Korvath's war room had never been this quiet.
The polished oak table was covered edge to edge with maps—cities marked with red ink, supply routes scribbled in rushed corrections, projected enemy movements sketched like spreading veins. The torches along the walls burned low, casting long shadows that trembled like ghosts of lost soldiers.
Iroko Ryusei sat at the head of the table, posture straight but spirit heavy. His armor was removed, replaced by a simple dark coat. It made him look less like a war hero, and more like a man cornered by fate. His fingers pressed against the bridge of his nose as he studied the map of Ostoria for what must have been the hundredth time.
The door opened sharply.
Kouki Nozomi strode in, eyes burning with irritation, a stack of reports thudding onto the table.
"Read them," Kouki said. His voice was controlled, but the anger hid beneath like a blade under cloth. "Funeral tallies. Supply seizures. Civilian petitions. And this—concerns about the criminals you insisted on protecting."
Iroko didn't raise his head.
"This was your idea," Kouki continued. "Keeping them. Feeding them. Planning to use them."
Silence pressed thick as snow.
Iroko finally lifted his gaze. His eyes were not tired—they were worn. Like steel that had been sharpened too many times.
"They have use," he said quietly. "If they are utilized properly."
Kouki exhaled, short and sharp. "That's the problem. 'Properly' no longer exists. Everything we do now is improvisation between disasters."
At the far end of the room, leaning against the window frame, stood Nogare. His cloak was still dusted with ash from Giggleburg. He looked down into the training yard, where young recruits struggled with wooden spears too heavy for their hands.
"Tools break," Nogare said without turning. "Monsters don't."
The words were not said with pride. Not with threat. Simply truth.
Kouki looked at him. There was always a subtle unease in the guildmaster's posture when Nogare was in the room—an instinctual recognition of a predator.
Nogare pushed away from the window and approached the table, eyes scanning the map.
"You have few choices left, Iroko. Unless you have different plans."
The way he phrased it did not accuse. It invited.
Iroko did not answer immediately. He reached for a carved wooden piece—marking Korvath—and placed it slightly forward on the map. His movement was slow, deliberate.
"Ostoria is isolated," he said. "Dargath is withdrawing. And Valeria has not yet shown its true forces."
Kouki's jaw tightened.
Nogare raised one eyebrow. "So we prepare to fight alone."
"That is the reality," Iroko replied. "We cannot pretend we have honorable options left. The war does not care about honor."
Kouki leaned forward, hands flat on the table.
"So we work with devils?"
Iroko's voice was steady. "We work with what we have."
The torches flickered. The shadows on the map seemed to move.
No one argued. There was nothing to argue with.
This was not a decision made today.
It was a decision made the moment Giggleburg fell.
The silence stretched long enough to become a verdict.
Kouki stepped back. His expression did not soften—but something inside him shifted from resistance to grim acceptance.
Nogare nodded once, a soldier acknowledging orders already understood.
Outside, the training yard echoed with the shouts of recruits, voices thin and strained against the cold.
The war room felt colder.
Iroko looked at the map again—not as a battlefield, but as a wound.
"We will proceed," he said. "Carefully. Quietly. And without hesitation."
A breath exhaled.
A direction chosen.
A path sealed.
No triumph.
No conviction.
Only necessity.
The room did not erupt into plans or commands.
No one moved to speak further.
Because every person present understood:
Once you decide to use monsters—
You lose the right to pretend you are anything else.
Ostoria had already stepped beyond the threshold.
There was no going back.