I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Darkness swallowed them.

Only the faint red symbols carved into the walls remained.

They descended deeper.

The stairs twisted beneath the earth in long, uneven turns. Water dripped from the ceiling. The walls were carved directly from black stone, but they were not natural. Ancient markings covered them from floor to ceiling, some faded by time, others sharp enough to suggest they had been cut recently.

Nathan ran his fingers near one symbol without touching it.

The shape resembled an eye.

Below it, dozens of smaller figures knelt around a larger shape with horns and multiple arms.

Genzo noticed where he was looking.

”They look very old.”

”They are,” Nathan nodded.

The markings continued.

They showed people carrying offerings into darkness. They showed bodies laid before an altar. They showed black shapes rising from a circle of blood.

And farther down, Nathan saw another image.

A man kneeling before a shrine.

Behind him, a city burned.

The sight made his stomach tighten.

Norihiro had not merely found this place.

He had studied it.

Prepared it.

Perhaps he had spent years learning every ritual and secret buried beneath Minami Kyoto while pretending to govern the South from above.

One of the shinobi behind them suddenly stopped.

Nathan turned.

The man stood rigidly beside the wall, staring at a carving.

”What is it?” Genzo asked.

The shinobi did not respond.

His face had gone pale.

Then he stepped toward the wall.

”Mother?” he whispered.

Genzo moved immediately.

He grabbed the man’s shoulder and pulled him back.

The shinobi blinked rapidly, as though waking from a dream.

”I heard her,” he said. ”She was calling me.”

The whispers began.

At first, they were faint.

Nathan heard nothing clearly. Only the sense of voices moving through the walls, too soft to understand. Then the words became almost recognizable.

Names.

Memories.

The voices of people no longer alive.

One shinobi covered his ears.

Another shut his eyes tightly.

Nathan’s hand tightened around Kyomei.

The shrine was testing them.

Or feeding on them.

”Do not listen,” he said.

The whispers grew louder.

Nathan heard Ayame’s voice.

Then Yukihime’s.

For one dangerous moment, he heard Sakura crying his name from somewhere farther down the corridor.

”Nathan.”

Nathan froze instantly when he heard a voice he could never mistake.

His mother’s voice.

”Ryo.” Genzo patted his shoulder.

Nathan breathed out.

None of them were here.

The shrine knew nothing of love.

It knew only how to use it.

Nathan released a small wave of dark magic.

The shadows around his feet rose and spread across the corridor floor. The whispers faltered. The red symbols on the walls flickered.

The shinobi breathed again.

”Keep moving,” Nathan said.

They went deeper.

At the bottom of the stairs, the corridor opened into a large underground chamber.

The sight before them made everyone stop.

The chamber was enormous.

Its ceiling disappeared into darkness high above. Thick stone pillars rose along both sides, each covered in crimson markings. Old chains hung from the walls, rusted and stained. At the center of the chamber stood a wide circular platform surrounded by a shallow trench.

The trench was filled with blood.

Fresh blood.

Dozens of bodies lay around it.

Some wore Norihiro’s colors.

Others wore the clothes of servants, workers, and captives who had likely been brought down here long before the battle began. Their faces were pale. Their throats had been cut. Ritual knives rested near several of their hands.

Genzo’s expression became frozen with rage.

”He sacrificed his own people.”

Nathan said nothing.

He had expected something terrible.

But even he had not expected Norihiro to have prepared this much death beneath the city.

At the far side of the chamber stood an altar made from dark stone.

Norihiro was there.

The twelve knights formed a line before him, swords drawn.

Norihiro himself had removed the rest of his armor. He wore a dark ceremonial robe beneath it, embroidered with symbols that matched the walls. Blood ran down one of his hands, dripping from a fresh cut across his palm onto the altar.

He looked toward Nathan.

Then at Genzo.

A smile appeared on his face.

”You came,” Norihiro said.

Nathan stepped forward.

Kyomei pointed toward the Daimyo.

”You expected me.”

”I hoped.”

Norihiro’s voice echoed across the chamber.

”You have been the missing piece since the day you appeared in the South.”

Genzo’s eyes narrowed.

”What are you talking about?”

Norihiro did not look at him.

His attention remained on Nathan.

”The black ronin. The man who killed Daimyos as though their titles meant nothing. The man who entered Death God Valley, and destroyed Mitsuhide after he touched power he was never worthy of.”

Nathan’s expression hardened.

”You used Mitsuhide.”

”I used everyone I could.”

Norihiro smiled faintly.

”Mitsuhide was a failure. He was greedy and weak. He opened a small door and believed he had seen a kingdom.”

The blood from his palm ran into a groove carved across the altar.

The crimson symbols around the chamber brightened.

”I spent years preparing this shrine,” Norihiro continued. ”Years learning what the old cults did wrong. They tried to command the Kijin. They tried to bargain with it as though it were a lesser spirit.”

His eyes gleamed in the darkness.

”I will not make their mistake.”

Genzo stepped forward, fury rising in his face.

”You murdered people for this.”

Norihiro finally looked at him.

”You spent years hiding in forests, calling yourself a protector of the South. Yet you never understood the truth. This land cannot be protected by weak men whispering in shadows.”

He lifted his bleeding hand.

”It must be remade.”

The blood trench began to ripple.

Something moved beneath its surface.

Nathan felt the shrine’s pressure increase.

The floor trembled.

The dead bodies around the circle shifted slightly, as though an unseen wind had passed over them.

Norihiro’s knights raised their weapons.

Nathan looked toward Genzo.

”Take the shinobi and deal with them.”

Genzo nodded once.

”And you?”

Nathan’s eyes remained on Norihiro.

”I stop him before he finishes.”

Norihiro’s smile widened.

The crimson light flared.

And somewhere beneath the blood-filled circle, something answered.