"There’s a hidden passage here," he said, his voice more focused now. "Help find it."
"A hidden passage?" Elin echoed, her soft voice tinged with confusion as her brows furrowed delicately.
"Yes," Nathan affird with a curt nod, pulling his hand away from Elin’s grasp. He took a small step forward, eyes scanning the ancient stone around them. "That hooded man you noticed earlier—while you were speaking with your classmates—I followed him all the way here."
"W-What?" Freja stamred, her eyes widening in disbelief. "You spied on us?!"
Her tone was a mix of outrage and incredulity.
Nathan raised an eyebrow, his expression unreadable. "The sa way you spied on ? Trust , I was just as obvious as both of you. We all suck at subtlety."
Freja’s face flushed an angry pink. Her mouth opened to respond but nothing ca out. She clenched her fists in frustration. She wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of teasing—especially not from soone like him.
She had never even tried to spy on anyone before! And now she was being accused of being bad at it?
"I followed him up to this point," Nathan continued, returning to the matter at hand. "Then... his presence just vanished. He didn’t leave the way he ca, I’m sure of it. That ans there’s got to be a hidden passage sowhere around here. Help find it, and maybe you’ll finally get to learn what Caesar’s planning."
"Wait a minute," Freja interjected, her expression growing more serious. "Aren’t you with Caesar? You’re talking as if you’re—"
"I don’t have ti to explain everything to you," Nathan cut her off sharply, his voice firm and dismissive. "If you’re going to question instead of helping, then don’t waste my ti."
"W...We’ll help you, Septimius!" Elin said quickly, stepping forward with a bright, reassuring smile.
Freja shot her friend an incredulous glance. "Elin—!"
But the blonde girl was already nodding enthusiastically.
Freja sighed and folded her arms across her chest. "Fine, but if you try anything shady—"
"You’ll trip and fall again?" Nathan interrupted, his gaze sliding toward her with amusent glinting in his eyes.
Freja blinked, stunned. "W–What?!"
"It’s becoming a bit of a habit for you, isn’t it? Like that ti in the Roman bath...?"
Freja’s entire face turned crimson, and her body stiffened as the mory assaulted her—a humiliating mont she had spent hours trying to bury. The mory of him seeing her completely naked in that steamy, echoing bathhouse...
"Roman bath?" Elin asked, tilting her head in confusion as she looked at Freja.
"I–It’s nothing! Nothing at all!" Freja practically yelped, then grabbed Elin by the wrist and yanked her away from Nathan with surprising force. "Let’s not waste any more ti. We have a hidden passage to find, rember?!"
Elin stumbled behind her, but as she glanced back at Nathan, a quiet curiosity stirred in her chest.
What exactly had happened between those two?
She’d assud there was nothing special between Freja and Nathan. But that mont... and the way Freja reacted just now—it suggested otherwise.
Nathan, however, seed entirely focused on the task at hand. His brow was furrowed, and his pale eyes combed the walls with cold precision. He had no ti for gas, nor distractions.
He had to find that hidden passage. Wherever that hooded man went—it was urgent that he find out who he was eting. This place, ancient and full of secrets, had already seen too much silence.
"Hmm..." Freja muttered thoughtfully, gently touching one of the ornate carvings along the stone wall. "Usually, in places like this, there’s so kind of trigger—maybe a hidden button, a loose tile, or even a pressure chanism. Sothing that activates the hidden door."
"Oh really?" Elin asked, eyes wide.
"Yes," Freja nodded, nodding toward the intricate patterns etched into the marble. "It’s always like that, isn’t it? Haven’t you played any video gas before, Elin?"
"Um... not really," Elin replied sheepishly, her cheeks pink with embarrassnt.
"Well, start looking for anything that might serve as a switch. It could be part of the wall, or even sothing disguised in the design," Freja said, as she began pressing gently against various stones and decorative tiles.
Nathan, who was also from Earth and was no stranger to video gas himself, agreed with her logic. Hidden passages always had a trigger. The problem was that in a place like this—an ancient, possibly divine temple—anything could be that trigger.
And he didn’t have the luxury of ti.
He ran a hand over the stone, tracing the lines and engravings, his mind already spinning through possibilities. He needed to find where that hooded figure went. He needed to know who they were going to et... and more importantly—why.
Ti was running out.
Nathan stood still for a mont, his jaw tight, eyes scanning the temple chamber with growing irritation.
A spark of impatience flared in his chest.
Maybe I should just destroy the temple.
The thought ca uninvited but tempting. With enough force, with a single violent burst of mana, he could collapse half the structure. Hidden passage or not, whatever was concealed here would be revealed through sheer devastation. No more guessing gas. No more waiting.
But he quickly pushed the idea out of his mind.
Too loud. Too reckless. Too much attention.
The last thing he needed was the entire city descending upon this place—especially if they thought he had desecrated a holy site. Caesar’s spies, the divine enforcers, maybe even gods themselves could respond. No, that wasn’t an option. Not yet.
"Think," Nathan murmured to himself, taking a long step backward and drawing in a breath.
This ti, he didn’t just glance around—he studied the room. Every line, every carving, every shadow that danced along the stone. The walls were covered in scenes of ancient battles, celestial thrones, and divine punishnts... and in the center stood a grand marble statue.
Zeus.
God of lightning, sky, and kings.
The statue towered over them all, carved in dramatic detail: flowing beard, stern eyes, and in his right hand, the weapon he was most known for—his thunderbolt.
"Hey," Elin’s voice broke the silence, tentative but curious. "Sothing’s... off about the thunderbolt he’s holding."
Nathan turned toward her, then followed her gaze to the thunderbolt in Zeus’s hand.
At first glance, it seed unremarkable—just another part of the sculpture. But now that she ntioned it...
"Yeah..." Freja chid in, stepping closer and narrowing her eyes. "It looks too... clean. Polished, even. Like it hasn’t aged the sa as the rest of the statue."
She was right.
While the rest of Zeus’s statue bore the soft wear of centuries—faint cracks, patches of discoloration, the erosion of sacred ti—the thunderbolt glead faintly, untouched by age or dust.
Nathan didn’t hesitate.
In a single, fluid motion, he leapt onto the base of the statue, his boots hitting the cold stone with a hollow thud. From there, he climbed swiftly up Zeus’s leg, then along the arm, his body moving with the grace of soone used to ignoring rules and sacred boundaries.
If a Roman civilian had seen him now, their reaction would have been one of sheer horror. To defile the image of Jupiter—Zeus, in Roman form—was an unspeakable blasphemy. They’d have scread about curses, divine punishnt, and sacrilege. They might’ve even tried to stop him.
Nathan didn’t care.
Gods or not, he had no reverence for statues.
He reached out to the thunderbolt, his fingers wrapping around the cold, smooth surface of it. Then he let his mana flow—channeling it directly into the object.
For a mont, nothing happened.
Then the bolt began to hum.
Blue sparks sizzled to life along its surface. The thunderbolt flared with energy, its pale marble skin igniting into a crackling, living current of blue-white lightning. The power coursed up the statue’s arm, and the floor beneath Nathan began to tremble.
Then—crack—the thunder leapt from the bolt and slamd into the ground below.
But instead of destruction, sothing else happened.
A glowing, swirling circle of light unfurled across the floor—an ancient portal of energy, spinning with streaks of stormy blue and silver. The wind kicked up as if a storm had burst into the chamber, scattering dust and loose threads of fabric into the air.
Nathan’s eyes glinted with satisfaction.
Without a word, without hesitation, he jumped.
His figure vanished into the swirling vortex.
"W–Wait! Septimius!" Elin cried, reaching out instinctively as her friend disappeared. But it was too late—he was gone.
The portal pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
Freja stepped back in stunned silence, her gaze fixed on the otherworldly vortex. She felt the hairs on her arms stand up. The pressure in the air had changed. Sothing about this wasn’t right.
"W...What is that?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the low hum of the still-spinning portal. Her gut twisted. Everything about this felt wrong.
"Elin, we shouldn’t..."
But before Freja could finish her sentence, she turned—and her heart sank.
Elin was already mid-jump, her body diving straight into the unknown.
"Elin?!" Freja’s voice cracked in panic as she rushed forward, only to see her friend vanish completely, swallowed by the glowing swirl.
The portal was shrinking now, closing rapidly like the eye of a storm drawing shut.
Freja clenched her fists.
"Damn it!"
There was no ti to think. No ti to analyze. Biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood, she took a deep breath—
—and leapt.
In a flash of light, she too was gone.
°°°°°
As Nathan stepped through the portal, the world twisted and blurred, and for a fleeting mont, he felt as though he were being torn through space itself. Then, without warning, his boots hit solid ground.
Cold.
The chill bit through his soles like a whisper of frost. He straightened imdiately, instincts sharpened, eyes narrowing as he took in his surroundings. The air was damp and heavy, carrying the scent of ancient stone and lingering magic. Darkness pressed in from all sides, the only illumination coming from the faint, pale shimr of residual portal energy fading behind him.
He was underground—deep underground.
A hidden cavern of so sort. Rough stone lined the walls, uneven and jagged, glistening slightly with moisture. Stalactites hung like teeth from the low ceiling above, and a hollow echo whispered with every breath he took.
Nathan wasted no ti.
In a fluid motion, he reinforced his senses—mana rushing subtly through his body, heightening his perception, hearing, and movent. His skin tingled as his vision adapted to the low light, his ears picking up even the smallest of vibrations in the silence.
No traps, he quickly realized. No enchantnts. No magical defenses.
But then he felt it.
A faint ripple, barely there—but unmistakable.
The presence of the hooded man.
Nathan’s expression hardened. Without hesitation, he lted into the shadows, cloaking his presence entirely as if he were never there. Then, like a phantom, he moved—his body a blur as he darted down the winding, murky tunnel.
The deeper he went, the darker it beca. The silence turned heavier, the stone walls tighter, as if the earth itself were watching. Only the rhythmic echo of water dripping in the distance punctuated the oppressive quiet.
Then he heard it—whispers.
Soft at first, like wind brushing through cracks. But as he moved closer, the voices sharpened, words taking form.
He slowed his pace and approached with care, stepping over uneven stones without a sound. The tunnel opened slightly into a secluded hollow—an antechamber carved from ancient rock, where the whispers resounded with eerie clarity.
Nathan pressed his back against the jagged wall near the entrance and folded his arms, his body relaxed yet coiled like a spring. His head tilted slightly, his attention fixed on the conversation unfolding just beyond the bend.
"...The Heroes of Amun-Ra have already taken our side," ca the smooth, composed voice of the hooded man. "It was fairly easy. Their pride made them predictable."
A low, dark chuckle followed—sinister, amused, and filled with smug delight.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed. Carefully, he leaned forward and peered around the edge of the stone, keeping only a fraction of his face exposed.
The chamber beyond was dimly lit, the only light coming from a ring of candles arranged in a precise circle around a group of figures. Flickering shadows danced across the cave walls, painting the gathering in hues of gold and black.
There were six of them in total, all appearing to be in their twenties. They sat or stood in deliberate positions, each radiating a quiet, simring power. But Nathan’s gaze locked onto one.
The one who had laughed.
He lounged arrogantly on a stone chair at the far end of the chamber, legs crossed, posture lazy—but his aura was anything but.
He had jet-black hair that shimred slightly in the candlelight, and golden eyes that glead like molten tal. There was sothing predatory in the way he smirked, sothing dangerous in his stillness.
Nathan’s heart froze for a mont.
That face...
He’d seen them before—in the mirror. Or rather, in the mirror of soone else.
He looked almost like...
Father...?
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