2025-09-01 22:08:16"More like you brought that upon yourself." Ethan reasoned calmly, his expression unreadable.
Jennifer puffed with anger, her mind spiraling in rage. "You are not just useless but also lack proper manners? Were you raised in the gutters?" She fumed, cursed, and scowled, still clutching her aching face.
"That's enough!" Emma stepped in quickly. Her stance was strong; her words were obeyed even by the swaying winds.
"Ethan saved our necks; we should be grateful."
She ended the words with an abrupt pause. No room, no cracks for Jennifer to chip in a pin.
Her face burned like that of a red oven. A bitter sensation rose through her throat as she glanced at Ethan. Cold, venomous, dripping with excessive coldness.
A car zoomed off, blending into the speed of the wind. Also brushing the clothes of Jennifer.
"Bitches!" She cursed under her huffed breath. Her anger fumbled into her trembling fingers.
But a letter has dropped. The contemporaneity is drawing a still calm. It felt urgent. The air is thick and heavy.
The temperature rose with the sudden wave of tension, piercing against their skin as they tried to shake it off. A futile attempt.
With a steady hand, Emma peeled off the seal.
"Brace yourself for War." The caption was bold and red. Flashing with everything that spoke of danger.
"It's human blood." Jennifer panicked. Sweat dripped down her face.
Realization hits Emma deeply. Indeed, it was human blood. It was a bold warning, a sign of a bloodbath; her heart rocked harder against her heart. Each beat rising with intensity.
"From the gangsters of the city!" The letter dropped from her hands.
The little tussle. It had burnt her peace like a wide fire. She had a company to rescue from the clutches of falling. A fight with the gang of the city was definitely not a welcome development.
"He caused it!" Jennifer had finally gotten enough room to speak. Her hands pointed at Ethan, her cold gaze embedded with disgust.
"He attacked Locust without even thinking. Now we are all going to pay for it?" She scowled.
"If you ask me, I think we should fold him up, tie him, and hand him over to Locust. Maybe that might appease him." Jennifer proposed. Emma cocked a brow.
"How quickly do you forget that he's still my husband?" Her brows grew wider.
"We will find a way to deal with it... I will get in contact..." Ethan's sharp tone interrupted her words; Jennifer flashed with disdain.
"The issue will be sorted. Don't bother!" He ended, Ethan's sense of authority drawing the breath off from their lungs.
Even the wind drew silent at the solemnness of his words. Jennifer and Emma stared in utter disbelief.
"What?" Jennifer was the first to speak. Her words were filled with spite, hate, and rage.
"Do you think you can solve every issue by throwing a handful of fists?" She thundered.
"Do you think Locust is a man that can even be reasoned with?" She glared harder.
"Or do you think that you're what? The president of the city who can order everyone around like kids?" She flared even more.
Ethan said nothing. If only she knew that he indeed was A.M.E.N. The man in whose presence the president trembled.
The Gods of War quaked.
The mayor folded like lily-livered rats in the dark corners.
Taking care of a set of stray mutts was nothing more than an unnecessary disturbance.
"Do you trust me?" Ethan side-stepped Jennifer's ranting, only paying attention to the one that mattered to them.
Jennifer's heart sank deep into the bottom of her disdain. A bitter sensation rises through her throat. Her hate was bottling in her throat.
"I'm going to make you pay for this. And make Emma see how worthless a fool you are!" She swore under her breath.
Emma nodded, slow, reassuring, and calm. He saved her once already; giving him a little bit of trust was not enough to pay for his kindness.
They got into the car. The evening sun glowed gently on Emma's skin with grace as she gazed into the window, heart heavy with thoughts.
She sighed multiple times. Taking a look at the young man at the other end of the car. The man that fate had brought her to. Suddenly. Chaotic.
She didn't know what to make of it. But staring at him brought a strange sense of calm to her heart.
Emma has. Her interest piqued, her breath unsteady. The way Ethan stared with a grave sense of reassurance.
The way he spoke with a suppressive aura made everyone in the room stand in still silence.
The way his expression remained so calm. Even at the heart of the storm. Like he was hiding secrets, deep secrets that could candle a whole continent.
None of these personalities, everyone of whom seemed to have been drawn from a dreaded monarch, fits into that innocent, over-pampered look and such plain dressing.
Who was he? A hidden millionaire. One of the Gods of War. Maybe a lost heir?
If there was anything she was certain of, she wanted to know more. It was dangerous, but how much was it going to hurt to play with fire a little bit?
The car came to a stop. A sign that they had finally gotten to the Robbins Family Villa They came down together.
Emma's gaze collected. The mansion stared down in utter splendor. Rising high and disappearing into the broad sky.
The fountains poured with grace. Every branch of the flower is trimmed with so much care and precision. It was breathtaking, a sight that was worth lingering on.
It mocked the whole of Ethan's existence.
His looks even with the forty grand clothes. It didn't match the statues of this building. The sport cars—everyone shot glances at Ethan from behind.
He could feel it like a blazing stab from behind but he remained unfazed.
"Shall we proceed?" He said, stretching his hand to his newly wedded wife.
Emma took his hands without words. Jennifer scowled in utter disgust and disdain.
"Hey, Emma!" Someone called from behind.
"Did you get us a servant for the meeting? Isn't that thoughtful of you!" A young man stepped forward and greeted with a smile.
"But why are you holding hands with him!" He looked somewhat surprised. The grim look on his face begs for an answer to this question.
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Chapter 207: Visions like memories
Ethan lowered himself onto the woven mat, the coarse fibers a tactile anchor in the surreal chamber. He crossed his legs, rested his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes. The weight of the stone room, the scent of earth, the profound silence—it all pressed in, not as an assault, but as an invitation to dissolve.This was the same thing he had run away from back then that he was now finding himself performing again.But what choice had he got? He needed to complete this before he could think of facing Nathan for the sake of Emma and his unborn baby.“Breathe into the stillness,” the Grand Physician’s voice murmured, not from across the room, but seemingly from within the stillness itself. “The Quieting is not an erasure. It is a re-ordering. You will see the tapestry of your life. The threads of joy, of pain, of choice and consequence. Do not cling to them. Observe them as patterns in the weave. You will have visions. Keep an open mind. The mind that judges is the mind that suffers
Chapter 206: The sanctuary of stillness
They passed through corridors Ethan vaguely remembered, places of instruction and meditation. But the Grand Physician led him deeper than he had ever gone before, to a part of the compound that felt less like a building and more like a natural cave system that had been gently shaped. The air grew cooler, the scent of stone and damp earth replacing the incense.Finally, they entered a circular chamber. The ceiling was a natural dome of rock, with a single shaft of muted light falling from a hidden opening far above, illuminating the center of the room. In that pool of light was a simple mat of woven reeds. Around the perimeter, in deep shadow, stood nine smooth stone pillars, each carved with a single, complex symbol that seemed to shift in the low light.This was the Sanctuary of Stillness. The air itself felt thick, heavy with intention, as if sound went to die here.The Grand Physician gestured to the mat. "The place of unraveling."Ethan moved toward it, the gravity of the room pre
Chapter 205: The ‘Quieting’ Ritual
As Ethan drove to the Grand Physician’s the following morning, his hands tight on the wheel, his mind was a million miles away—or rather, decades.He wasn't navigating by GPS, but by muscle memory of a journey taken in a different life. The towering pines blurred into a green-grey wall, and with them, the present dissolved.“The focus is not to feel nothing, Ethan. That is the crude aim of a brute. The aim is to feel everything… and choose which sensation becomes action. The rest, you relegate to a silent room and lock the door.”The Grand Physician’s voice, dry as ancient parchment, echoed in his mind. He could see the austere training hall, the smell of sandalwood and cold stone. He’d been young, arrogant, flush with the early successes of the skills he’d already learned. The ‘Quieting’ had been presented as the final masterwork, the capstone. Not a new weapon, but the forging of an impregnable armory for the mind itself.And he’d walked away just before he could even get to underst
Chapter 204: Back To The Grand Physician
Ethan didn’t answer for a long moment. He pushed back from the desk, the chair rolling soundlessly on the thick rug. He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to the room, his silhouette tense against the glittering, indifferent cityscape.“I know my brother,” Ethan said, his voice hollow, stripped of all its usual command. “I know that Elizabeth Robbins would swallow broken glass before calling me for help. The fact that she did…” He bowed his head, a hand coming up to press against the cold glass. “It means she has exhausted every other option.”Ethan gave a single, jerky nod. The weight of it—the dual loss, the compounded violation—seemed to press him physically into the floor. “My brother understands currency. He understands leverage. He has just acquired the only two things in this universe I would trade the crown for. Not that I would ever be given the choice.”He strode back to the desk, not with purpose, but with a frantic, caged energy. He picked up the dead phone, s
Chapter 203: What do we do now?
Elizabeth’s phone slipped from her nerveless fingers, thudding softly onto the carpet. She didn’t hear it. All she heard was the roaring silence of a timeline that ended at seven o’clock.She was leaving.Four hours ago.The chill from the balcony was nothing compared to the glacial fear freezing her from the inside out. Every terrible possibility—the kind she’d spent years as a corporate wife learning to suppress—flooded her mind. An accident on the winding coastal road. A mugging in the city garage. Or worse, something deliberate, something linked to the crown, to the viper’s nest Emma had just been thrust into.Her gaze swept the room, landing on the family portrait from a decade ago—Richard’s arm around her, a young, smiling Emma between them. A perfect, painful lie. She was alone. Utterly alone with this terror.And then, unbidden, the most complicated, infuriating face of all surfaced in her mind: Ethan.She recoiled from the thought. Emma’s fury at him had been absolute, scorch
Chapter 202: Four hours ago
"You're operating under the assumption that Ethan and I are still connected. That I am leverage." Emma's voice was cold and sharp. "You're wrong. What happened with my grandfather severed that tie completely. I am done with Ethan. There is no loyalty to exploit, no affection to manipulate. Keeping me here is a pointless risk. Your quarrel is with him. Let me go, and you eliminate a complication. He will still come for you, for the crown. But you won't have an angry, resourceful hostage who has zero stake in his survival cluttering your operation."She delivered the speech with icy precision, every word a calculated move on this new, horrifying board. She was a redundant asset. A liability. She painted the picture with clear, logical strokes.And of course, that was what she thought. There was no point in dragging her into a sibling rivalry that she had no stakes in, and much worse, dragging her unborn child into it as well.Nathan listened, his head tilted. When she finished, he didn'
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