Night had settled fully over Kastoriaâs capital by the time the three of them made their way back through the city streets toward the castle. The market stalls had folded away their awnings, replaced by the warmer, quieter atmosphere of eveningâlanterns burning at intervals along the stone paths, the distant sound of music from somewhere deeper in the entertainment district, the comfortable reduction of crowd noise to something more intimate and unhurried.
Ayaka walked with the satisfied looseness of someone whose day had gone exactly as needed. Akane moved with her customary composed grace, though there was a softness around her eyes that hadnât been there this morningâthe visible residue of a day genuinely well spent.
They had gotten what theyâd needed from today. Both of them. Nathan could tell, and something about knowing that settled quietly in him.
"I still cannot believe you have that many wives, Onii-chan," Ayaka muttered as the castle gates came into view ahead, her tone carrying the particular quality of someone who had been intermittently processing this information throughout the afternoon and kept arriving at the same mildly staggered conclusion.
"You think so?" Nathan replied without particular perturbation.
He supposed that from an outside perspectiveâcertainly from the perspective of someone who had grown up with him in the ordinary modern world of Japan, where such things were not merely unusual but legally impossibleâthe number was extraordinary.
But somewhere past a certain point, the internal accounting had simply stopped feeling remarkable. Each relationship had its own weight, its own reality, its own reasons. The cumulative number had become less significant than the individual truths of which it was composed.
"I find myself more surprised by the number of children, Onii-sama," Akane added quietly from his other side, with the thoughtful precision of someone identifying the part of the information that had actually landed hardest for her.
"Right! Thatâs the real thing!" Ayaka brightened suddenly, turning toward Nathan with the expression of someone who had just remembered an important grievance. "You should have brought at least one of them! Theyâre basically our nephews and nieces, arenât they? We have a right to meet them!"
Her enthusiasm was entirely genuineâAyaka had always had an instinctive warmth toward children, even when sheâd have denied it strenuously to most people.
Nathan considered this honestly.
He could have, in principle. But the reality of each childâs situation made it considerably more complicated than it sounded.
Archidamus had only just been bornâtoo young for any journey to be reasonable. Azarel, born several months prior, was technically old enough to travel, but Azariahâs protectiveness of their son was something Nathan had both profound respect for and no intention of crossing without necessity. Azarel was heir to Tenebria, grandson of the Demon King, which meant his existence carried the kind of political weight that made his safety a legitimate strategic concern rather than mere maternal anxiety.
Then there was Idenaâhis daughter with Medea. But bringing Idena to Kastoria meant either leaving Medea behind or bringing Medea along, and Medeaâs relationship with the concept of her daughter being in any potentially unsafe environment was such that Nathan genuinely feared what she might do if something as minor as a mosquito bit Idenaâs skin within Kastoriaâs capital.
A diplomatic incident was the optimistic outcome of that scenario.
His other children were scattered across distances that made the journey impractical for this particular visit.
"Next time," he said. "Or perhaps more practicallyâonce the ceremony is finished and Harukaâs position is secured, you could both visit Tenebriaâs capital yourselves."
Ayakaâs expression transformed immediately into something bright and decided. "Yes! Absolutely yes! Weâll definitely do that! Right, Akane?" She looked at her sister with the energy of someone already planning the details.
"Iâm impatient to meet them," Akane confirmed with a genuine smileâthe rare, unguarded kind she kept for moments that actually moved her. "All of them, Onii-sama."
"If you love children that much," Nathan said then, his tone carrying a slight smile, "you are both more than old enough to have your own. Nothing prevents either of you."
The words were spoken lightly, with affectionate pragmatism rather than any particular agenda.
What followed was a strange, weighted silence.
It lasted several seconds longer than it should have for such an unremarkable observation.
"I mean..." Ayaka began, her voice carrying a careful quality that was quite unlike her usual directness. She looked at Nathan with an expression that was simultaneously pointed and slightly frustrated. "Finding a good man is considerably harder than finding a good woman, you know? Quality is simply rarer on one side of that equation."
"I wonât disagree with that," Nathan said with complete sincerity.
"Are you worried about our love lives, Onii-sama?" Akane asked, turning to look at him with quiet attention.
"Why wouldnât I be?" Nathan replied, his tone shifting almost imperceptiblyâthe lightness leaving it, something more serious and protective settling in its place. "Youâre both precious to me. I donât want either of you ending up with men who donât deserve you. That concern doesnât require explanation."
"Thenâ!" Ayaka started, her voice carrying sudden energy, leaning slightly forward.
Akaneâs hand closed gently around her sisterâs arm.
Ayaka turned to look at her twin. Akane gave a single small, deliberate shake of her head.
Not now. Not the right moment. The meaning was entirely clear between them.
Ayaka exhaled through her noseâa short, quietly frustrated soundâand subsided. Her expression as she looked back at Nathan carried something caught between longing and mild exasperation at a situation she couldnât quite resolve.
Was he genuinely oblivious? Or was he aware of exactly what sheâd been about to say and choosing, for his own reasons, to neither invite it nor close it off?
Neither sister could tell, and that particular uncertainty was its own very specific kind of frustrating.
"Children can be complicated though," Akane shifted the subject with smooth composure, her tone returning to something more reflective. She looked at Nathan with careful eyes. "Onii-samaâyou mentioned earlier that some of your children are scattered. That there are some you havenât even held yet."
Nathanâs expression changed.
Not dramaticallyâhe was too controlled for that. But the comfortable ease of the evening settled into something more complicated, more inward, less available.
"Yes," he said simply.
Sara. His daughter with Amelia and Karenâhis daughter with Aisha, born into circumstances he hadnât been present for, living a life whose daily texture he couldnât picture because he had never seen it.
He hadnât held either of them.
The reason was practical and strategically sound when examined in the cold light of planning: stepping into the Light Empireâs capital nowâwith the protective presence of the Light Gods watching over it like vigilant sentinelsâwould reveal his survival immediately. Everything he had built around the assumption of his death, every plan that depended on his enemies believing him gone, would unravel at once.
The Light Gods would see the change in the divine fabric the moment he crossed into their sanctioned territory. There was no disguising that.
With Aisha and Karen, the calculus was different but no simpler. He could perhaps find a way to reach Aisha. But reaching Aisha meant proximity to Amelia. And telling Amelia he was aliveâ
He couldnât. Not yet.
Not because he feared her reaction, or feared anything about the encounter itself. But because he had a plan. A specific, carefully constructed plan that required certain people to continue believing certain things for it to function. Ameliaâs knowledge of his survival would change her behavior in ways that would inevitably reach the wrong ears at the wrong moment.
The fewer people who knew, the better the plan would eventually work.
He had accepted that reasoning when heâd made the decision. He still accepted it now.
It didnât make the image of two daughters heâd never held feel any less like a weight that lived somewhere below rational calculation, in a place that logic didnât fully reach.
But that was the price he needed to pay.
He had made that calculation clearly and without sentimentality when the plan had first taken shape in his mind, and he had revisited it enough times since to know it held. Keeping his survival hidden from Amelia meant Sara didnât know her father was alive. Keeping it hidden from Aisha meant Karen grew up without that knowledge either.
Every instinct he had resisted that reality.
But instinct wasnât the same as wisdom, and he had learned that distinction through enough costly mistakes to have genuine respect for it now.
If Amelia knew he lived, she would reactâbecause she was Amelia, and she was constitutionally incapable of receiving information of that magnitude and simply sitting quietly with it. Her reaction would change her behavior, however carefully she tried to conceal it. Changed behavior reached people. People talked. The wrong ears were always listening, and the Gods of Light were patient observers who noticed inconsistencies in the humans they watched over.
If his survival reached the Light Gods before he was readyâbefore the plan had reached the point where exposure no longer mattered because the outcome was already determinedâthen everything built on that foundation would collapse at once.
Sara and Karen, kept in ignorance, couldnât accidentally reveal what they didnât know. Couldnât behave differently around people who were watching for exactly those kinds of differences.
A small and defined amount of time sacrificed. A specific period of absence, painful and deliberately chosen, in exchange for a future where he could actually be present for his children without the constant threat of divine forces who wanted him destroyed hovering over everything.
That was the trade. He had accepted it. He accepted it still.
"I have too many enemies to deal with simultaneously," Nathan said as they passed through the castleâs outer gate into the lamplit interior courtyard, his voice carrying the measured weight of someone articulating something they had thought about long and carefully. "Managing them requires making certain difficult decisions. Keeping my children from knowing Iâm alive is one of those decisionsâmade specifically to keep them safe from the consequences of being connected to me. As long as the Gods of Light believe Iâm not a threat, Sara and Karen are simply children. The moment those Gods learn otherwise, they become leverage."
Ayaka and Akane walked beside him in silence, and neither spoke immediately. The comfortable warmth of the evening had shifted into something more serious, the lightness of their shared afternoon receding as the full weight of what Nathan was describing settled over them.
Perhaps they hadnât fully understood until this moment what it actually meantânot in the abstract sense of knowing he had enemies, but in the concrete sense of what living inside that reality required of him daily.
"But Onii-sama," Akane said after a moment, her voice careful and precise, "if Kastoria commits military forces to attacking the Light Empire alongside Tenebria, we will be drawn into that conflict regardless. That consequence doesnât change based on whether Ayaka and I personally participate in the campaign."
It was a sharp observation, delivered without accusation. Simply true.
"Possibly," Nathan acknowledged. "But thereâs a meaningful difference between Kastoria being a supporting party in a war that Tenebria is leading and the Heroes of Kastoria being present on the battlefield itself." He paused briefly. "The Light Empireâs attentionâand more importantly the Light Godsâ attentionâhas been fixed on Tenebria and on me specifically since long before any of this began. Their hatred of demons isnât recent and it isnât divided. Itâs singular and itâs old."
He said it without bitterness, as simple established fact.
"Their focus will remain on Tenebria. On me. Kastoriaâs army provides weight and strategic value, but it doesnât become the target. You, specificallyâif you were present on that battlefieldâwould become a variable I couldnât fully control. And I donât accept variables I canât control when it comes to people I care about."
The logic was clean and the feeling underneath it was equally clear, and neither sister could argue against either.
Akane lowered her eyes slightlyânot in defeat, but in the particular quiet of someone genuinely absorbing what theyâve been told and letting it land properly.
Ayaka said nothing, which was itself significant. When Ayaka had no immediate words, the thing that had silenced her had done real work.
The three of them continued through the castleâs inner corridors without speaking, the sounds of the building settling around themâdistant voices, the soft footfalls of night guards completing their rounds, the occasional flicker of a torch in a wall bracket responding to some imperceptible draft.
It was the comfortable silence of people who didnât need to fill space with words to feel connected. They had spent enough of the day in each otherâs company that quiet now felt like continuation rather than distance.
They reached the branching corridor where their paths dividedâNathanâs guest quarters in one direction, the Heroesâ residential wing in another.
And after some goodnights words they parted ways going to their respective rooms.