The morning air in Avalon was usually a gentle thing, cool and scented with the dew of the royal gardens. Today, however, the palace felt like a bowstring drawn to the point of snapping. The quiet, rhythmic life of the Slatemark line had been replaced by a frantic, organized chaos. Servants hurried through the corridors with armfuls of silk banners, while the Royal Guard conducted drills that sounded like rolling thunder in the distance.
Julius sat in the heart of the Great Library, a space where the ceiling rose into a vaulted dome painted with the constellations of the first Sovereigns. While the rest of the palace prepared for the arrival of the Namgung through ceremony and steel, Julius was digging through the foundation of their world. Surrounding him were scrolls so old the parchment felt like dried skin, detailing the early, fractured observations of the Eastern Meridian system.
He was not looking for ways to win a fight. He was looking for the logic behind the choice to abandon the mind aspect. Surrounding him were diagrams of the human body, but they lacked the elegant, overlapping circles of the Star System. Instead, they were marked with jagged lines and points of "percussion."
"I thought I might find you here," a familiar voice said.
Isabella stepped out from behind a shelf of star charts, her violet eyes scanning the mess of scrolls on his table. She looked as though she had not slept much either. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight, practical knot, and she carried a small slate etched with the geometric lines of a 3rd Star offensive spell.
"The twins are at the training grounds," Isabella continued, taking a seat across from him. "Alaric is trying to see how much physical pressure his golden aura can take before it fractures, and Elena is obsessing over her casting speed. The entire palace is terrified of looking soft in front of the East."
Julius did not look up from the scroll. His fingers traced a diagram of a meridian junction, a point where the energy in an Easterner's body was forced to accelerate rather than stabilize.
"They are preparing for a performance, Isabella," Julius said, his voice quiet. "They want to show the Namgung that our stars are brighter. But they are ignoring the fact that the Namgung do not care about the light. They care about the weight."
Isabella leaned forward, her brow furrowed as she looked at the diagram Julius was studying. "You have been here for hours. My mother says the Namgung are coming to test our diplomacy, but you look like you are preparing to take their entire system apart."
"I just want to understand the sacrifice," Julius said, finally meeting her gaze. His red eyes were clear, and the usual apathy had been replaced by a sharp, focused intensity.
"Look at this junction. In our system, we would use a Mind Aspect calculation to smooth the transition of mana. It would be elegant and lossless. But here, the Namgung physically scar the meridian to force the energy to burst. It is a deliberate choice to accept damage in exchange for immediate, overwhelming impact. It is not a lack of sophistication. It is a different kind of perfection. A violent one."
Isabella sighed, held up her slate, and shifted the topic. "Speaking of sophistication, I have hit a wall with the intersection of these three circles. I can feel the stars reacting, but the math for the third tier gravity well keeps collapsing at the apex. I thought maybe your perspective might see the error."
Julius took the slate from her. His mind shifted gears effortlessly. While the stars in his chest were formed by pure will and the purification of mana, the application of those stars was a world of geometry and logic. He looked at her etchings for only a moment before he noticed the misalignment.
"You are calculating the gravity as a sphere," Julius said. "But because your 3rd Star is anchored slightly higher in your chest than the standard model, the mana is not exiting in a perfect radius. It is an ellipse. You need to adjust the third circle's intersection by four degrees to account for the drag of your own presence."
He took a stylus and quickly redrew the lines. The geometry was complex, a web of interlocking arcs that would have taken a Master a day to calculate. Julius did it in seconds, his hand steady and sure.
"Try it now," he said, handing the slate back.
Isabella closed her eyes, her mana flaring briefly. A small, dense pocket of air materialized above her palm, humming with a localized gravitational pull that made the loose papers on the table flutter. The spell held perfectly, stable and silent. She let it dissipate, looking at Julius with a mix of gratitude and a strange, lingering shadow of worry.
"You make it look so easy," she whispered. "Everything. The math, the stars, the social games. Sometimes I wonder if you are actually seeing the same world the rest of us are."
"I see the same world, Isabella," Julius replied, his smile returning to its usual, warm social mask. "I just do not find the rules as intimidating as everyone else does. Most people see the wall; I just see the bricks it was built from."
They spent the next hour in a rare moment of quiet. Julius helped her refine two more spell circles, his mind moving between the beautiful math of the Star System and the brutal, scarred meridians of the scrolls. He felt the internal pulse again, that deep vibration in his solar plexus that had started at dinner.
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the library were thrown open. The sound echoed through the silent hall like a crack of thunder, causing Isabella to jump in her seat. Elara, Julius's personal maid, stood in the doorway. Her usual composed, robotic efficiency was gone. Her face was pale and she was breathing as though she had run the entire length of the palace.
"Your Highness," she gasped, her voice trembling as she clutched the doorframe for support.
Julius stood up slowly. He could feel it now. The air in the library, which had been still and scented with old paper, was suddenly heavy. A distant, percussive thrumming began to vibrate through the floorboards, a rhythm that was entirely separate from the heartbeat of Slatemark.
"The scouts, they were wrong," Elara managed to say, her eyes wide with a frantic sort of panic. "The black iron carriages, they moved too fast. They have already breached the outer valley."
She took a ragged breath and looked directly at Julius.
"The King has sent for you immediately. The Namgung delegation is at the gates. They have arrived early, Your Highness. They are here now."
Julius felt the three stars in his chest pulse in unison. The curiosity that had been building since last night sharpened into something more focused. He stood, his movements controlled but quicker than usual. Isabella noticed the change in his expression. It was not his usual social warmth, but something more intent.
"Julius?" she asked, her voice small.
He did not answer immediately. His red eyes were fixed on the library doors, his mind already cataloging the differences between the silence of the library and the heavy, approaching vibration from the valley. A smile crossed his face, one that was sharper and more focused than any he had ever given a student.
"They are here," Julius said softly.