Kaelen and his northern knights were standing in a rigid perimeter, their hands resting on the hilt of their swords.
The moment the door cleared, Kaelen’s eyes snapped to Julian. He didn’t just see the sudden, complete change to vibrant blue in both of Julian’s eyes—he felt the sheer mass of the power radiating from the tutor.
𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂
The knight’s breath caught, and instinctively, his shoulders dropped as he gave a deep, respectful bow that he had never offered to any priest in this empire.
Behind him, the northern knights immediately followed suit, their armor clinking in the sudden silence.
Julian didn’t say a word. He walked with a smooth, unhurried stride, his blue robes brushing against the stone. Alaric walked right beside him, his massive frame projecting a silent, lethal warning to anyone who even dared to breathe too loudly, while Lucius kept pace at his father’s side, his small face set in serious imitation.
But when he began to lag behind, Alaric lifted him into his arms.
At the end of the long hallway, where the corridor opened into the main hall of the Inner Sanctum, Pope Clement and the council of Elders were gathered.
They were a sea of artificial silver hair and pale grey eyes, their hands tucked into long white sleeves.
Castor stood slightly to the side, his chestnut hair completely uncovered. It seemed like he was openly showing forth his rebellion now.
His gaze locked onto Julian’s approach with wide, unrefined curiosity.
Alaric’s eyes flicked to the eighteen-year-old for a fraction of a second, his jaw tightening as he mentally noted the nuisance.
The moment Julian stepped into the main hall, the air pressure in the room dropped violently.
Pope Clement, who had been preparing a speech of holy reverence, took a single step forward and froze.
As Julian’s clear blue eyes met his, the old man felt a physical weight press down on his chest. It was a frequency of light so pure, so baseline absolute, that it made his own years of cultivated divinity feel like a gutter candle next to the sun. The Pope’s knees trembled, and before he could speak a single word of praise, his head dropped.
He cowered, his gaze fixing firmly on the floorboards because his spirit simply could not bear to look higher.
The Elders behind him staggered back, some of them sinking to their knees as the sheer force of Julian’s presence washed over the council. The disturbing words of grand titles and display-shelf praises they had prepared died instantly in their throats.
Before the silence could stretch into an awkward, suffocating weight, Julian raised his hand slightly. The movement was simple, but it cut through the room like a blade.
"I have found the answer to tackle the demons," Julian said. His voice was smooth, carrying the refined, quiet cadence of a royal scholar, but it vibrated through the stone floor. "An answer from a thousand years ago."
Pope Clement swallowed hard, his voice shaking as he kept his head bowed. "Saint Julian... did you receive this revelation... directly from the mouth of the God of Light?"
Julian’s lips twitched into a faint, dry expression. Well, considering I witnessed the incident first-hand and engineered the very framework of the cycle, it isn’t a lie, he thought.
"The light is not merely a shield," Julian explained calmly, his gaze sweeping over the silent council. "It serves as a defense and a protection. The light is the only thing that can fight against the demons, as we all well know. But simply standing at the passes and cutting down the beasts as they crawl out will not end this war. We have to get rid of the source."
"The source?" one of the head Elders muttered, his grey eyes wide with an anxious, pale light. "What is the source, Saint Julian?"
"The source is the one who created the demons," Julian stated, his voice flat and absolute. "And I know how to get to him."
He had no intention of explaining the tragic history of Norx or the ancient, bleeding jealousy of a fallen deity. These priests didn’t need the lore; they just needed the directives. He needed them to understand that if he removed the core of the rot, the entire demonic army would collapse into dust before they even began to march.
"And how can you be so certain of this, Saint Julian?" another Elder asked, his tone carrying a slight, defensive friction. He was an older man, his hair bleached so heavily it looked brittle. "The scriptures say the dark is a trial for the clay, an unyielding test of our purity. To suggest it can simply be... removed at its root by a single mortal’s claim—"
Julian turned his vibrant blue eyes directly onto the speaker. The scholar in him took over, his expression perfectly polite, yet completely savage.
"The proof that I am standing here after having listened to the God of Light should help your thick skull understand that the solution came from him directly," Julian said, his voice dripping with a refined, quiet ridicule. It came from me, and I am half the God of Light, so the mathematics remain identical, he noted internally.
The Elder flinched, his face turning an unholy shade of pale under the weight of the insult.
"Furthermore," Julian continued, walking a few paces closer to the center of the sanctum, "the God of Light is deeply disappointed in the way you have twisted his doctrine after so many years. He asked his creations to love. He asked you to help your neighbors. He did not ask you to force an artificial purity into anyone."
"This... this is bordering on blasphemy!" a younger priest near the back cried out, his voice cracking with a high, frantic energy. He stepped forward, his fists clenched within his silver robes. "You are using your disbelief in the sacred traditions to twist the God of Light’s words! The silver paths are absolute! The disciplines are written in the ancient scrolls!"
Julian didn’t look angry. He simply looked tired.
"Then if I am lying," Julian said softly, his voice echoing in the vast, vaulted ceiling, "may the God of Light strike me down right now."
The hall remained completely still. The silence stretched for three seconds, five seconds, ten seconds. Not a single spark of energy shifted around Julian’s frame. His blue robes didn’t even rustle.
"And if you are involved in the things that the God of Light has explicitly asked his people not to practice," Julian added, his eyes narrowing into two piercing chips of ice as he looked at the young priest, "may you be struck down."
Crack!
Without a single cloud in the sky, a violent, blinding bolt of lightning ripped straight through the high glass dome of the Inner Sanctum.
The air pressure exploded, the sound of tearing thunder deafening the entire council as the white-hot arc of electricity descended directly toward the young priest’s head.
The man was paralyzed, his grey eyes rolling back in pure terror as death rushed down on him.
But just a millisecond before the current could turn him into a pile of smoking ash, Julian reached out. He grabbed the fabric of the young priest’s robes and violently yanked him three paces to the left.
The lightning slammed into the stone floor exactly where the man had been standing, leaving a deep, blackened crater that hissed with residual heat.