The Guardian gods

Chapter 876

Right then, a violent shift rocked the room.

Everyone felt it, a crushing, suffocating weight as his divine will descended forcefully into the vessel. The previous lazy, detached demeanor of the vessel evaporated in a heartbeat. Björn was here.

An absolute, deafening silence blanketed the hall. Björn didn’t speak, and nobody else dared to. The tension in the air was so thick it was palpable, every single person in the room holding their breath, paralyzed by the sheer gravity of his presence.

Björn’s gaze swept across the table, locking onto each of them in turn.

"You all have grown bold after all these years," Björn said, his voice echoing with a terrifying resonance that rattled their bones. "Acquiring a bit of power... power that makes you think my words can be ignored."

There was no anger in his tone, it was entirely calm, and that unsettled them even more.

"I have spoken with Yuki," Björn continued, his voice back smooth "and she has convinced me that this is a time where we are stronger together."

Yuki’s breath hitched slightly, but she kept her face completely expressionless, not daring to reveal to the others that he hadn’t spoken to her at all, but was instead rewriting the narrative to suit his whim.

"Since my words alone are no longer able to move you from your seats, I will make a bargain with you instead," Björn said. Everyone held their breath, every scrap of their attention completely locked onto him.

"Even without this bargain, you all have no choice in the coming war. I have created a situation where it is do or die for this kingdom. But I need my soldiers strong, and I need them willing, hence why this bargain is made."

Björn leaned forward, the vessel’s posture mimicking a king leaning down from his throne to look down at his subjects.

"I know the secret to Osita’s power," he whispered, the words slicing through the heavy air. "The secret you all have been working so hard to find all this time..."

Björn’s words suddenly paused. His crimson eyes lost their focus, appearing to peer directly into a hidden layer of unseen space, his expression turning completely blank.

Everyone in the hall sat utterly paralyzed by the tension, except for Leiko, whose mortal senses couldn’t perceive the subtle shifts in the fabric of reality as the others did. But the Paragons felt it. The air grew impossibly dense, and a presence vastly larger, more ancient, and more terrifying than even Björn made itself known the exact moment those last words left the vessel’s mouth.

They all recognized that presence instantly. "Ikenga"

This was the terrifying advantage of being an Origin God in one’s own home world. Ikenga truly paid no direct attention to Björn, nor did he care about the petty political squabbles of his council. Yet, like his siblings, he remained fundamentally omnipresent. The world itself was a living web constantly feeding information back to them, most of it they chose to ignore, filtering out the background noise of mortals.

But Björn’s vessel had just spoken a key phrase. A trigger word. And it drew his attention like a lightning rod.

The moment Ikenga shifted his divine attention toward the council chamber, the reality around them buckled. It was of no surprise to the Origin God that the Paragons immediately became aware of him as he allowed it, when a being of that magnitude merely looks in your direction, the soul cannot help but shiver.

Staring down at Björn across the vast, unseen layer of space, Ikenga spoke"You are about to march onto my board, uninvited."

Hearing Ikenga’s words, Björn’s eyes widened slightly. His mind raced, calculating every move, dissecting every word he had just spoken to figure out exactly what had drawn the Origin God’s direct attention. Then, the realization hit him.

"The mage towers," Björn said out loud, carefully observing Ikenga’s reaction.

"Good," Ikenga nodded, he turned his gaze toward the other Paragons, who could acutely perceive the crushing weight of his presence but lacked the sensory depth to actually see him.

To ensure Björn fully grasped the gravity of the situation, Ikenga leveled a cold, uncompromising look at the vessel. "We have a plan in place concerning those mage towers. It is something we want the world to remain entirely unaware of and you were about to let these Paragons in on that secret. We cannot allow that to happen."

Björn’s eyes widened slightly as he processed Ikenga’s words. He opened his mouth to ask what the plan actually was, but stopped himself. He caught the subtle nuances of what Ikenga had just revealed. First, the Origin God had used the word "we," meaning he wasn’t acting alone. Second, this plan was non-negotiable, it must happen.

To interfere now meant putting himself on the wrong side of the world’s greatest powers. Honestly, the towers themselves held no real value to him. He had simply planned on using his knowledge of them as a political power move to re-establish total control over the Paragons.

His strategy was simple, let them know he possessed the answers they had spent so many resources searching for, dangling the secret like a leash. If they wanted it, they would have to fall in line, lead his armies in his name, and utterly decimate the Silver Kingdom.

Through their shared divine awareness, Björn subtly conveyed this intent to Ikenga. The Origin God listened, offering a slow nod as his suffocating presence began to dissipate from the chamber.

"You can continue with your war as planned," Ikenga’s fading voice echoed in Björn’s mind, "as long as they learn absolutely nothing about the towers."

With that, the suffocating pressure vanished, and Ikenga was gone. The Paragons watched with bated breath as the familiar, bloody aura of Björn reasserted control over the vessel.

Looking across the table at their pale faces, Björn spoke, seamlessly pivoting his strategy. "I possess the knowledge you seek. Knowledge you would have freely gained had you remained in my favor."

He paused, letting the weight of their near-heresy sink in. "But you have shown doubt in your faith. To redeem yourselves, to earn my favor and the secrets you desperately crave..." Björn raised a heavy hand, pointing with absolute certainty in the direction of the border. "...go and conquer in my name. Go and slaughter in my name. What awaits you at the end of this path is the very glory and power you all seek."

He gave a brief, inscrutable glance to Yuki, and then to his son Leiko, before his consciousness abruptly retreated back to his own realm.

He had pushed the mortal vessel to its absolute limit. It had only been months since his last descent, and forcing his divine will into the world again so soon was a dangerous gamble. Any more time spent in this flesh would have shattered the vessel entirely.

But as Björn sat back on his blood-soaked throne in the afterlife, a cruel, triumphant smile spread across his face. He had achieved exactly what he wanted. Through the eyes of his fading connection, he had seen the crushing look of defeat painted all over Olaf and the rest of the Paragon’s faces.

They were trapped, and they knew it.

Olaf let out a long, ragged sigh. Even after ascending to the rank of Paragon, after gaining godlike power and the highest status in the land, he was still being forced to dance on the edge of a blade. He was still being forced to risk his life at the whim of another.

Beneath his tightly controlled exterior, Olaf bore the exact same violent, volatile blood that flowed through the veins of everyone in Björn’s domain. The very thought of bathing in his enemies’ blood thrilled him, sending a dangerous spark of adrenaline through his core. But unlike the common rabble, Olaf knew the true price of that thrill. He was a veteran of brutal conflicts, he had marched into the meat grinder and watched countless friends and loved ones get torn to pieces.

He knew that in exchange for this glorious frenzy, you had to place your own life on the line with a terrifyingly high probability of death.

That was the exact reason he had chosen to stand with Yuki. He had championed her vision to wait, to bide their time, and to build their strength until they could guarantee a total victory or at the very least, find a tactical avenue where their losses would be minimized.

But now, all of those cautious calculations were thrown completely out the window. Björn had laid an impossibly massive, enticing prize right before their eyes, and if Olaf wanted even a single bite of that power, he would have to do exactly as he was told.

Slowly, he exhaled a long, heavy breath. He then consciously began to let go of the restraints he kept on his own nature. He allowed that dark, violent touch of Björn, the dormant frenzy he kept so tightly suppressed to finally flood forward. Everyone around the table felt the sudden, oppressive shift in his aura.