56) Tithonus is married?!
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{3rd Pov}
It didn’t take long for Ember to realize that the Athena Familia and the government officials had begun acting warily around him.
The subtle glances, the slightly stiffened posture whenever he entered a room, the overly formal tone in their voices, none of it escaped his notice.
He had also become somewhat informal in front of them, mostly because Athena was almost always present.
She clearly preferred it when he spoke to her casually, and over time he had gotten used to addressing her in that relaxed manner.
Unfortunately, what was natural between the two of them likely looked very different from an outsider’s perspective.
After finishing the books on Magic Tool crafting and spending several days building a prototype mecha model with Athena, Ember found himself reflecting more carefully on everyone’s behavior toward him.
‘Of course they would be wary,’ he thought calmly.
Someone had appeared out of nowhere and, in a matter of weeks, gained influence equivalent to a second-in-command of an entire nation.
That was an absurd thing from their perspective, it had to look suspicious and dangerous.
‘This situation is ridiculous,’ he admitted internally.
‘Heck, I’m not even stronger than the elites here. And I’m certainly not wiser than the elder elves who’ve lived for decades longer than me.’
He paused in thought.
Even though he himself was a High Elf and undeniably a genius he was still young compared to the people who surrounded Athena.
Many of them had decades of experience, political awareness, and battlefield knowledge that he simply didn’t possess yet.
In terms of raw talent and intellect, he could compete.
But in terms of age, influence, and history within Altena?
He was still just a newcomer and again from their perspective, that made him dangerous.
It was no wonder they didn’t particularly like him here.
In fact, Ember had already picked up on the quiet murmurs that circulated whenever he left a room.
He wasn’t blind or socially inept.
He knew very well that Athena’s behavior toward him had shocked almost everyone in the palace.
Athena had always been known as a dignified goddess someone who is usually composed, authoritative, and nearly untouchable in presence.
Her posture alone could silence a hall with her words carrying weight that even seasoned officials hesitated to challenge.
And yet, after meeting him, she had become casual.
Not just casual, she was also clingy, cute and utterly spoiled Goddess bro.
She would pout, complain, demand attention, and act as though he were truly her brother from another mother.
In private, she would even drop her regal tone entirely and speak in ways that would give her ministers a collective heart attack if they ever heard it.
Which was honestly hilarious, considering she was at least a million years older than him.
But beneath the humor, Ember had started to understand something more serious.
Perhaps the Goddess of Wisdom, after descending into the mortal world, had realized that humans possessed far greater potential than most gods believed.
Maybe she had seen what civilization could become without divine interference.
Maybe she understood that the Falna system while necessary to combat the Dungeon and the monsters had also severely restricted the natural evolution of human knowledge and society.
The Falna was a necessary evil.
It had protected mankind and had allowed them to survive.
But it had also butchered the independent progress of civilization.
Instead of developing through science, innovation, and collective effort, humanity had become dependent on divine blessings and individual strength.
Athena likely understood that contradiction better than anyone.
That was why Athena had been trying so relentlessly to raise the civilization level of this world.
Deep down, she genuinely believed that mortals could one day reach the stars,not metaphorically, but literally.
She wanted a future where humanity would build vessels capable of touching the heavens instead of relying on divine miracles.
However, reality had not been kind to her ambitions.
The first and most obvious problem was that mortals simply were not on her level intellectually.
It wasn’t that they were incapable of learning, it was just that the gap was enormous.
They were living in what was essentially a medieval era.
Basic infrastructure, primitive metallurgy, limited understanding of natural phenomena most people didn’t even grasp the fundamental difference between heat and temperature, let alone electricity or advanced mechanics.
Trying to introduce modern concepts to a society that had never even properly systematized its scientific method was an uphill battle from the start.
She couldn’t just hand them advanced theories and expect results.
They lacked the foundation.
So she had to guide them step by step, slowly building their understanding from the ground up.
It required patience, repetition, and constant supervision and that was the cruelest part.
By the time a student finally reached the minimum level she expected by the time they were capable of understanding the deeper implications of what she was trying to teach they were already old.
Their bodies weakened, stamina declined and eventually, they passed away.
She had to watch them die.
They were not just scholars or officials to her.
They were children she had personally raised, students she had mentored from youth, individuals whose growth she had carefully nurtured over decades and when they died, their wisdom died with them.
The knowledge she painstakingly cultivated would scatter, distort, or be forgotten entirely within a generation.
She would have to start over again, repeating the same process with new minds, knowing full well that time would claim them too.
That cycle had repeated more times than anyone around her could imagine.
It wasn’t as if she had never considered opening a proper academy an institution designed to gradually elevate the civilization level of the entire world over the course of a few centuries.
She had thought about spreading knowledge systematically, creating a structured learning system, and nurturing generations of thinkers who could carry forward her vision even after their teachers passed away.
However, that idea had been halted.
Ouranos had warned her.
He had explicitly cautioned her against spreading advanced knowledge too freely among the common population.
His concern was not ignorance, it was fear.
Fear that such knowledge, once combined with magic, could become the undoing of their own kind.
Mortals were already gifted magic through the gods.
They already possessed Falna, granting them strength far beyond their natural limits.
If they were to master science as well, true science, not fragmented understanding then what kind of weapons would they create?
What kind of tools?
What kind of destructive force?
Only a goddess like Athena could fully grasp the implications.
She understood the nature of mankind better than most gods ever cared to.
They were brilliant, adaptable, creative and also capable of unimaginable destruction when pushed.
Give them enough understanding, enough motivation, and they would build weapons that could challenge even divine authority.
So she had been forced to compromise.
Instead of educating the masses, she chose to gather a handful of elites.
Individuals who possessed both Mystery and Magic.
People capable of handling knowledge responsibly or at least those she could monitor closely.
Through them, she slowly advanced the technological tree of the world in ways that would not destabilize society.
There could be no sudden leaps in technological tree or weapons that even in hands of a falnaless could destroy mountains or outright vaporize them.
It was slow, frustrating, and often painful but it was the only way she could move forward without risking catastrophe.
However, deep inside, she had always yearned for someone who could truly understand her knowledge, someone who could comprehend her wisdom without needing decades of guidance, and someone who could reignite the light that had slowly faded from her life over the years.
When Ember entered her life and displayed that promise through his brilliance, she had been genuinely excited.
At first, she tested him.
She verified his answers.
She challenged him with questions that had stumped countless scholars.
She observed how quickly he grasped ideas that normally took years to process.
And when she confirmed that he truly was that intelligent and not merely lucky her excitement only grew.
The fact that he was an Elf made everything even better in her eyes.
Elves lived long lives.
That meant he would not disappear after a few decades like the others.
He would have time to grow, to innovate, to leave a lasting impact on the world she so desperately wanted to elevate.
To Athena, Ember was something dangerously close to her ideal child the mortal she had unconsciously longed for.
Someone who could walk beside her intellectually.
Someone who could keep up with her thoughts instead of lagging behind.
And then there was the way he treated her.
He didn’t worship her blindly, didn’t fear her authority and didn’t act stiff or overly reverent.
He teased her, joked with her, spoke casually and played along with her ridiculous ideas.
Before she even realized it, she had become attached and... dependent.
It was almost comical.
A goddess who, if she wished, could manipulate the entire Heavens into war was now acting like a giddy woman around a mortal.
The contrast was absurd.
However, Ember never once believed her affection was romantic in nature.
If anything, he interpreted it as familial.
Even when she pulled borderline inappropriate antics to get his attention, he felt less like he was dealing with a seductress and more like he was handling an overexcited sister from a past life.
Though, to be fair, he was absolutely certain that his previous-life sister had never considered it a good idea to behave that shamelessly just to win an argument.
Ahem.
Now Ember had already sent a letter to Aurora his goddess and, technically speaking, his wife alongside another letter that he sent anonymously to his mother and sister in the Alf’s Royal Forest the moment he arrived back at Altena months ago.
He wanted to make sure they were not worrying about him.
The recent rampage of the Behemoth had caused massive destruction.
Entire regions were shaken, with cities that had been wiped off map and countless people had died.
News of such a calamity would undoubtedly spread, and if his family heard about it without knowing his status, they would assume the worst.
So he made sure to act first.
The letter to his mother and sister was sent in a way that could not be traced back to him.
He could not risk exposing his location or identity unnecessarily.
However, that also meant they had no reliable way to send a reply back to him.
It was a one-sided reassurance.
Aurora, on the other hand, could reply.
He eventually received a letter from her, and the moment he read it, he could practically imagine her expression while writing it.
She told him how relieved she was after receiving his message.
Even though she had known he was alive due to the Falna connection between them, that knowledge alone had not calmed her.
She specifically mentioned how violently his life force had flickered during the Behemoth incident.
Through Falna, a god could sense the condition of their children and according to her letter, his status had fluctuated so erratically that it had terrified her.
There were moments when she thought he was on the brink of death, moments when his presence felt faint and unstable, and moments when it spiked sharply again.
It had scared her more than she was willing to admit.
In the letter, she questioned him repeatedly about what exactly had happened.
Why had his condition deteriorated so severely?
What kind of danger had he faced?
Why had he pushed himself to that extent?
She also asked what he was currently doing, where he was staying, and when he planned to return.
The tone of the letter was a mix of relief, frustration, worry, and subtle accusation as if she was scolding him while simultaneously wanting to hug him.
Ember could almost hear her voice through the ink on the page.
Without hiding anything, Ember told Aurora the full truth in his reply.
He described the battle at Karuna City in detail, the chaos, the Bloodsaurus, the exhaustion that nearly broke him.
He explained how the Behemoth appeared, how he was forced to flee, and how he nearly died from the poison.
He did not exaggerate, nor did he downplay the danger.
He made sure she understood just how close he had come to death.
However, he also reminded her of the promise he had made.
He told her that he had not broken it.
He had promised her that he would not die recklessly, that he would survive no matter what, and he had kept that promise.
He assured her that he would continue to hold onto it until his natural death no matter how difficult the circumstances became.
After addressing the incident, he went on to describe his current situation in Altena.
He told her about how he had unexpectedly grown close to Athena, how the Goddess of Wisdom had taken an interest in him, and how he had been given access to her encyclopaedia of magic tools.
He mentioned how he had been studying intensely, training, and occasionally fighting alongside Lance’s party to maintain his combat condition.
He kept the tone honest and straightforward, not wanting to hide anything that might later cause misunderstanding.
A few weeks later, he received another letter from Aurora.
This one was far more emotional.
She wrote about how terrified she had been while sensing his Falna fluctuate so violently.
She again admitted that even knowing he was alive had not been enough to calm her when his life force had felt unstable.
She expressed relief, frustration, pride, and lingering anger all at once.
Most importantly, she requested that he come back to see her as soon as possible.
Ember had already been considering it.
Several months had passed since the Behemoth incident.
His original plans had been disrupted entirely.
He needed to update his Falna, reassess his growth, and strengthen himself quickly before another catastrophe struck.
From a practical standpoint alone, returning to Aurora was necessary.
On a more personal level, he missed her.
When he was with Aurora, their relationship was intense and passionate.
They rarely restrained themselves, and their closeness had become something almost legendary within their small circle.
The villagers often joked that if anyone so much as intruded on their privacy, Aurora would threaten to gouge out their eyes, a rumor she had intentionally encouraged just to ensure no one dared interrupt them.
It was an exaggeration, of course, but it served its purpose well.
Ember smirked slightly while folding the letter.
Between duty, necessity, affection, and very depraved desires, he had more than enough reasons to return.
And he had absolutely no way to vent his frustration here.
Hooking up with any of Lance’s party members was out of the question.
Even if some of them might not mind due to the trust and respect they had for him, he refused to cross that line.
He valued that dynamic too much to complicate it with something physical.
As for visiting a red-light district, he dismissed that option immediately.
He didn’t even know if Altena had one, and even if it did, he had no intention of going anywhere near it.
Then there was Athena.
She was his “bro,” yes but at the end of the day, she was also a divinely beautiful woman.
A true Goddess.
Her constant proximity, her shameless teasing, her casual touching, and the way she would sit on his lap without a second thought left far more impact on him than he liked to admit.
She had frustrated him more times than he could count.
Every time things escalated even slightly, she would either derail the situation into chaos or leave him hanging just to get what she wanted.
It wasn’t intentional seduction most of the time, it was just her being impulsive and clingy but the result was the same.
He was pent up.
He needed to return to his waifu and deal with his bottled-up lust properly.
There was no point pretending otherwise.
'Damn these Elf hormones,' he muttered internally.
Was it really just an Elf thing? Or was it just him? Either way, it was becoming increasingly annoying.
So he finally decided it was time to tell the clingy Goddess that he would be leaving for a while.
He hoped it wouldn’t turn into a dramatic scene.
…
Or so he hoped.
“Why?! Why, bro? Do you not like Athy anymore?” Athena pouted, crossing her arms as she looked at him indignantly, her expression full of exaggerated betrayal.
“Lady Athena, I must return to my Goddess’s side. And can you please stop using those manipulative tactics on me?” he said directly, looking her straight in the eyes without hesitation.
She paused at his bluntness.
For once, she did not protest immediately.
Instead, she sighed and adjusted her tone, speaking more politely.
“Bro… you can tell her to wait a few months. She’s an immortal Goddess, and you’re an Elf. A few months is nothing to beings like us. But right now, you have an important role beside me. Please, bro,” she said, her voice softer, her eyes pleading instead of teasing.
However, Ember simply replied, calm and firm, “Athy, you might be my bro. But Aurora? She’s my wife.”
“Huh?”
Athena froze in place.
For a moment, she genuinely could not process what she had just heard.
The words seemed to hang in the air between them, refusing to make sense.
Even Merina, who had been quietly observing from the side, felt her jaw drop in disbelief.
“Y-Your wife?!” Athena stammered.
“Bro, don’t joke like that! She’s a virgin Goddess! H-How can she even… How could she marry a mortal?”
She cut herself off abruptly, covering her mouth as if she had just said something inappropriate.
Because she could clearly see Ember’s expression twist in anger—real anger, not the playful irritation he usually showed her.
“Goddess Athena,” he said, his voice steady but sharp, “I consider you my friend. However, you are not allowed to question my relationship with Goddess Aurora or imply that it is fake. She is no longer a virgin Goddess. She is officially married to me.”
Athena stood still, processing every word carefully.
The implications sank in slowly.
Her eyes shifted to a faint golden hue for a few seconds as her divine perception activated instinctively.
When she looked at Ember again, she could sense it, the unmistakable taint in his aura.
There was a trace of sacred purity intertwined with him, something that confirmed his claim.
He had truly taken the virginity of a Virgin Goddess.
She stepped back unconsciously, her face paling in disbelief.
A strange pain twisted inside her chest, it was sharp, unexpected, and deeply uncomfortable.
It felt as if something had been taken from her, though she couldn’t immediately rationalize what or why.
Her divine aura flared instinctively, the pressure in the room rising for a brief second, threatening to burst outward.
For a dangerous moment, the power of a Goddess of Wisdom nearly spilled free.
She stopped herself.
‘Are you an idiot?’ she scolded herself internally.
‘You are a Goddess of Wisdom. You should understand this. It was her choice. A Goddess chooses her partner freely. And Tet… Tet is a perfectly acceptable partner. Yes. A perfectly acceptable partner.’
She repeated that thought, forcing logic over emotion.
When she looked back at him, Ember’s expression had turned wary.
He had felt the shift in the atmosphere.
Merina, standing nearby, was equally tense, having sensed the brief surge of divine pressure.
Athena inhaled slowly, steadying herself.
“G-Goddess, are you alright?” Merina asked cautiously, noticing the sudden shift in Athena’s expression and the faint tremble in her hands.
Athena forced herself to straighten her posture.
“Y-Yes,” she replied, though her voice wavered slightly before she steadied it.
She looked toward Ember and then toward Merina.
“Tet… Merina… I apologize for my outburst. I also understand how rude Athy’s words might have sounded. Please forgive me.”
She bowed her head, clenching her fists tightly at her sides.
Her eyes were moist, tears threatening to spill despite her effort to maintain composure.
Ember exhaled slowly.
“I forgive you, Athy. Just… don’t say something like that again, okay?” Tet...Ember said with a tired sigh as he stepped closer and gently patted her head.
The simple gesture made her freeze as heat rushed to the tips of her ears.
Her heartbeat quickened in a way she did not appreciate or understand.
The sensation was comforting...dangerously comforting yet beneath that warmth was a sharp sting in her chest that refused to disappear.
Ember was not hers.
And he was not stolen by a random mortal, neither lost to some faceless stranger.
But married to a Goddess like herself.
A virgin Goddess, just like she is.
The similarity between her and Aurora struck her harder than she expected, and the thought made her blood feel hot and her pulse race uncomfortably.
She forced a bright expression onto her face.
“Y-Yes! I also have something important to take care of! I’ll see you later, bro!” she said quickly, avoiding his eyes for too long.
Before he could react, she stepped forward and planted a quick kiss on the side of his cheek.
Then she turned and hurried away, almost fleeing the room.
Merina stared after her.
If this had been the first time witnessing such behavior from her Goddess, she might have fainted from shock.
However, after weeks of watching Athena cling to Ember shamelessly, she had grown numb to the sight.
Still, this time felt different.
There had been something raw in Athena’s reaction, something far more complicated than her usual antics.
Ember had already realized that Athena was probably jealous.
It wasn’t difficult to notice.
The flare of divine aura, the sudden shift in her tone, the visible hurt in her eyes all of it pointed toward something deeper than simple surprise.
Still, he did not believe it would evolve into anything romantic.
After all, Athena was a million-year-old Goddess.
Even if she behaved casually, joked around, and acted childish at times, she was not human.
At her core, she was still a divine being whose essence had been shaped over eons.
Her personality, her divinity, her identity as the Goddess of Wisdom those were not things that shifted easily.
More importantly, she was one of the three strongest virgin goddesses in all of the Heavens.
Alongside Hestia and Artemis, she held a position of immense spiritual significance.
She was one of the very few capable of countering Freya’s Arcanum, which made her status as a virgin goddess even more critical in the divine balance.
Romantic love, as mortals understood it, simply did not exist for her.
At least, that was what Ember believed.
From everything he had observed in the past few months, Athena’s attachment to him had felt familial...like an overexcited older sister who had finally found someone she could relate to intellectually.
She sought companionship, understanding, validation, not romance.
However, there was one factor he had not properly accounted for.
Athena was currently inhabiting a mortal vessel.
In the lower world, gods were bound by restrictions.
Their divine nature was suppressed.
Their Arcanum was sealed.
While their core identity remained intact, their emotions were no longer distant and detached like in the Heavens.
They were closer to mortal sensations which were rawer, sharper, more immediate and emotions, when experienced repeatedly, could influence even a divine being.
Right now, that very process had begun.
Jealousy was not a concept Athena had allowed herself to dwell on before.
But in a mortal shell, emotions could linger.
They could fester.
They could evolve.
What Ember dismissed as harmless jealousy was slowly becoming something far more complicated.
And neither of them had fully realized it yet.
...
While Ember calmly explained his departure plans to Merina detailing when he would leave, how long he expected to be gone, and what preparations he still needed to make Athena had already retreated.
The moment she entered her private chambers, the composure she had forced onto her face shattered.
She shut the door behind her, walked a few unsteady steps forward, and then completely lost control.
Tears burst from her eyes as she rushed toward her bed, throwing herself onto it face-first.
She buried her face into the pillow, her shoulders trembling as quiet sobs turned into uncontrolled crying.
She couldn’t understand it.
Why?
Why had another Goddess broken her oath and married Tet?
Why hadn’t Aurora simply treated him as a gifted mortal? As a promising child? As a disciple?
Why had she taken him as her husband?
The thoughts repeated in her mind, irrational and emotional.
Logic tried to surface, reminding her that gods were free to choose, that Aurora had every right to love whom she pleased, that Ember had made his own decision willingly.
But logic felt distant.
The pain in her chest was real.
It was suffocating.
Her heart felt tight, as if something was squeezing it relentlessly.
Every time she imagined Ember leaving returning to another Goddess, belonging to someone else it made her stomach twist.
She didn’t want to lose him, the conversations she had with him, the laughter they had together, the way he treated her like an equal, the way he patted her head without fear.
She pressed her face harder into the pillow, her tears soaking into the fabric.
Because now, in the privacy of her room where no one could see her weakness, she finally admitted the truth to herself.
This wasn’t just attachment.
It wasn’t just intellectual companionship.
It wasn’t just a “bro” dynamic anymore.
She loved him.
Not as a brother, disciple or as an experiment.
She loved him as a woman loved a man.
She loved him.
Loved him.
Loved him.
Loved him.
The words repeated in her mind again and again, no longer a question, no longer confusion just a clear, undeniable truth that refused to be silenced.
Every repetition carved itself deeper into her thoughts until it became the only thing she could hear over the sound of her own breathing.
Slowly, she lifted her head from the pillow.
Her tears had not completely stopped, but she wiped them away with the back of her hand, dragging her sleeve across her face without caring about appearances.
The softness in her expression faded.
In its place, something sharper emerged.
Her eyes, once wet and trembling, now held a glint that bordered on madness.
Beneath the surface of heartbreak, something else was forming—something colder, more possessive.
It was no longer just pain.
It was obsession.
‘Tet will be mine,’ she thought, her breathing steadying unnaturally fast.
‘I will make sure of it.’
The thought did not feel impulsive.
It felt calculated, determined and dangerous.
A faint, chilling presence filled the room as her suppressed divinity stirred in response to her emotions.
The air grew heavy, not enough to damage anything, but enough to make the atmosphere feel suffocating.
She was the Goddess of Wisdom.
If she truly wanted something, she would not chase blindly.
She would plan.
She would calculate.
She would strategize and she would win.
The pillow beneath her hand crumpled slightly as her fingers tightened.
For the first time since descending to the mortal world, Athena was not thinking like a detached Goddess observing mortals from above.
She was thinking like a woman who had decided she would not lose.
To be continued...