Chương 245: 45. Undeclared War 1

After Hans held out the two letters, the council chamber fell quiet again for one more breath. Not the kind of silence that comes from having nothing left to say. The kind that comes from everyone understanding, with total clarity, that whatever the Emperor read in that letter from the King of Eckhaus was about to push this war onto an entirely different tier. Albatros took the letter addressed to him first.

He broke the wax seal with a motion so unhurried it looked like he was flipping open a routine morning brief. And yet — whether it was only my imagination or not — that single thin sheet of paper seemed, in his hands, to weigh more than the entire war map spread across the table. I took the other letter myself. The royal seal of King Valerian III sat heavy on its face. The instant I saw that mark, my heart gave a distinctly unappreciative lurch.

Because it meant one thing, and one thing only — this wasn't a come home whenever it's convenient sort of family letter. This was a summons. Named directly. By the King himself. I didn't open it right away. Not out of fear. It was simply that, in a situation like this, bowing my head to read my own mail first would have felt like exactly the kind of idiotic move a student makes when he sneaks a look at his exam results in the middle of a hurricane.

So I stayed exactly where I was, composed, eyes forward, doing my absolute best to pretend I wasn't dying to know precisely how King Valerian III intended to tear into me. Albatros read his letter fast. Fast enough that I genuinely wondered whether he'd actually finished it, or whether being Emperor simply came with the ability to burn words directly into memory with a single glance. Either way, once he'd finished, he didn't waste a syllable. He set the letter down on the table and raised his head.

"Bring them back in." The kneeling guard bowed at once and went. It didn't take long. The strategists, civil officials, commanders, and scribes who had just been cleared from the room filed back in and returned to their places. The atmosphere they walked back into was nothing like the one they'd left. When they'd been sent out, they'd only known something larger was happening.

Now, every gaze in the room carried real weight — they understood that whatever the Emperor was about to say had already moved past the Dragon Kingdom's own border defenses. The scribes lifted their brushes again. The officers straightened their backs. Ignicia still stood half a step ahead of me on my left, arms folded, calm as a flame sealed inside iron. A very bad feeling crept up my spine. And in my experience, that particular feeling rarely turns out to be wrong.

Albatros swept his gaze across the chamber, then spoke.

"I hereby declare." His voice wasn't loud. But those four words alone were enough to catch every breath in the room and hold it still.

"From this moment, a formal state of war exists between the Dragon Kingdom and the Yanxia Empire." A scribe's brush stuttered, then flew across the page — as though he were terrified that a single beat's hesitation would leave him trailing behind history itself. I stood there. I'd known this was coming; a declaration of war had felt almost inevitable given everything that had happened.

And yet, hearing the words formal state of war actually fall from the Emperor's mouth still landed like a physical blow to the chest. It meant there was no grey space left. No border skirmish. No maritime friction. No misjudgment. No ambiguous zone where anyone could still pretend there was room to negotiate. This was war. Nation against nation, written plainly into dispatches and military orders. Albatros didn't pause.

"The Dragon Kingdom enters a state of war, effective this instant." The second declaration followed immediately. This time, even the older ministers who had held their composure through the first line lowered their heads further still. Entering a state of war was not the same thing as merely declaring one. It meant that from this moment, every supply road, every dragon tower, every fortress, and every pair of hands in the capital capable of carrying anything at all, would be folded into wartime order.

"Second matter." Albatros looked over his assembled court, his tone carrying not a trace of fluctuation.

"Effective immediately, this kingdom and the Kingdom of Eckhaus stand as formal allies." At that, I heard a very soft, very brief intake of breath from somewhere in the chamber. Short enough to almost count as a breach of decorum. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. But I understood it. Because the weight of that sentence was no lighter than the two before it. The Dragon Kingdom was no minor power. Eckhaus was no vassal state.

This wasn't we'll look out for each other — it was two nations binding themselves together, formally, in the middle of a war. I looked toward Hans on reflex. His expression was carefully controlled, but beneath that control was something pulled taut enough to have gone nearly bloodless — not fear, but the recognition of a man who understood that once this page turned, every step Eckhaus and the Dragon Kingdom took from here on would no longer be simple diplomacy. Then Albatros looked at me.... Here it comes.

That was the entirety of my thought process.... Fuck. Naturally. Being singled out by the Emperor at a moment like this was never going to be about whether the local cuisine agreed with me.

"The first wave of reinforcements." Albatros looked at me, his tone as even as someone reading off a list already written.

"Lord Rosa. I leave it to you." For a second, I genuinely questioned whether I'd heard correctly. Lord Rosa? Hold on. This old dragon was entirely too good at this. One breath ago, he'd been formalizing an alliance with Eckhaus. The next, he was addressing me exactly as he would one of his own officials, dropping the entire first wave of reinforcements onto my head with a tone so naturally certain it implied I'd been a commissioned officer of the Dragon Kingdom all along. This wasn't merely political skill.

This was the kind that made the back of your neck prickle. I'd wager that in this entire chamber, no one but me even registered that sentence as strange — because the Emperor's flat, self-evident certainty had a way of making the most outrageous arrangement sound like ancestral law. And the worst part was, I had no way to object on the spot. Because he wasn't consulting me. He was appointing me. The corner of my mouth must have twitched.

Before I could assemble a response that was neither disrespectful nor made me sound like a mule that had just discovered a saddle strapped to its back, Albatros dropped the next line — and this one hit even harder. He turned to Ignicia.

"Daughter."

"Yes, Father."

"Go with your husband." For one full second, I genuinely wanted to confirm whether someone had quietly converted this council chamber into an execution ground while I wasn't paying attention. Husband. He wasn't even pretending anymore. Not Rider. Not Lord Rosa. Not take him with you. Husband — said outright, in front of the entire chamber, in front of every civil and military official and every scribe present, as lightly as if it were the most ordinary word in the room.

In that instant, I clearly saw two scribes' brushes pause at exactly the same moment. An old minister kept his head bowed, as if he'd heard nothing at all — I'd stake my life on the fact that he'd caught every syllable more carefully than anyone else present. The commanders' expressions didn't shift, but the air in the room changed all the same. And I had exactly one thought left. It's over. This was no longer a matter of the capital might talk.

This meant that before the sun finished its arc today, every corner of Latpan — from the inner court to the outer city, from the dragon towers to the taverns — would already be circulating versions of this that grew more absurd with every retelling. At this rate, by tomorrow, I wouldn't be shocked to hear a rumor that the Emperor had personally named me his successor on the spot. I was still holding a silent memorial service for the coming explosion of the capital's rumor mill when Ignicia spoke first.

"Naturally." She answered with total, unhesitating certainty, as if husband had always been the most unremarkable title in the world to her. Then she lifted her eyes toward Albatros.

"However, Father." Her tone stayed even.

"How many troops may I take?" Good. At least that confirmed the fire dragon's head was still working perfectly under pressure. She hadn't wasted a single breath on the title — she'd cut straight to the one question that actually mattered in a council of war. Albatros paused for a beat. Then said, flatly:"The old custom of the Dragon Kingdom." I blinked.... I'm sorry? The old custom? Wait. That phrase already sounded bad.

Words like ancient, custom, and tradition, coming from a power of this size, almost never meant something friendly like eat before you leave the house. Far more likely, they meant some institutional complication elaborate enough to make a sane person want to lie down and play dead on the spot. Right on cue, Ignicia's brow furrowed.

"Father." For once she dropped the standard, immaculate princess register, her voice dropping instead.

"Cedric only became a Rider yesterday. Are you really sending him there today? Isn't that going too far?" There? Where, exactly? Could someone please, at minimum, tell me what this old custom actually was? Albatros only looked at her, unbothered.

"He'll have to face it sooner or later, Ignicia."

"But he—""This is wartime." One sentence, and whatever she'd meant to say next was pressed flat. That wasn't a father rebuking a daughter. That was an Emperor reminding a princess. No excess emotion. No room for negotiation.

"If he is to leave this realm at your side, named commander of the Dragon Kingdom's first wave of allied reinforcements, he cannot remain exactly where last night left him." The Emperor's tone stayed level.

"What must be passed through, he passes through now." I understood almost none of the specifics, yet my instincts picked up the exact scent of trouble with perfect accuracy. And not small trouble, either. The ancestral, nation-level kind — the sort that always seems to land squarely on a protagonist's head at the precise moment he least wants it there. So I finally gave in and asked.

"... So what, exactly, is this old custom?" Several pairs of eyes in the chamber turned my way at once. Albatros looked at me, his tone airy and untroubled.

"Nothing much." He said.

"Don't worry. Just a small trial." I very nearly laughed on the spot. Not from amusement — the kind of laugh that surfaces when a man has been pushed right up against the edge of what he can absorb in a single day. Because if this entire journey had taught me anything, it was this: the Dragon Kingdom's collective standard for words like a little, ordinary, small matter, and nothing to worry about existed in a completely different universe from the one ordinary humans lived in.

I genuinely wondered whether the small trial referenced by this Immortal, this Eternal Dragon, this Ancient Watcher, translated roughly to something like: line up and stare down every past Dragon King for three hours straight, with survive serving as the passing grade. Albatros seemed to catch the skepticism I was working very hard to suppress, because he added, in a rare gesture of elaboration:"Ask Ignicia for the details later." Wonderful. Textbook Dragon Kingdom briefing style.

Frighten a man half to death first, then toss out a breezy ask someone else about it later on the way out. I suddenly understood, with far greater clarity, exactly why the Yanxia Empire had dared to invade in the first place. In their position, I might also be tempted to strike while this particular family was too busy communicating in their own private shorthand to notice anything happening outside. Naturally, that particular thought stayed strictly behind my teeth.

The chamber snapped back to business almost immediately. The Emperor began assigning troops, dividing fronts, and issuing orders, laying out the Dragon Kingdom and Eckhaus's first joint actions in what felt like a single unbroken breath. Officers stepped forward one by one to receive their commands. The scribes wrote fast enough to strike sparks off the page. Hans was called up to confirm liaison and reception routes.

Everything that mattered was settled within a window of time that shouldn't have been enough to settle any of it. And I stood there, feeling very much like someone who'd been kicked onto a war chariot already running at full speed, and simply assumed, without so much as a vote, to be part of the load it carried. At last, Albatros swept his gaze across the assembled court.

"Today's orders are to be issued at once."

"Any who disobey — beheaded." No rousing conclusion. No lengthy speech meant to stir hearts. Just that. And precisely because of its simplicity, it was the line that sounded most like him. Everyone bowed their heads as one.

"By your command!" The words struck the high stone walls and fell back to the floor, like the formal seal on something that could never again be unwritten. The council was over. I knew, with total certainty, that the real trouble had only just begun.