why I wanted your son to become the next King of Kastoria,” she said. Her voice was not unkind but it was absolute. ”Your elder brother is cruel. He has no decency and no honor — the same qualities your father lacked, and your father’s failings cost this kingdom enormously. He drove the Shinobis to betrayal. He was responsible for your mother’s death.” She let that settle without softening it. ”We cannot reproduce the same mistake. Your son has to become the next King. And he will — because unlike the men of your bloodline, he will be raised properly.”

Haruka lowered her gaze to the stone floor.

”But you are right,” Kaguya said.

Both heads came up simultaneously.

”Your son is in danger,” Kaguya continued. ”He will remain in danger until he is old enough to protect himself or until the threat is removed entirely. Those are the facts and I won’t pretend otherwise.”

Ryuuki stepped forward. ”Then what do we do, Kaguya-sama?”

Silence. Kaguya was thinking — not the pause of someone uncertain but the pause of someone selecting from options already prepared.

”I will call your Aunt,” she said finally.

Haruka’s eyes went wide. ”Aunt Ayame?”

Kaguya nodded once.

”But she left years ago,” Haruka said, the memory uncertain at the edges — how many years, what the last meeting had looked like, whether she would even recognize the woman’s face now. ”She wanted nothing to do anymore with the capital or the court or any of it.”

”She left because her sister died because of your father,” Kaguya said plainly. ”Yes.”

Haruka said nothing. She absorbed the shame of that quietly, as she had been absorbing the shame of her father’s legacy her entire adult life.

”But Ayame is strong,” Kaguya said. ”Intelligent. Capable of ruling Kastoria as Queen Regent in your absence without losing ground to Takehiko’s faction. The capital loved her as they loved her sister — that hasn’t changed. People’s love for the dead transfers to the living who carry them.” She paused. ”She can redirect Takehiko’s attention. Give him another obstacle to navigate. Buy time.”

”I doubt she’ll come back,” Haruka said quietly. ”After everything my father did to her sister—”

”I will take care of that,” Kaguya said simply.

The three words closed the subject entirely.

Ryuuki was quiet for a moment, working through the shape of the plan, and then his expression shifted toward the thing still unresolved.

”But even then — will Ayame’s presence actually protect Ryuuji? Takehiko will still be out there. He’ll still have the three clans. He’ll still—”

”No,” Kaguya said, cutting it short. ”Bringing Ayame back redirects attention and stabilizes Kastoria’s internal political ground. But Ryuuji himself will still be a target as long as he is reachable. Takehiko is many things — patient among them. He will simply wait.”

Haruka’s breath caught. ”Then what—”

”Send her to Tenebria.”

The voice came from behind them.

Both Ryuuki and Haruka spun.

Nathan stood in the doorway — how long he had been there was impossible to say, his expression carrying nothing that answered the question. He had his eyes on Kaguya.

”Send her and her child to Tenebria,” he said. ”In the capital she will be kept safe.”

Ryuuki stared at him. ”To — Tenebria?”

”You distrust demons that much?” Nathan asked, his gaze shifting to Ryuuki narrowly.

”No... it’s not that, it’s just—” Ryuuki stopped, reorganized. ”It’s far. We don’t know it. We’ve never—”

”My wives are there,” Nathan said. ”A lot of them are Humans.. The capital is protected by people capable enough that no one attempts it seriously. Your brother would have to go to war against Tenebria directly to reach your son there — and he won’t. Not now. Not when he still needs to consolidate Kastoria first.” He held Ryuuki’s gaze. ”He can’t touch the boy if the boy isn’t here.”

Haruka was still. The unease that had crossed her face at the first mention of Tenebria was changing — shifting, recalibrating, the fear of the unknown running against the very specific and very recent fear of what had come through her window tonight.

Her arms tightened once more around Ryuuji.

”We are in truce,” Nathan continued, his voice measured and without particular investment — the tone of someone presenting a logical structure, not asking for anything. ”Soon we fight together against the Light Empire as formal allies. There is nothing improper about a Kastorian Princess seeking protection in an allied kingdom’s capital during a period of internal threat. It is precisely the kind of arrangement alliances exist to enable.”

Haruka’s expression settled into something serious and quiet. She looked at Kaguya — the question already answered in her own mind, waiting only for the one person whose judgment she trusted above her own.

Kaguya looked at Nathan.

The throne room held them all for a long, measured moment.

”I will speak to the Lord Commander alone,” Kaguya said.

Ryuuki and Haruka exchanged a glance — brief, wordless — and both nodded. Haruka rose from the floor, adjusted Ryuuji against her chest, and walked toward the door. Ryuuki followed.