Novel Full Chapter 446: Their plan
Chapter 446: Their plan
Nathan didn’t look back.
Servilia’s confusion lingered behind him like a fog he refused to acknowledge. He had said all he needed to—“Don’t waste your tears on Caesar.”
That was his strange way to comfort Servilia.
Any more, and Caesar would’ve noticed. His presence was suffocating, even when unseen, like the eyes of a god carved into stone, watching from the corners of every column.
Nathan hadn’t planned to speak to her at all, not yet. Even a passing word held risk in Caesar’s domain. But he hadn’t said more than necessary, and that alone was a calculated mercy.
Up until now, Servilia had been nothing more than a placeholder in his mental chessboard—a decorative piece, useful only because she held guardianship over Ameriah and Auria. A woman too soft for the stage of power, too dull to even spark curiosity. But in that brief encounter, something shifted. Something in the way her eyes faltered—not in fear, but in confusion. And under that confusion, maybe even defiance. Unformed, dormant.
A potential ally? Hard at first but not impossible anymore.
Caesar was arrogant. That was his greatest flaw. He moved like a man too sure of his invincibility, never once considering that the weakest-looking pieces might still turn against him. He left crumbs in his wake, tiny, arrogant oversights—and Servilia might just be one of those crumbs. He probably believed she was too broken, too loyal, too unimportant to matter. But Caesar didn’t know that power sometimes whispered to the overlooked.
Nathan smirked faintly as he soared away from the Senate Castle, cloak fluttering behind him in the wind. He had more important things to deal with now than to muse about political pawns. Servilia could wait. Caesar could wait.
There was someone else he needed to see.
He veered sharply in the air, descending toward a quiet, almost forgettable street in the Roman district. The house he approached looked mundane, like any other structure lining the cobbled roads—modest, symmetrical, Roman. No guards, no spells visible to the naked eye. But Nathan knew better.
This house had once belonged to a Roman soldier. Had. Past tense. The man was now fertilizer, and his home belonged to someone else entirely.
Medea.
She had turned it into her personal workshop of agony—a torture house wearing the skin of a home. It was brilliantly disguised. From the outside, it exuded normalcy. No screams slipped through the stone walls. No foul stench wafted into the street. Just another quiet dwelling among many.
That was thanks to one of Medea’s magic: a subtle enchantment that repelled the curious and the weak-willed. Anyone who approached would suddenly feel sick, unnerved, irrationally compelled to turn around and walk away. No one questioned why.
It didn’t affect Nathan. Of course not.
The moment he stepped through the doorway, a wave of silence greeted him. The kind of silence that had weight to it—heavy, deliberate, unnatural. He moved through the hallway without hesitation, boots clicking softly against stone as he made his way to the heart of the house.
And there she was.
Medea.
Sitting on a simple wooden chair in the center of the bloodstained floor, reading a book like she didn’t have a mutilated man chained in front of her.
Nathan paused in the doorway for a moment, watching her. Even now, soaked in the scent of iron and death, she looked… elegant. Black hair draped over one shoulder, eyes calmly scanning the page, her pale skin bathed in the amber glow of a hanging lantern. She could’ve passed for a noble scholar enjoying a quiet evening—if not for the pool of blood at her feet and the utterly broken man in front of her.
Logan.
Or what remained of him.
Nathan barely recognized him. His face was swollen, bruised beyond shape. His eyes had turned glassy, blank, as if the soul behind them had been cracked apart and left to rot. His lips trembled. His body jerked involuntarily in small, pathetic spasms.
The proud Hero that had once fought tooth and nail against him was now reduced to a trembling wreck.
Nathan stepped forward, his gaze fixed on Logan, though his voice was for Medea.
“You work fast.”
Medea glanced up from her book, a small smile blooming across her lips. She was very happy to see this soon Nathan already.
“Nathan. I was waiting for you,” she said sweetly, as if greeting a guest to afternoon tea. “He finally decided to speak.”
Of course he had. Nathan didn’t doubt for a moment that Medea had cracked him open like a soft-shelled fruit. She wasn’t just brutal—she was methodical. Precise. Elegant in her cruelty.
He walked over and gently ran a hand through her hair, a gesture of fond approval.
“Good job,” he murmured. “As expected of you, Medea.”
He turned to Logan now, standing before the wreck of a man who had once stood tall. There was no reaction from him. No fear, no hatred. Nothing. Just the hollow stare of someone who had forgotten what it meant to be human.
Nathan stared down at him silently.
Nathan’s gaze fixed on the trembling shell of a man before him, chained and bloodied, barely coherent. The silence in the room felt like the breath held before a storm, broken only by the faint dripping of blood from Logan’s wounds.
He crouched slightly to meet Logan’s blank stare, his voice low but clear.
“What’s your name?”
There was hesitation—an eerie pause, as if even speaking required him to scrape together the remnants of who he had once been.
“L…Logan…Logan Cox…” he stammered, each syllable brittle, his voice hoarse and cracked, a ghostly echo of the man Nathan remembered.
Gone was the proud warrior who had once stood with defiance in his eyes. The man before him now had been broken—utterly shattered. Medea’s work, no doubt. Effective. Devastating.
Nathan didn’t comment on it. He didn’t need to. The result spoke for itself.
Instead, he asked the next question, his tone sharpening, curious and probing.
“How is it possible that you’ve survived this long? It’s been thirty years since you were summoned. You haven’t aged a day. Most of you are still alive. Why did you fake your death?”
Logan swallowed hard. His whole body trembled with the effort of speaking.
“I…Aaron and the others… they sided with the Demon King…” he said haltingly, voice shaking. “When Ethan, Olivia, and the rest arrived—we fought them. We stood with the Demon King, but then…”
His voice faltered again.
“…the Demon King used some kind of Dark Magic. Before we could even react, we were… trapped. Frozen inside another dimension, sealed outside of time itself. We were gone. For decades.”
Nathan’s frown deepened. That wasn’t what he had expected to hear.
“A time prison…?” he muttered to himself.
Logan continued, his words tumbling out now, driven by fear and pain.
“Five years ago… the spell was broken. We returned. But everything had changed. Ethan and the others—we didn’t stay together. We scattered.”
Nathan straightened, his arms folding across his chest as he processed the information.
So the Demon King had imprisoned them rather than killing them. But why? He could’ve wiped them out. Instead, he chose to exile them into a dimensional stasis.
Azariah had told him the Demon King’s health had started deteriorating… around five years ago. Could that have been the trigger for the prison’s unraveling?
Was it possible… that the Demon King had done it on purpose? That, even while corrupted, some sliver of his original self remained? Enough to spare them?
Nathan didn’t like the implications.
It meant the Demon King wasn’t just a monster. It meant he might still remember.
And that… complicated everything.
He pushed that thought aside for now. One mystery at a time.
“What are you planning with Caesar?” Nathan asked, voice now cold, deliberate.
That question had been clawing at the back of his mind for far too long.
Logan flinched as if the name itself hurt to hear. His mouth opened, closed—panic surged behind his hollow eyes. But then Medea tilted her head slightly, narrowing her gaze.
That was all it took.
Logan’s breath hitched.
“W-We… we need Pandora…” he whispered. “To take control of the Pandora Box.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
Pandora Box…?
“For what purpose?”
“T-To gain the power to defy the Gods…”
There it was.
The ambition laid bare.
“Is that Aaron’s plan?” Nathan pressed.
Logan hesitated. His lips moved without sound at first, then finally:
“N-Not exactly… he promised us…”
Nathan’s breath caught.
That wasn’t Aaron’s ambition.
That was someone else’s.
The pieces were falling into place. Aaron and Caesar weren’t the masterminds. They were puppets—clever, powerful ones—but still not the true architects of this madness.
Nathan’s voice dropped to a whisper, sharp as a blade.
“Who promised you?”
Logan’s lips trembled, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.
“I… Iblis…” he rasped.
And then, he collapsed.
Unconscious.
Nathan froze.
His heart skipped a beat.
“Iblis…?”
The name echoed in his mind like a curse.
The evil god. The one who had created the Corrupted Gods. The source of the darkness that had bled into the world for centuries. The force behind the Demon King’s corruption, the very embodiment of hatred, chaos, and destruction.
Nathan’s thoughts spiraled. If Iblis was involved—if he had promised something to Aaron’s faction—this meant no good at all.
Great unease flickered in Nathan’s chest.
Iblis, that was different.
That was an extinction-level threat.
A soft voice interrupted his spiraling thoughts.
“Iblis isn’t personally involved, Nate.”
Nathan turned sharply.
Aphrodite stood beside him, her expression more serious than he had ever seen. No teasing smile. No soft charm. Just solemnity.
“Then who is?” he asked.
“A Beast of Iblis,” she replied. Her eyes—usually filled with warmth—were hard now, cold as marble. “That’s my guess. If you ever see one, Nathan… you run. No matter what. You run.”
Nathan didn’t argue.
He understood what she meant. Beasts of Iblis—born from the evil god’s dying hatred—were walking calamities. Not corrupted by Iblis, but forged from him. Sentient weapons that knew only destruction and obedience.
And one of them had once corrupted the Demon King himself.
If that same or similar force was walking the earth again… then the world was already in far more danger than anyone had realized.
Nathan exhaled slowly, eyes falling once more on the unconscious Logan.
This changes everything.