Julius awoke before dawn.
He rose, dressed in travel attire—darkened mail beneath a velvet cloak, his armor adorned with simplicity.
The Codex Solaris was already packed, sealed in the hardened blackwood case beneath his bunk.
His hands rested upon it only once, as if to assure himself it was still there.
Then, wordlessly, he fastened the strap and lifted it onto his back.
Outside, the Praetorians had already formed.
Thirty riders in a loose crescent, cloaked against the morning chill, visors lowered, weapons sheathed.
Only the dark sigils on their pauldrons shimmered in the rising sun.
Their loyalty to their emperor was absolute, even with some of the legionaires watching with worry as the Emperor and his Imperial Guard prepared to leave the frontline and all of them behind.
Julius ordered, and without so much as a drumbeat, the procession began to move.
They rode eastward, the snowmelt-soaked roads squelching beneath their hooves as they carved through the war-carved countryside.
Fields burned weeks ago now lay black awaiting the sowing and planting yet to come by Romanus, an empty shell of what the nation once was before the invasion happened.
Skeleton trees stood like witness-markers to the shifting era, branches clawing silently at the overcast sky.
Julius had made certain his departure would be quiet.
It was better that the Francian people did not see an emperor retreating — even if only for a time.
Dozens at first, then hundreds.
Pushing carts of bundled belongings, leading gaunt oxen or dragging crude sleds over the mud.
Francian men, women, and children — tired, cold, hollow-eyed.
Some bore Romanus sigils on cloth.
Others carried relics of Joan’s failed miracles: broken charms, scraps of white linen, even shards of shattered incense burners.
They were not fleeing the Romanus legions.
They were fleeing the rule of Romanus itself.
Julius did not mind, better they leave now rather than remain and rebel causing him to enact policies to put down uprisings before they began.
In the end their rebellious spirits would shatter when he took over the entire world.
It wasn’t until the fifth hour that Julius halted his column on a ridgeline near the border forests.
There, beneath a haze of low-hanging fog, he saw the truth with unfiltered clarity.
A stream of Francian refugees—close to five hundred—lined the ancient border road leading into Germania.
But they weren’t seeking sanctuary.
They were surrendering.
A checkpoint manned by Germanian auxiliaries stood ahead, gates half-raised beneath a wooden palisade.
Armed guards herded the refugees into lines.
Men were branded with iron sigils, their heads shaved clean.
Women were separated by age, their names recorded in rough ledgers.
Children were counted.
Julius stared in silence as a barefoot man knelt before the checkpoint guard, kissing the iron-toed boot of a Germanian officer.
Another man—older, perhaps a veteran—argued for his son to be spared.
He was struck across the face and dragged to the side.
His son remained behind.
A servant of Germania now.
Veyne rode up beside Julius, her voice flat behind her mask.
"They would rather serve as thralls than live as free subjects of Romanus."
Julius said nothing at first.
’Such is the spirit of Francian either in this world or my previous’
A woman cried as her daughter was taken from her arms.
Another cheered as the gate opened, as if crossing that boundary meant salvation.
Julius finally murmured.
"And superstition. Both are harder to conquer than steel."
"They believe in Saint Joan."
"They believe in suffering, and the belief that suffering now can bring them salvation upon the resistances successful war against us in the future, when the kingdom can negotiate their freedom from the Germanians."
He turned his gaze back toward the road behind them.
"There is no nobility in slavery, Veyne. Only avoidance. They choose chains because they think it means peace."
"Should we intervene?"
Julius looked to the checkpoint.
"No. Let the Germans take their prize. They are our allies afterall, and its not like we havent take spoils of war either."
"But when word spreads? That our subjects willingly walk from us?"
Julius’s gaze hardened.
"Then we reshape the message."
He turned in the saddle, signaling the column onward.
"Let the people say we offered peace and they refused it. Let them whisper that Germania swells with the desperate and the broken, who sell themselves into slavery only to then be sold by their masters to Romanus finding themselves worse off than their breathren who simply bent the knee before the might of Romanus."
"What if the Germans get bold enough to challenge your rule, or raid the war caravans returning from the war front to raid the spoils?"
Julius gave a cold smile.
"Then we remind them that mercy is only ever temporary, unless they truly deserve to receive it."
By midday, the column reached the final watchtower along the border — a half-Roman, half-Germanian structure rising like a scar along the high ridge.
The guards saluted as Julius passed, their eyes wide at the sight of the Emperor himself among them.
One bowed too deeply and collapsed in the slush, weeping.
It was not pity he sought from his soldiers.
As the Praetorians crested the ridge beyond the tower, the forests of Germania unfurled like a scroll before them.
Even in snow and shadow, it felt like breathing again.
That evening, beneath the shelter of tall pine and iron canopy, Julius set camp on Imperial soil for the first time in months.
The Codex remained sealed in his tent.
And yet its weight pressed against him still — as though it was already whispering from beneath silk and steel.
He stood at the edge of the fire, arms crossed, eyes scanning the night road.
More refugees would come.
Not all would return.
But Romanus would remain.
He turned to the nearest courier, a tall youth wearing the rose sigil of Rosaria.
"Send word to the Eternal City,"
"The Emperor returns within a week. Prepare the gates. Prepare the throne."
The boy saluted, mounted, and vanished into the dark.
Julius stood in silence as the wind picked up.
Banners rustled in the trees.
The border still held.
But the people — they were shifting.
He did not need their loyalty.
But one day, he would have it.
Not even through fear.
But through inevitability.
He turned from the flames, entered his tent, and closed the flap behind him.
Tomorrow, they would ride for the heart of Empire.
And the Codex would awaken with every step closer to its throne.