He was still seated, still composed, still wearing that same unreadable expression. But something had shifted. The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Several of the lesser nobles found themselves leaning back without quite knowing why.

Northern's fingers tapped once against the table. The sound was sharp in the sudden quiet.

"I've been listening to this discussion for the better part of an hour." His voice was calm—the calm of someone delivering a terminal diagnosis. "And I have to admit, I'm disappointed."

He looked around the table, meeting eyes one by one. None held his gaze for long. Some glanced away. Others suddenly found their wine goblets fascinating.

"Not because you're afraid. Fear is rational. The Empire is vast, your kingdom is small. The mathematics of your situation are genuinely unfavorable." He paused. "I'm disappointed because not a single person at this table has asked the right question."

Duke Sethran's eyes narrowed. "And what question is that?"

"You've spent an hour discussing whether you can win." Northern's voice remained perfectly level. "Calculating numbers, measuring passes, weighing the cost of resistance against the cost of surrender. Very thorough… very reasonable."

He leaned forward slightly.

"But no one has asked *how* you win. No one has asked what victory would actually require. You've all simply assumed it's impossible and argued backward from that conclusion."

"Because it is impossible," the worried Earl—Lord Eryx—said. "The numbers—"

"The numbers." Northern's tone didn't change, but something in it made the Earl's mouth snap shut. "Forty thousand against twelve thousand. Unfavorable, certainly. But since when has war been arithmetic? Since when have battles been won by counting bodies before they fall?"

He stood.

The motion was smooth, unhurried—but every eye in the room tracked it like prey watching a predator rise. A chair creaked somewhere as its occupant shifted. Someone swallowed audibly.

"You have the terrain. You have the passes. You have knowledge of the land that no invading army can match." Northern began walking slowly along his side of the table, and the nobles nearest him drew back slightly, unconsciously creating distance. "You have soldiers who are fighting for their homes, their families, their existence—against soldiers who are fighting for an emperor's pride. You have every advantage that matters in a defensive war."

"Advantages that won't overcome a three-to-one deficit," Duke Sethran said, but there was something different in his voice now. Something that might have been curiosity.

"Won't they?" Northern stopped, turning to face the Duke directly. "Tell me, General. In your years of training warriors, of studying battles—have you never seen a smaller force defeat a larger one? Have you never witnessed terrain and determination overcome raw numbers?"

"I have. But—"

"But this is different?" Northern's voice carried a razor edge of contempt now. "This enemy is too vast? This challenge is too great? This is where the legendary Victorious Son of the Dragon Flame finally admits that some enemies are simply beyond him?"

Sethran's jaw tightened. His hand twitched toward his sword—an instinct, quickly suppressed. But Northern had seen it. The faintest flicker of acknowledgment crossed his face before it settled back into ice.

"You don't know what you're talking about, boy. You haven't seen what the Empire can—"

"I know exactly what I'm talking about." Northern's voice cut through like a blade. "And I've seen more than you can imagine. What I haven't seen—what I expected to find in this room and did not—is a single person willing to fight."

Silence. The kind of silence that pressed against the ears.

He looked around the table again.

"I came here because I thought Ryugan was worth protecting. A kingdom small enough to value what it had. A people who understood what they stood to lose." His lip curled slightly. "Instead I find a room full of men measuring their own coffins. Debating which size will be most comfortable."

"Lord Northern—" the King began.

"No." Northern's voice was quiet. More terrifying for its quietness. "I've heard enough reasonable arguments for surrender to last a lifetime. Now you're going to hear something else."

He returned to his seat and sat down. Posture perfect. Expression carved from ice.

"You want to know if you can win this war? You can't. Not as you are now. Not with generals who've already accepted defeat. Not with nobles more concerned with survival than victory. Not with a council that spent an hour describing problems and zero minutes proposing solutions."

He let that settle. Let them feel the weight of it.

"But if you're willing to actually fight—not just bleed and die, but fight to win—then sit down, shut up, and listen."

His gaze swept the room one final time. No one moved. No one breathed.

"Because I didn't come here to attend a funeral. And I certainly didn't come here to help you negotiate the terms of your own extinction."

The silence that followed Northern's words was different from the silences that had come before.

Those had been the silences of men with nothing left to say. This was the silence of men afraid to speak.

Duke Sethran was the first to break it. His voice was low, controlled—but there was something new in his eyes. Not quite hope. Something closer to the wariness of a predator recognizing another predator.

"You speak as if you have a plan."

"I have the shape of one." Northern's posture hadn't changed—still seated, composed, and radiating that quiet danger that made lesser men want to look away. "Whether it becomes a real plan depends on whether anyone in this room is capable of executing it."

The Duke studied him. His expression shifted—something darker there now, but also a glint of amusement.

"And what will that plan be?"

Northern raised a single finger and pointed it at his own chest.

"Me."

The word hung in the air. Around the table, nobles exchanged glances—uncertain whether they'd heard correctly, uncertain whether this was arrogance or madness or something else entirely.

Northern let the silence stretch. When he spoke again, his tone was almost offhand.

"I'm all Ryugan will need to defeat the Empire in a confrontation."

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