Sigmund and Hans locked eyes with him. They didn’t need to ask, they knew he had made his choice. With deeply complicated, resigned expressions on their faces, the two Paragons followed his lead. They let go of their restraint, allowing their own inner bloodlust to rise to the surface.

Olaf turned his gaze toward Yuki on her throne, and then to the resting, closed-eyed vessel of their god.

"Let us discuss war," Olaf said, his voice dropping into a growl-like tone, as he and the other two Paragons bowed their heads in submission.

Yuki opened her mouth to speak. She had a mountain of objections, a dozen political maneuvers, and a hundred reasons why this was a terrible mistake ready on the tip of her tongue. But as her gaze swept across the table, she froze.

She looked at the faces staring back at her. The intelligence and tactical reasoning were still clear in their eyes, but resting just beneath that thin veil of logic was a roaring, monstrous craving for slaughter. The bloodlust had been uncaged. She knew that any words of restraint now would not just be ignored, they would be viewed as treason against the divine mandate.

Meanwhile, Leiko sat rigid in his chair. He had always proudly considered himself unhinged, a wild card in a structured world, but the current atmosphere in the council chamber made his skin crawl. He could barely sit still. His innate gift of high awareness was working against him now, painting a vivid, terrifying picture of his surroundings, it felt as though he were trapped in a small cage with slumbering beasts of blood and iron.

His mother had told him once said, that the Paragons were nothing more than beasts in human skin. Sitting here, watching the mask of civilization slip away from them, he realized there was no better explanation she could have ever given. He had grown so used to seeing them as stuffed suits, politicians playing a tedious game of statecraft with his mother that he had forgotten what they truly were.

Yet, despite the chill of primal fear, a part of Leiko’s own heritage began to thrum with a dark, intoxicating excitement. The thought of the upcoming war, of marching into the jaws of hell alongside these living legends who had once followed his father into the grinder, made his heart hammer against his ribs.

At the same time, beneath that excitement, however, was a sharp, calculating thought crystallized in his mind. He glanced sideways at his mother. With war now an absolute, unavoidable certainty, her grand political strategy had failed. She was cornered.

And in this state of vulnerability, she would finally be desperate enough to listen to his words and the secret he had been keeping.

Yuki let out a slow, conceding breath and gave the silent nod they were all waiting for. With a heavy clatter, a massive tactical map of the territories was unrolled across the center of the council table. The shift in the room was instantaneous, the posture of politicians vanished, replaced by the cold, calculated efficiency of generals.

They dove straight into the logistics of transforming the realm into a total war state. Columns of resource allocations, weapon reserves, and conscription numbers were quickly drafted. The most pressing issue was the broken border wall, the section currently choked by the lingering effects of Björn’s Red Mist and the erratic, newly awakened zealots. Olaf suggested deploying vanguard units to establish a perimeter, sealing the breach from external threats while channeling the maddened volunteers into organized shock-troop divisions.

As the other Paragons debated troop movements, Yuki leaned over the map. It was time to bring forward a contingency plan she had kept strictly to herself for decades.

"There is an inherent flaw in our forces that we can no longer ignore," Yuki said, her voice cutting through the murmurs. She looked directly at Olaf and the others. "When the bloodlust takes over, our people lose their minds. You forgo formation, you ignore terrain, and you abandon tactical communication in favor of raw slaughter. Against a disciplined enemy, that chaotic frenzy can be baited, isolated, and destroyed."

Sigmund frowned, about to defend their traditional way of combat, but Yuki raised a hand to cut him off.

"I am not suggesting we suppress the frenzy, we need that power," she continued. "But I have devised a countermeasure. We will utilize Björn’s War Priests."

The Paragons shifted in their seats, listening intently.

"The War Priests will no longer remain in the temples offering prayers," Yuki explained, pointing to specific vanguard positions on the map. "They will be embedded directly within the ranks. I have developed a network of spiritual arrays that the priests can channel. When the soldiers cross the threshold into madness, the priests will act as mental anchors. They won’t stop the rage, instead, they will direct it, acting as a collective hive-mind to keep the horde moving as a singular, cohesive weapon rather than a fractured mob of wild beasts." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Olaf stared at the map, a slow, appreciative gleam returning to his eyes. It was a good calculating use of their god’s faith, but it solved their greatest tactical liability.

Leiko watched his mother from the edge of the table, his hidden thoughts spinning. She was brilliant, always preparing for every variable but even this masterstroke wouldn’t change the fact that a win wasn’t guaranteed. He quietly waited for the meeting to conclude, biding his time until he could get her alone to reveal what he knew.

Meanwhile, across the Silver Kingdom, the news of the border massacre had reached them as quick as it reached Yuki. But the reaction within the grand spires of the silver capital was entirely different from the dark, zealous awakening gripping the people of Björn.

Their first, collective reaction was not fear or fury. It was utter exasperation.

"Are the people of Björn truly this stupid?" a paragon muttered, rubbing his temples in the royal court. "Are they completely blind to the state of the world right now?"

To the paragons of the Silver Kingdom, the attack was an exercise in pure madness. There was a delicate, unspoken rule holding the major powers of the world in check right now, a fragile status quo that everyone was secretly trying to maintain while they figured out the shifting tides of magic and mana. Who in their right mind would deliberately throw a torch into a powder keg at a time like this?

King Ragnar and his high court found the initial reports almost impossible to believe. Rather than mobilizing their legions immediately, they chose to wait. The rational move, they reasoned, was that Yuki or one of the saner Paragons would send an emergency envoy or a formal letter. They were expecting an explanation, a message stating that a rogue faction had lost control, that a border commander had gone mad, and that the incident was a tragic mistake, not a declaration of war.

But as the hours ticked away, the tense silence stretched.

The dark sky slowly bled into a pale grey as dawn broke over the Silver Kingdom, and yet, no courier arrived. No magical missive appeared on Ragnar’s desk. The horizon remained empty of any peaceful intent.

Instead, the magical communication crystals in the war room began to flare up in rapid succession. Urgent, panicked dispatches from their deep-cover scouts and border sentries were flooding in, all carrying the same grim reality, the people of Björn weren’t trying to fix a mistake. Their entire nation was rapidly transforming into a state of war.

"Madness!" one of the Paragons in Ragnar’s court shouted, his fist slamming down onto the heavy council table with enough force to crack the polished wood.

"Are they suicidal?" another Paragon demanded, their voice thick with sheer disbelief, pacing the floor. "Are they not aware of the sheer scale of the losses both kingdoms will suffer if this war actually occurs right now? It’s complete and utter lunacy!"

The lower council members, the human ministers, and the military generals who did not possess the status of a Paragon could only watch in stunned silence. Lost looks passed between them. They were deeply confused and a little unsettled by why these grand symbols of their kingdom’s strength seemed to be losing their minds, sounding almost... scared.

To the ordinary mortals in the room, this reaction made no sense. Wasn’t this exactly what the Silver Kingdom had been preparing for? For decades, the rhetoric had been about eventual conflict with the brutal people of Björn, about marching out and finally emerging victorious to secure the continent. And now, the barbarians had foolishly made the first move, giving the Silver Kingdom a perfect, politically righteous reason to retaliate and crush them once and for all.

So why wasn’t the conversation about drawing up battle lines? Why weren’t the Paragons eagerly discussing how to counter-attack, mobilize the arcana, and crush the invaders?

Frustrated and confused by the hesitation of their powerhouses, the lower council members slowly turned their eyes away from the bickering Paragons. They all looked up toward the dais, focusing on King Ragnar, who sat silently upon his silver throne, a deep, ominous frown carving lines into his face.