The patriarchs filed out one by one.Guo gathered his ledgers with the reverence of a man handling sacred texts, tucking them under his arm and bowing three times before clearing the doorway. Liang's beard-stroking continued uninterrupted as he shuffled past, already murmuring to himself about recruitment projections and the logistics of a three-hour endurance test that would hospitalise half his remaining students. Fen cracked one final knuckle at the threshold, a parting shot that echoed off the stone walls, and then vanished into the corridor. Sho's shovel-hands found the doorframe and gripped it for a moment as though he wanted to say something, thought better of it, and released the wood with a sigh that carried the weight of a man who had just been told his entire understanding of the world was insufficient.Patriarch Duan had been the first out.He'd risen from his chair before Jun finished dismissing them, bowed once with a speed that cracked his lower back audibly, and then strode through the door with the energy of a man forty years younger who had somewhere important to be and someone important to see. His half-closed eyes were still fully open. The smile hadn't faded through out the entire meeting.Jun watched the last of them disappear and the door swung shut.She stayed in the quiet that followed and let it sink in. The maps stared at her from every wall containing information about troop positions, territory lines, supply routes, training schedules, patrol rotations, recruitment projections, and a dozen other things she had never been taught to manage, trained to understand, or prepared for in any capacity whatsoever. Her Ancestor had taught her how to strike and not be struck. How to fight, survive, endure, and protect the person standing behind her.He had not taught her how to run a war council that was preparing for an all out war with a Demon that also happened to be her sister… (...)