The Imperial response to the Heretics' golden handprint shrine was swift and decisive. Inquisitor Caelia Vance's logic was now doctrine: the Heretics were the unwitting vanguard of a rival power, and their actions were psychological warfare. The new shrine was not just a symbol; it was a recruitment tool and a declaration of ideological territory.
The Emperor, guided by Caelia's cold calculus, could not simply tear it down. That would create martyrs and fuel the Heretics' narrative of persecution. He had to discredit it. He had to counter-program.
His new strategy: The Campaign of Glorious Mundanity.
Imperial heralds were dispatched to every corner of the Empire. Their message was not one of war or threats, but of quiet, firm dismissal. "The so-called 'miracle' in the capital is a clever forgery by deluded fanatics," the official proclamation read. "The true Master, as authenticated by His Majesty's own observers, desires not loud worship but productive silence. His 'miracles' are not flashy displays, but acts of sublime, practical simplicity."
To prove this, the proclamation ended with a startling and bizarrely specific new Imperial decree: The Golden Handprints were declared a forgery. However, the newly erected 'Sanctified Picket Fence of Oakhaven' was officially recognized as a "Class-One Imperial Wonder" and a "Paragon of Humble Architecture."
The Empire was now actively promoting the fence.
This had two immediate effects. Firstly, it utterly bewildered the common populace, who couldn't understand why the Empire was making such a big deal about a fence. Secondly, it enraged High Priest Vorlagos and the Heresy of the Devout to the point of apoplexy.
"A FENCE?!" Vorlagos roared, shattering a goblet on the floor of his hidden sanctuary. "They declare our holy, divinely inspired transmutation a forgery, and they have the blasphemous audacity to recognize a piece of common carpentry as a 'wonder'? This is a declaration of war! An insult not just to us, but to the Master himself! They seek to minimize his glory, to domesticate his divinity!"
The Demon King's agents, still embedded within the Heresy, saw their opportunity. "Indeed, Your Holiness," the Whisperer agent hissed in Vorlagos's ear. "This is a deliberate provocation. They are trivializing your god. An appropriate response, surely, would be to... remove the object of their profane veneration. Destroying the fence would prove its mundane nature and expose the Emperor's lies."
The logic was flawless demonic manipulation. Convinced that destroying the fence was a sacred duty, Vorlagos green-lit a new, desperate plan. He gathered his most fanatical and martially skilled followers—the hundred most furious knights from Sir Kael's company—for a surgical strike.
Their mission: a high-speed, surprise assault on Oakhaven, not to worship, but to destroy the picket fence. They would be a holy wrecking crew, sent to tear down a false idol. They drank potions of rage provided by their 'benefactor' and worked themselves into a battle frenzy, managing to temporarily override the ambient calming aura through sheer, focused fanaticism.
The attack came at dawn. A hundred knights on armored warhorses, their eyes blazing with righteous fury, thundered down the main road towards Oakhaven. They bypassed the Crimson Vanguard's main checkpoints, using a route provided by King Xylos's intelligence.
They were a thunderous, unstoppable wave of steel and fury.
Inside the Command Bunker, alarms screamed. "Incoming hostiles! One hundred heavy cavalry, Class-Three threat level! They're moving too fast for the ground troops to intercept! They're going to hit the town!" the analyst yelled.
The Sentinel Commander went pale. A direct assault. On the sanctum itself. "Raise the Aegis Shield! Now!"
But it was too late. The knights were already there.
Sir Kael, at the head of the charge, raised his war hammer. "For the true glory of the Master! Tear down this wooden lie!" he roared.
They charged the last fifty feet towards the pristine, white picket fence.
And then they entered the "De-Escalation Field."
The effect was not like hitting a wall. It was like charging at full gallop into a vat of warm, thick, comforting honey.
Sir Kael's furious, world-ending war cry trailed off into a confused, "...um, and do so with respect for local ordinances?" The rage potion in his veins fizzled out, replaced by a profound sense of inner peace. The war hammer in his hand suddenly felt very heavy and unnecessarily aggressive.
The knight beside him, who had been screaming a vow to turn the fence into splinters, abruptly reined in his horse. "Splinters," he said to his companion. "You know, that seems terribly wasteful. This is clearly very well-made oak. It would make a lovely rocking chair."
The entire charge, a hundred thundering warhorses strong, slowed from a gallop, to a trot, to an amble, and then came to a gentle, placid stop just a few feet from the fence gate.
The horses, also affected by the aura, began to peacefully graze on Mrs. Gable's prize-winning petunias next door.
The knights sat on their steeds, blinking in the morning sun. The battle fury, the righteous rage, the desire for holy destruction—it was all gone. They looked at the neat, charming little fence. They looked at each other. They felt a deep and profound sense of embarrassment.
Inside the bookstore, the followers had been preparing for Armageddon. Seraphina had a dozen knives in her hands. Valerius was levitating three feet off the ground, crackling with raw power. Lyno was huddled under a table, whimpering.
Then... silence.
They crept to the window. They saw a hundred of the Empire's most fearsome knights sitting placidly on their horses, staring at their new fence with expressions of quiet, artistic appreciation.
One knight dismounted, walked to the fence, and ran a gauntleted hand over the smooth, contentment-infused wood. "The craftsmanship is exquisite," he murmured to a comrade.
Another knight had taken off his helmet and was currently apologizing to his horse for having spurred it so aggressively.
It was not a battle. It was not a siege. It was the most anticlimactic, non-violent confrontation in the history of warfare.
In the Command Bunker, the Sentinel Commander and his crew watched the scrying screen in stunned, utter silence. They had seen the charge. They had braced for the impact, for the destruction, for the inevitable divine retaliation from the Librarian.
But they had seen no retaliation. They had seen no divine shield.
They had seen a hundred furious berserkers simply... stop. Their fury had been extinguished as if by a switch. They had been pacified. Disarmed. Not by a weapon, but by an atmosphere.
The Inquisitor's report was wrong. Dros's report was wrong. Everyone was wrong.
This was not a Spymaster's web. This was not a passive god's sanctum. This was something else. This was a power of a kind they had no name for. A power that didn't just negate hostility. It rewrote it. It fundamentally altered the emotional state of its enemies against their will.
The Sentinel Commander stared at the screen, at the knights who were now cheerfully discussing the fence's aesthetic merits with the town's baker. A new, more terrifying logic took hold in his military mind.
They were not containing a Spymaster or appeasing a god. They were observers. Lab rats, watching a scientist of unimaginable power conduct an experiment in conceptual warfare.
"Analysis..." the Commander whispered, his voice trembling as he recorded the official report of the incident. "Subject Omega did not engage the hostiles. His new perimeter defense... pacified them. It did not block them. It did not destroy them. It changed what they were. It converted a direct military assault into a spontaneous public art appreciation event."
He took a deep, shuddering breath before adding the final, horrifying conclusion to the record.
"Our understanding of 'conflict' itself is now obsolete. The Librarian is no longer playing the same game. He is changing the very rules of reality. Recommend we cease all attempts at analysis and reclassify the Sanctum not as a hostile zone, but as an 'Unknowable Event Horizon.' Our only logical course of action now... is to get as far away as possible."
The Battle of the Picket Fence had succeeded where no other event had. It had broken the Empire's will to even try to understand. They were utterly, comprehensively, and logically terrified into a state of total non-interference.