My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 457: Between Her and Maxtons

Chapter 457: Between Her and Maxtons

She conjured the screen.

It bloomed in the void before Consort like a window torn from reality itself — a flat, shimmering panel of light that showed the Maxton Mansion’s ruined living room in perfect clarity. The wards that had blinded Consort were nothing to One Above.

She looked through them the way a person looks through dirty glass — irritated by the smudges, but unimpeded.

Consort watched… she figured Consort would understand more if she watched more than just explanation.

Saw the ritual circle. The hooded figures. The twelve staffs with their cold blue flames. The obsidian pillar with the boy chained to it. The box of living scales. The elder reaching into the light. The chained witch with her silver hair and her manacled hands and her voice that carried the weight of centuries.

Saw the tears of Victoria and Delilah poured onto Danton’s chest.

Saw Sienna’s blood absorbed into skin that was not hers.

Saw the Dragon Heart Scale — Phei’s birthright, his father’s legacy, the scale that should have found its way home — fed to a boy whose bloodline had no right to it.

Saw the serpentine scales crawl across Danton’s body. Not draconic. Serpentine. Wrong. A perversion of something beautiful forced into something that slithered.

Then the last two items and finally Danton coming to life.

Consort’s head snapped up slightly.

The first crack in her perfect composure.

“This level of trickery. This level of calculation. Knowing exactly which piece to move, which emotion to harvest, which child to sacrifice, which name to beat out of a boy’s mouth for nine straight years — and moving every single one into the right direction for a decade without a single thing going wrong.

No! Even the fact of knowing the Nine Prime years was still something to still marvel at!

No miscalculations. No accidents. No moments of conscience that might have caused Harold to hesitate, to wonder if perhaps beating a child bloody for saying his own name was a step too far.

Every beating had been calculated.

Every cruelty had been calibrated and even used his own blood to make the boy hate himself more, what he was… denying his own blood silently.

Then every tear shed by Victoria and Delilah and the blood they stole from Sienna — tears of guilt, of regret, of the dawning horror of what they’d done to a boy who’d only ever wanted to belong — had been harvested. Collected.

Preserved in glass bottles with their names on the labels, waiting for this night… just so the Dragon Heart Scale could settle in Danton with the three draconic catalysts.

Even Phei’s rage — the moment of chaos and rage and power that should have been the Maxtons’ destruction — had been anticipated.

Weaponised.

Harold had let the boy tear through his own mansion. Had let himself be beaten.

Had smiled through broken teeth because the blood on his face was the price of admission and the boy who’d put it there had just handed him everything he needed without knowing it.

The sheer scale of the trickery sent a rare chilldown Consort’s immortal spine.

She stood motionless before the Red Door, pink hair hanging like frozen moonlight, hand still resting on her katana’s hilt.

The void around her was absolute — no wind, no sound except the slow, rhythmic pulse of the crimson cracks along the door’s edges, glowing in time with One Above’s distant presence. But the laughter had stopped again.

The silence that followed was heavier than before.

Consort spoke, voice low, precise, every word measured as though speaking too loudly might shatter the fragile equilibrium of the void itself.

“Mistress… knowing which piece to move, and moving them into the right direction for ten straight yearswithout a single thing going wrong… this level of calculation is beyond anything I anticipated from the Maxtons. And it all started with what?”

She paused, letting the question hang like a blade.

“Harold befriending Seiryū?Marrying Melissa?Giving birth to the first girl who would one day give them her tears?Then the twins? — killing one infant daughter… who as the witch has reavled was supposed to be the reincarnation of Phei’s Eternal Wife… then planting the reincarnation of the Jörmungandr Prince in her place, stealing her core and her Dragon Heart Scale?”

Her voice dropped.

“If this is true… then the Maxtons have been planning this for more than two decades. Harold didn’t just stumble into this. He didn’t just see an opportunity and seize it. He built the opportunity. Brick by brick. Year by year. Child by child. Beating by beating. Every single piece of this ritual was set in motion even before Phei was born… all thanks to the witch who can read fate or see the future? Or is there something more… something else we do not know?”

A faint shiver ran through Consort’s frame.

Not fear, exactly. She had faced gods, severed bloodlines with a single stroke of the blade at her hip. She had stood before things that would have driven lesser immortals to madness and felt nothing but the cool, clinical satisfaction of a weapon doing what it was made to do.

But this…

This was different.

This was chess played across generations. Every move disguised as coincidence. Every piece manipulated with surgical patience.

A family of Legacy — exiled on earth — had looked at the board, seen twenty years into the future, and played it flawlessly.

Not with power. Not with divine intervention.

With patience. With cruelty. With the cold, meticulous understanding that a child’s name, beaten out of him at the right time, in the right way, for the right number of years, could sever a bond between a Dragon Heart Scale and its True Heir.

That a boy’s suffering was a resource.

That his cousins’ beating and later guilt was a reagent.

That his awakening was a trigger.

“If this is true,” she continued, voice quieter now, “then awakening the Prince was never the endgame. It was only the opening. The real objective was—”

One Above’s voice cut through the void like warm silk wrapped around a blade.

“Do not worry, my little blade.”

The words were gentle. Almost affectionate. Yet they carried the absolute certainty of something that had watched empires rise and fall for millennia and had never once been surprised by the ending.

“They may have been planning for decades… but I have been at this for centuries.”

A soft, amused hum rolled from behind the door, making the crimson cracks flare brighter for a moment.

“Also… Phei is not an easy target, no matter what the Maxtons believe. He is a wild card. No — he is more than that. A wild card can be predicted. Phei cannot. He is the variable that breaks the equation…. even mine. The piece that moves itself. And that…” Another soft laugh. “That is precisely why I chose him.”

The sigils on the Red Door shifted — pleased, languid, like a cat stretching after a long nap.

“For now… we sit back. We watch.”

Consort inclined her head in perfect deference.

“The Price family has also—”

“I know what they’re doing,” One Above interrupted smoothly. “Let them.”

She sounded almost bored. The boredom of something so vast that the machinations of Legacy families registered as background noise — vaguely interesting, occasionally entertaining, fundamentally irrelevant.

“Let them scheme in the shadows. Let them think they are clever. It only makes the board more interesting.”

A pause.

Then — a low, delighted chuckle that made the sigils on the Red Door writhe like living things. The dead constellations danced. The crimson deepened. The void itself seemed to lean in closer, as though even nothingness wanted to hear what came next.

“Besides… after everything that has happened, I’m afraid Phei is going to cuck the whole of Paradise.”

The words hung in the void like dark honey.

One Above’s voice dropped into a conspiratorial purr — the voice of a goddess sharing a secret with her favourite weapon, and finding the secret delicious.

“Soon he will get the hang of his emotions. He will learn how to hold them instead of being held by them. And when he does — when that boy finally understands exactly how dangeroushis presence is to women, how his aura alone can make them tremble, how a single glance can unravel centuries of restraint, how a touch can end marriages and a kiss can end dynasties — he will conquer Paradise. Not with armies. Not with void-storms. Not with the power that tore the sky open.”

The voice turned warm. Almost proud.

“Through their women. While he grows stronger every day, the Legacy houses will fall — one by one — until every patriarch has a daughter whispering his name in the dark. A patriarch’s wife reaching for her phone at midnight. A sister who can’t look at her husband anymore without comparing him to the boy who made her feel like a goddess.”

Another soft laugh. Fond. Hungry.

“The Maxtons think they’ve awakened their Prince? Fine. Let them have their little serpent. Let them dress it in stolen scales and golden flames and call it a dragon.”

The voice behind the Red Door turned almost playful. The playfulness of a creature that could end solar systems and had chosen, today, to be amused instead.

“Let’s see how long that golden flame lasts when the real dragon wakes up hungry.”

A final, lingering chuckle echoed through the void. The sigils on the Red Door flared one last time — bright, almost joyful — then settled into their slow, patient crawl.

“Sit back, Consort. Watch.”

(A/N: Check this only if you want a spoiler.)¹

Consort bowed deeper.

“As you command, Mistress.”

The void was eternal.

And behind the Red Door, something old and vast and terribly, terribly patient smiled in the dark.