My Wives are Beautiful Demons-Chapter 684: Mythological Story: Medusa.

The story has always been told as a warning.

As if it were a fable about pride, divine punishment, and monsters who deserved the fate they received. As if the world needed a villain to justify its own cowardice. As if repeating the same version, countless times, could make it true.

But stories are weapons… And those who write them decide who bleeds in silence.

They say Medusa was beautiful.

They say it as if that were the beginning of everything—as if beauty were an inaugural sin, as if the error lay in the eyes that observed her, and not in the hands that took her.

They say she was one of Athena's most faithful devotees, guardian of the temple, sworn to her vow, dedicated not only by faith, but by choice. Medusa did not seek power. She did not seek glory. She sought belonging. Order. A place in the world that made sense.

She believed in the gods.

She believed that devotion was a shield.

Then came Poseidon.

Not as a romantic temptation, not as a tragic encounter between equals, but as what it always was: a force that doesn't ask, doesn't wait, doesn't respect.

A god who confused desire with right. A king of the seas who decided that the body of a mortal—even consecrated, even protected by oath—was just another territory to be conquered.

There was no consent.

There was no choice.

There was no mercy.

The temple of Athena, a place of vows and sacred silence, became the stage for a violence that would echo for ages. Medusa screamed to gods who didn't hear. She cried to walls that didn't answer. And when it was all over, it wasn't Poseidon who carried the shame. It wasn't Poseidon who lost something.

It was her.

Because the world of the gods never punished the aggressor. It only rearranged the guilt.

Virginity, that concept molded to control other people's bodies, was taken by force—and transformed into the victim's crime. Medusa, once pure in the eyes of the gods, became "impure" because of something she never chose. And Athena… Athena looked.

Not with hatred.

Not with compassion.

With discomfort.

The goddess of strategy, reason, and order, did not see a wounded devotee. She saw a broken symbol. An unsettling reminder that chaos had touched her domain. Medusa's appearance changed—not because Athena wanted to punish her directly, they say—but because the divine does not tolerate that which confronts it with its own flaws.

Snakes took the place of her hair.

Her gaze became a curse.

Her beauty turned grotesque.

And the world breathed a sigh of relief, because now there was a monster to point out.

Athena did not kill Medusa.

That would be too merciful.

She isolated her.

She exiled her far from the temples, far from mortals, far from any memory of what had happened. No longer a devotee. No longer a spiritual daughter. Just… a mistake that needed to be forgotten.

And so was born the most comfortable lie in history:

Medusa fell because she defied the gods.

Medusa was punished for her pride.

Medusa deserved it.

No one asked what she felt when she woke up every day in absolute solitude. No one asked what it was like to exist knowing that a single glance from her meant death. No one asked what it was like to be feared by something she never asked to be.

Monsters don't receive questions.

Only swords.

Perseus came later, guided by divine blessings, armed with sacred gifts, protected by those same gods who had failed before. He didn't face Medusa. There was no duel. There was no honor. He used reflexes, tricks, tools granted by gods who never soiled their own hands.

And when the blade fell, it was swift.

History says the hero won.

That evil was eradicated.

That the monster's head became a weapon, a trophy, a symbol.

Even in death, Medusa was useful.

Her body fell.

Her consciousness began to unravel.

And her soul was pulled into the Spirit Realm, like all the others, to dissolve into eternal oblivion.

It was meant to end there.

But Artemis saw.

The goddess of the moon, of the hunt, of women running free in the night, observed what the other gods refused to see. She didn't see a defeated monster. She saw a survivor who never had a choice. She saw a victim transformed into a convenient narrative.

And Artemis, unlike the others, hated poorly told stories.

On the threshold between existence and oblivion, she intervened. She broke the flow. She snatched Medusa's soul from the spiritual current before it completely dissolved. Not out of empty pity, but out of recognition.

"You don't belong to oblivion," she told her.

"You belong to memory."

Medusa did not return to life. Not as a mortal. Not as a goddess. Artemis transformed her into something different: a familiar spirit. A being that exists between worlds, that serves not through submission, but through a pact. A chosen bond, not an imposed one.

For the first time since the temple, Medusa could say yes or no.

And she said yes.

Not to serve the gods… But to never again be silenced.

As a spirit, Medusa learned to observe. Learned to wait. Learned that time is the cruelest—and most just—weapon that exists. She saw generations repeat lies. She saw Athena exalted as a symbol of justice. She saw Poseidon continue to be venerated as an indomitable force of nature.

And she never forgot.

Because monsters don't forget… They only learn to survive the weight of memory.

The portal still closes behind Medusa, the echoes of the Spirit Realm dying like an ancient sigh. Her presence changes the air—not with explosions or immediate terror, but with something worse: condensed memory. Each step she takes makes the space seem to remember what it tried to forget.

Athena remains motionless within the sealing circle.

Not due to physical incapacity.

But because, for the first time since ascending to Olympus, she doesn't know what expression to use.

Medusa stops a few meters from her and tilts her head slightly, observing her as one might assess an ancient work, cracked by time, but still too proud to fall on its own.

"Funny," Medusa says, her voice low and controlled. "I always imagined this moment… but I never thought you would seem so small."

Athena doesn't answer. Her eyes follow Medusa with strategic attention, trying to calculate, trying to understand which piece on the board was moved without her noticing.

Medusa sighs and then turns to the side.

"Vergil."

He raises an eyebrow, interested.

"Lend me Yamato."

For a second, the entire coliseum seems to hold its breath.

Vergil observes Medusa, then the sheathed blade in her hand, and then smiles in a relaxed, almost amused way. He extends the sword without hesitation.

"You can use whatever you have," he says. — Today I'm just watching.

Medusa's fingers close around the hilt.

Yamato vibrates for an instant, reacting to the shift in domain, to the presence that is neither demonic nor divine, but something in between, ancient, spiritual. Vergil doesn't release the blade forcefully—he simply allows it.

Medusa raises the sword to face level.

And then, she looks.

There is no beam of light.

There is no explosion.

There is no sound.

Her eyes gleam with a deep, dull green, and the blade begins to change. Vergil's demonic energy is not destroyed—it is pushed to the bottom, temporarily replaced. Yamato petrifies completely, from tip to guard, transforming into an extension of pure, sealed, silent spiritual power.

Undead stone.

Observing stone.

Vergil lets out a low laugh.

"Interesting…" he comments, crossing his arms. "You really don't mess around. Medusa smiles slightly."

"Jokes are for those who have lived a carefree life."

She then turns back to Athena.

Now, nothing exists between them anymore.

Medusa takes a step forward, firmly holding the petrified Yamato, and stares directly into the goddess's eyes.

The eyes that once looked away.

The eyes that chose not to see.

The petrification tries to act.

The power extends like invisible roots, seeking to transform, impose, end.

But Athena is not human.

The veins of divine energy beneath her skin react, the symbols of wisdom and war burn in response, and the effect is incomplete. The stone tries to rise—and stops. Cracks. Stagnates.

Medusa watches, unsurprised.

"I know," she says calmly. "Petrification never worked properly on beings like you."

She takes another step closer.

"In humans, it's easy. In heroes, it takes a little longer." A slight, cruel smile appears. "In gods… it's a different story."

Athena finally speaks, her voice firm but tense:

"Medusa. This doesn't need to—"

"It does," Medusa interrupts, without raising her voice. "Because you called this an order. You called that justice."

She raises the Yamato, resting the blade on the stone floor, as if it were a sentencing rod.

"Then let's play by your rules."

She leans slightly, bringing herself to Athena's eye level.

"First, I'm going to strip you of everything that makes you comfortable." Her voice is cold, methodical. "Not physically… yet. But of control. Of certainty. Of narrative."

Medusa's eyes gleam with something deeper than anger.

"I'm going to break you slowly enough for you to understand every choice you've made. I'm going to take you to the edge… and stop."

She straightens up.

"And then I'll repeat it."

The silence that follows is not empty.

It's heavy.

Vergil observes the scene from his makeshift throne, clearly satisfied.

"Good," he comments, relaxed. "This will be educational."

The sealing circle pulsates.

And Athena, for the first time in millennia, realizes something she has never had to face before:

She is not being challenged.

She is being judged.