Syris immediately raised a singular, elegant dark eyebrow. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

The King of the Swamps looked at the rolled-up document, then up at his ten-year-old daughter. Tanith was standing with her small shoulders squared, her chin tipped up in the exact angle Syris used right before he completely dismantled a foreign diplomat.

"Grand plans?" Syris drawled, his velvety voice laced with a mixture of amusement and sharp suspicion. "Do tell, little serpent."

Tanith did not flinch. She simply gestured to her younger sister.

Iris stepped up to the edge of the parchment. The young illusionist grabbed the bottom corner of the heavy paper and began to walk backward. She walked past Kaelen’s chair, past Torian’s goblet, and kept going until she was practically standing at the completely opposite end of the massive dining hall.

The scroll unrolled down the absolute center of the table, entirely covering the platters of roasted meats and winter-berries. The parchment was completely covered in meticulous, glowing Beastworld runes, elegant ink, and highly official Vanguard wax seals.

Roxy leaned forward from her seat at the head of the table, her brilliant green eyes wide with curiosity. She completely forgot her shock over Drax’s upcoming coronation.

"What is this, my girls?" Roxy asked, her voice laced with maternal wonder.

Tanith cleared her throat, officially addressing the Matriarch and the five Alpha Kings.

"In honor of our mother’s victorious return from the celestial void, and the absolute defeat of Abaddon the Demon King," Tanith announced, her childish voice echoing with the undeniable, projecting acoustics of a seasoned Vanguard general. "The children of the Iron-Wood Manor are officially hosting the first ever Vanguard Youth Tournament."

Kaelen’s icy blue eyes softened into a look of profound, majestic pride. He looked at the intricately drawn brackets on the parchment.

"A tournament," Kaelen rumbled approvingly, nodding his head. "To showcase the combat skills and magical progression of the pack. That is an excellent initiative, Tanith. Iris, your formatting is flawless. We will have the elite guards clear the eastern training courtyard for you and your brothers to spar."

"We want to show you exactly what we can do, Mama!" Iris chirped from the far end of the table, her violet eyes practically sparkling with transmigrated magic. "We want to show you that we are strong enough to protect you now!"

Roxy’s heart completely melted into a puddle of absolute, unadulterated love. She brought her hands up to her chest, overwhelmed by the fierce, beautiful devotion of her children. They wanted to throw a tournament just to honor her survival and prove their worth to their parents.

"Oh, my sweet girls," Roxy breathed, a brilliant, watery smile breaking across her face. "I would love nothing more than to watch you all perform. It sounds absolutely wonderful."

"It is," Tanith agreed, a slow, incredibly wicked smirk spreading across her pale face—a smirk that was practically a carbon copy of Zarek’s draconic arrogance blended perfectly with Syris’s cunning. "However, Papa Kaelen, the eastern courtyard will be entirely too small."

Kaelen frowned, his thick silver eyebrows knitting together. "Too small? There are only five of you, excluding the toddlers."

"Yes," Tanith said, her golden-green eyes flashing dangerously. "But we are not just fighting each other."

The ten-year-old snake-shifter tapped her small finger against the heavy red wax seals stamped at the very bottom of the sprawling scroll.

"Drax signed the official missives right before he left for the Dragon Peaks this morning," Tanith revealed, dropping the absolute tactical bombshell onto the dining table. "He used his new authority as the Vanguard Heir. The wyvern couriers have already been dispatched across the continent."

The five Alpha Kings completely froze. The ambient temperature in the dining hall violently fluctuated as five distinct combat auras spiked in unison.

"Dispatched to whom, Tanith?" Torian asked, the massive White Tiger Alpha leaning forward, his voice dropping into a low, extremely cautious rumble.

Iris beamed, happily reading off the heavily inked guest list.

"To the elite pups of the Northern Wolf Pack!" Iris announced cheerfully. "And the strongest feline cubs of the Southern Tiger Kingdom! Oh, and the noble hatchlings of the Dragon Peaks, the aristocratic serpents of the Swamps, and the fastest young leviathans of the Southern Seas!"

Silence. Absolute, deafening, ringing silence fell over the grand dining hall.

Roxy’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. She looked down at the scroll. It wasn’t just a backyard sparring match between siblings. Her children had officially, legally invited the noble offspring of every single major Beastworld faction to converge on the Iron-Wood Manor for a massive, continent-wide combat tournament.

And then, the Warlord panic set in.

"Hundreds of feral children?" Torian groaned, the colossal Tiger Alpha burying his scarred face directly into his massive hands. "Do you have any idea how destructive a single tiger cub is when it is excited? They are going to completely shred the upholstery in the west wing. They are going to chew on the furniture!"

"The plumbing," Caspian choked out, his luminous aquatic eyes wide with sheer, logistical terror. The King of the Southern Seas looked frantically at Syris. "The Manor’s plumbing cannot handle a hundred young leviathans demanding saltwater baths at the exact same time. The pipes will literally explode!"

"Wolf pups," Kaelen muttered, his stoic, impenetrable facade violently cracking as he rubbed his temples in agonizing distress. "A hundred Northern wolf pups running through the ornamental gardens. The winter-blooms will be entirely eradicated in an hour. It will be an absolute mud bath."

Zarek was staring blankly at the wall, a thick, continuous plume of dark smoke curling aggressively from his nostrils.

"Young drakes," the Dragon King whispered, sounding genuinely horrified by the prospect of his own kingdom’s youth. "They don’t know how to control their fire yet. They sneeze, and buildings burn down. We are going to have to magically fireproof the entire estate. And the food budget... gods of the void, the food budget to feed five hundred super-powered apex predators in puberty..."

Syris was already rapidly calculating the absolute nightmare of continental diplomacy.

"The territorial disputes," the Snake King hissed, his elegant fingers tapping a frantic, anxious rhythm against the wooden table. "Putting noble children from five different warring factions into a single, highly competitive arena? It is a political powder keg. We are going to have to deploy the entire Vanguard elite guard just to break up the toddler brawls."

The Warlords were absolutely, undeniably stressing out. The sheer logistical, financial, and structural nightmare of hosting a continental youth tournament at the Iron-Wood Manor was catastrophic. It was the kind of event that required a year of meticulous planning, not a surprise announcement heavily stamped with a teenage dragon’s wax seal.

They all looked at each other across the table.

Torian looked at Kaelen. Kaelen looked at Zarek. Zarek looked at Syris and Caspian.

They were the absolute rulers of the Beastworld. They possessed the divine authority to simply snap their fingers, intercept the wyvern couriers, and completely cancel the entire absurd endeavor before the ink even dried. All it would take was a single, unified Warlord command to shut it down.

But as the five terrifying Kings looked back at the end of the table, their eyes landed on Tanith and Iris.

Their daughters were standing tall, their small chests puffed out with absolute Vanguard pride. They had flawlessly orchestrated a massive, continent-spanning diplomatic event completely under the noses of the greatest tactical minds in the world. They had used loopholes, delegated authority, and executed a flawless Vanguard strike.

The sheer, unapologetic audacity of it was breathtaking.

Slowly, the frantic, panicked Warlord calculations began to entirely melt away.

Syris’s frantic tapping stopped. A low, dark, and incredibly proud chuckle escaped the Snake King’s lips. Zarek’s horrified stare shifted into a fierce, arrogant draconic smirk. Kaelen dropped his hands from his temples, a slow, majestic nod acknowledging the sheer brilliance of the pups. Torian let out a heavy sigh, but his tiger tail was thumping a loud, deeply amused rhythm against the floorboards.

They were terrified of the logistics. But they were far, far too proud of their children’s ruthless initiative to ever say no.

The five Kings of the Vanguard exchanged one final, definitive look of solidarity. And then, in perfect Warlord unison, they all simply shrugged.

Roxy watched the entire exchange from her chair. She watched the panic, the pride, and the silent, unbreakable Warlord communication that dictated the fate of the empire.

A few days ago, the sheer volume of this chaos would have terrified her. The noise, the responsibility, and the overwhelming weight of the Beastworld would have sent her spiraling back into her terrestrial trauma.

But not today. Today, she felt the heavy, blooming warmth of the Vanguard pup in her belly. She felt the blistering, unconditional devotion of the Kings flanking her sides. She felt the absolute, undeniable power of being the Matriarch of the most magnificent, terrifying family in the universe.

Roxy stood up from her grand, carved chair.

She smoothed down the silk of her dress, her brilliant green eyes shining with an absolute, radiant, and fiercely terrestrial joy. She looked at Tanith and Iris, completely embracing the beautiful, roaring chaos of the empire she had built.

Roxy beamed.

"How can I help my little ones?"