I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

The arena fell into a stunned hush the instant Spartacus’s ill-fated lunge grazed the VIP balcony and Nathan intercepted him. For a heartbeat the roar of the crowd — sand-scented shouts, the metallic clink of armor, the distant cry of hawkers — cut into nothingness, as if the stadium itself were holding its breath. People glanced up, searching the boxes where senators and nobles sat, whispering the same question: was that part of the show? Or had Spartacus actually dared to strike at the Emperor’s dais?

It looked too real to be a stunt.

The silence snapped like a broken string, and the fighters found themselves dragged back into the momentum of combat. Spartacus, a coiled thing of muscle and fury, spat, “Move away, Septimius!” He planted his foot and launched as though to close the distance and gut Nathan — a motion full of hate.

Nathan didn’t hesitate. He slid into Spartacus’s path with the cold, slow certainty of someone who had been in the eye of storms before. Spartacus tore past him with brutal speed and swung. The punch connected; Nathan felt the wind of it, the bruising intent behind the blow. Spartacus’s forearm rose to shield him, and he skidded across the packed sand, a spray of grit marking his retreat.

“Why are you stopping me?!” Spartacus howled, voice raw and certain. He was not holding back; the man had released himself to full strength, every reserve unlatched. Now that Curia — the woman who had been at the heart of all this chaos — was under Nathan’s protection, Spartacus had nothing left to lose. His blade was aimed for Octavius’s blood, and Nathan stood directly between the two men.

“Letting anger run you will get you killed,” Nathan said, voice low but steady. “Do you want to die that badly?”

Spartacus ground his teeth. Fury burned in his eyes like embers.

“Curia,” Nathan spat the name. “That woman — You think I’ll… babysit that slave in case you die?”

Spartacus froze.

Nathan’s expression didn’t flair; he kept his face measured, the way a performer keeps a mask in place even when the world tries to rip it off. “Control your rage,” he told him. “Keep it focused and you’ll have Octavius’s head — and your life. Maybe even a new life, if you want it.”

Something in Nathan’s voice worked. He had shifted using his Skill Deep Voice.

Control your emotions.

Something taught by his father since he was a kid.

Never let your face betray the truth, never let raw feeling be your instrument. Where his father’s mask had been impenetrable, Nathan’s was thinner — but it served. It kept his true intentions sealed, contained the flash of fury he felt when loved ones were threatened.

Spartacus blinked, anger receding a fraction as he chewed at the offer. The idea of a prize, a way forward, had a pragmatic pull even on a man drunk with vengeance. Nathan had the look of someone who could deliver on his promises; there was a certain cold sincerity in the smirk that tugged at his mouth.

Nathan turned, glancing over his shoulder at the VIP boxes as if reading the mood there, then fixed Spartacus with a small, mocking smile. “You’ll have his head sooner than you think,” he said.

That was all the bait the Emperor’s ego needed. For all Octavius’s power, for all the state’s weight behind him, pride had always been Caesar’s soft spot.

Nathan barely needed more than a handful of words and a crooked half-smile to carve a fresh wound into Caesa’s pride. It was almost effortless. The Emperor, predictable as the sun, snapped at the provocation like a starving wolf at meat. No hesitation. No doubt. Pride first — consequences later.

He invoked them.

The Keys of Rome.

The shift was immediate. The world did not scream at first — it exhaled, a long and dreadful sigh, as if the city itself had been waiting to breathe again. Then came the sensation: a colossal power stirring below, above, and within Rome. It seeped through stone, veins of earth, monuments, and mortar alike — pouring upward like blood through an opened wound.

Nathan felt it instantly.

But the gods felt it sooner.

Up in the imperial seats, Athena’s head snapped toward Caesar the moment the invocation was complete. The very air around her sharpened. The goddess of wisdom — controlled, composed, calculating — crushed restraint beneath pure disbelief and fury. Her fingers dug into the marble armrest of her seat, cracks splintering beneath the pressure as she clenched her fist.

“He really… did it,” she breathed, voice low enough to seem calm, yet trembling at the edges with restrained rage.

Dionysus chuckled, swirling the contents of his cup lazily. “Something monumental just snapped its chains, Athena,” he remarked, and drank again, the amusement in his voice at odds with the tension coiling around them.

Hermes, standing poised behind them like a coiled spring, narrowed his sharp eyes. “This isn’t mortal energy,” he said. “It’s… adjacent to ours. Almost divine. Almost ancient.”

Athena said nothing, jaw set. She didn’t need to. She knew exactly what had been stirred awake.

And soon — everyone did.

The tremors began small.

A shiver in the soles of feet. A clatter of pebbles. A ripple across cups of wine held too loosely by watching spectators.

Then the ground lurched.

Panic erupted in the stands.

“W–what’s happening!?”

“Is it an earthquake?!”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

The coliseum itself groaned, sandstone blocks grating as though gears too old had begun to turn once more.

Then—

BADOOOOOOOOOM!!!

A thunderous explosion detonated beyond the arena walls. The blast rolled through the sky like a war drum, slamming into eardrums and rattling air itself. Even within the pit of the arena, wind punched outward in a violent wave.

No one inside could see the source — the coliseum’s massive structure caged their vision — but the force of it needed no witness.

Nathan simply lifted his gaze toward the unseen horizon, eyes steady, unreadable.

He couldn’t see… but he could feel it.

“…It’s coming,” he said quietly.

Spartacus blinked at him, grim faced. “What is?”

A beat.

“Don’t drop your guard,” Nathan answered.

Far beyond them, at Rome’s outer edge, the earth ruptured like skin tearing. The ground buckled inward, collapsing to reveal a massive chasm — black, jagged, ancient.

Then something moved.

Not one shape.

Two.

With a force that shook heaven as much as stone, twin titans launched upward—soaring out of the abyss. When they landed, the impact punched shockwaves outward, flattening grass, cracking roads, and shaking what little calm remained in the city.

Up in the divine audience, Ishtar let out a delighted hum. “Ohh~?” she purred, lips curling into a satisfied smirk.

Beside her, Sif stood frozen in stunned disbelief, braid swaying from the tremor. Even she, a warrior goddess, had not expected this.

They were wolves.

But calling them that felt like calling a hurricane wind.

Their size dwarfed reason — towering colossi made of muscle, myth, and wrath. The red wolf of the second round of the tournament, once considered colossal, would have seemed a mere pup between their paws.

Both were white as moon bleached bone.

One bore deep, consuming blue eyes, cold as the first winter storm.

The other burned with feral red, molten with violence untamed.

When their howls split the night, the sound reached everywhere.

Over the trembling city.

Across the roaring crowds.

Straight into the arena, unfiltered and deafening.

A sound older than Rome.

A call older than gods.

A proclamation older than empire.

The Beasts of Rome had awakened.

Romulus.

And Remus.