Pope Clement and Commander Nadic quickly laid out the topographic scrolls, their fingers trembling slightly as they pointed out the jagged, narrow ridges of the southern pass.

Julian memorized the terrain lines with a quiet, intense focus, his mind calculating how the demonic vanguard would funnel through the mountain.

Once the primary deployment routes were marked, Julian raised his eyes from the parchment.

"We will move to the Sacred Vats and begin the baptism as soon as the priests complete the alignment," Julian stated, his tone brooking no argument. "But before we step onto that field, we need to eat. A starved soldier is a useless shield."

Nadic bowed his head, quickly leaving the war chamber alongside the Pope to oversee the heavy iron transport.

Julian, Alaric and Lucius also made their way out, heading to Julian’s room.

It didn’t take long before Kaelen’s knights brought in the morning rations. Unlike the plain, unseasoned gruel and dry white bread the Holy Empire’s priests forced upon themselves for the sake of an artificial discipline, the northern knights carried real food even if they had been in a haste to set out.

They set down platters of thick, roasted mountain meat and bowls of heavy, dark bone broth that smelled of rich marrow and salt.

Lucius’s eyes lit up the moment the trays hit the wooden table. The boy didn’t wait, immediately digging into his piece of roasted meat with absolute delight.

Alaric sat right beside his son, his large hand coming down to gently pat the boy’s blonde hair.

"Eat slower," Alaric murmured, his rough voice carrying a warm, grounding quietness that was meant only for his family. "The food isn’t going to run away from you."

Lucius gave a happy, greasy nod, but his chewing didn’t slow down a single bit.

Julian sat across from them, pulling a bowl of broth toward himself. His stomach had stopped growling, but as he lifted the spoon, a faint, persistent shadow of worry settled deep behind his blue eyes.

He was eating, the hot broth warming his throat, but his mind refused to stay in the room.

He had spoken with an absolute, unyielding authority in the main hall. He had cowered the Pope, insulted the Elders, and threatened the entire council with a display of pure, baseline divinity.

But Julian wasn’t a fool.

The scholar in him knew that fighting against a literal god of creation—even a grounded, fallen one like Norx—could never be as simple as storming into a hidden abyss and swinging a weapon coated in divine.

Norx had spent a thousand years curating his malice, molding creatures out of pure, ravenous hunger and binding human resentment into the very fabric of the void.

He had orchestrated hundreds of their deaths across the centuries, keeping a tight grip on the parameters of their lives through a cold, oppressive system shackle.

Pushing back the miasma at the pass was one thing, but cutting the thread of a god’s hatred permanently was an entirely different weight.

Julian’s gaze drifted down to his reflection in the dark broth. I am only half a soul down here, he thought cleanly, his knuckles tightening slightly around his spoon. The framework of this world is fragile. One wrong calculation, and the circle repeats.

Alaric stopped watching Lucius for a brief second, his sharp blue eyes shifting across the table to lock onto Julian’s face. He didn’t ask what was wrong out loud—he didn’t need to. He simply reached out beneath the edge of the table, his warm hand finding Julian’s knee and giving it a firm, steady squeeze.

The touch was solid, rough, and entirely real. It was the weight of a man who had already promised to tear apart any written scroll that dared to dictate their end.

Julian looked up, meeting Alaric’s firm gaze, and let out a small, slow breath. The lingering chill of his thoughts receded, chased away by the solid heat of his partner.

He offered a faint, genuine smile, took another bite of the meat, and focused back on the family sitting in front of him.

They finished the meal quickly and prepared themselves for the baptism.

Once the platters were cleared, Julian smoothed down the fabric of his blue robes, the determination in his chest fully overriding the exhaustion of his long slumber.

Alaric lifted Lucius onto his arm, the boy’s blond hair catching the faint light of the corridor as they left the bedchamber and made their way down into the deepest subterranean levels of the Inner Sanctum.

Kaelen and the northern knights fell into a tight formation around them, the heavy clatter of their unbaptized armor echoing sharply against the damp stone walls.

As they descended the winding spiral staircases, the air grew increasingly crisp, carrying a distinct scent of morning dew and pure ozone.

Eventually, the stone corridor opened up into a massive, vaulted chamber carved entirely out of solid white bedrock.

In the center of the hall lay the Great Vat—a massive stone pool where a crystal-clear stream of water fell continuously from a hidden fissure in the ceiling, never running dry and never slowing down.

It was the very pool that Alias had blessed with his own hands a thousand years ago during his descent, a reservoir of pure, unblemished light that had remained completely untainted by the passage of time or the twisted practices of the priests above.

Pope Clement stood near the edge of the water alongside a group of high priests, their silver robes rustling nervously as they watched the northern vanguard arrange hundreds of iron swords and heavy plate armor on the stone floor.

Commander Nadic stood to the side, his rigid posture holding a tense, silent anticipation.

Julian walked right up to the edge of the stone pool, his vibrant blue eyes reflecting the shimmering, liquid silver of the water.

As he looked down into the depths, a specific memory from his recent weeks in the Holy City surfaced cleanly in his mind.

He recalled scouring the grand libraries, searching for appropriate materials because he still had to give Lucius his daily lessons despite their displacement.

During those quiet hours of study, he had uncovered an old, dust-covered theological text detailing the military history of the Holy Empire.

At the time, he had read the passage out of sheer scholarly curiosity, but now, with his baseline divinity wide open, the data locked into his memory perfectly.

According to the ancient text, a true weapon baptism required more than just throwing iron into holy water. Normal iron was heavy, rigid, and completely separate from the spiritual plane, making it brittle against the abyssal void.

To properly coat the metal, the high-density holy water had to be paired with an intense, focused conduit of pure intent.

The water acted as a binder. When a baseline source of light vibrated through the pool, the holy water would permanently rewrite the outermost properties of the steel, enveloping the weapon in an unyielding, protective layer of light that dissolved the void upon physical contact.

"We are ready to begin, Saint Julian," Pope Clement whispered, his head deeply bowed as he gestured toward the high priests who were holding silver ritual staffs. "The prayers of alignment are prepared."