The following days passed with terrible slowness and a suffocating weight, as though time itself had sunk into a pool of mud. There was a particular and frightening kind of silence enveloping the ancient city of Seiron: a silence that precedes great catastrophes.
It was not at all the silence of peace or reassurance that the city had known in Lord Marcus's time, it was the silence of terrifying anticipation, like a wounded animal holding its breath in the thickets before the predator pounces, or like the sea retreating in a frightening manner before striking the shore with a devastating tsunami.
The city was preparing for the Coronation Ceremony, the event in which Sylvester would be officially installed as Duke of the Williams family and governor of the province. And though the streets and public squares were decorated with thousands of flags and banners bearing the family's crest, the blue and silver colors appeared faded, dead, and soul-drained beneath an autumnal sky blanketed by heavy gray clouds threatening an oncoming storm.
There were no signs of joy whatsoever, fear was the true ruler. People moved through the cobblestone streets with bowed heads, drooping shoulders, and eyes that avoided meeting one another's gaze.
The bribed guards and the brutal mercenaries Sylvester had brought from outside the province were deployed at every corner and alleyway, swaggering with their weapons arrogantly, their eyes scanning passersby with suspicion and aggression, searching for any spark of rebellion to crush in its cradle.
In the high tower of the ducal palace, the tallest point in the city of Seiron, the scene was entirely different. Inside the lavish room decorated with the finest Imperial carpeting and golden artifacts, Sylvester Williams stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling glass window.
He wore a luxurious silk suit embroidered with gold thread, designed specifically for his coronation day. In his right hand he held a crystal goblet of premium aged red wine, whose color bore an unsettling resemblance to the blood spilled in the palace's vaults.
He looked down at his city, and the eyes of arrogance blinded his perception to the truth boiling beneath the surface. A victor's smile spread across his face, the smile of a man who believed he had manipulated fate itself.
"Everything is proceeding exactly according to the plan I drew up," Sylvester murmured to himself in a low voice reflecting the intoxication of power, sipping from the fine wine, tasting the flavor of a false triumph. "Marcus, the great Lion, is now rotting in the secret vault, breathing his last breaths, afflicted by a poison for which no one possesses an antidote.
And his troublesome son Dex, that weak boy who stood as a trivial obstacle in my path, has disappeared forever and become food for the beasts of Falus Forest. Not even a bone remains to be buried."
Sylvester turned to look at the silver crown set with blue sapphires, resting on a velvet cushion at the center of the room. "And the regional council of nobles? A handful of cowards and the greedy, they submitted at last to the gleam of my gold and the sharpness of my sword.
Tomorrow at noon, I will place this crown upon my head and become the legitimate Duke of the Williams family. And when the coronation is formally completed with the blessing of the bribed priests, no one, not the Emperor seated in the capital, nor the Holy Church with its rigid laws, will be able to strip me of my title or question my legitimacy."
Sylvester laughed softly, a laugh whose echo rolled through the empty room, foolishly believing that all the threads of the game were in his hand and that everything was under absolute control, utterly unaware that the ground he stood on, the palace sheltering him, and the city he surveyed were completely mined with minds and souls waiting for zero hour.
On the other side, far removed from the luxury of the tower, in the dark underworld of Seiron, inside the secret underground hideout built by the old guard loyal to Marcus decades past, the atmosphere was radically different. There was no wine, no glass windows, and no illusions. There was only sweat, dust, and a resolve harder than diamond.
Dex stood in the center of the stone room lit by faint torches, bent over a large dilapidated wooden table spread with detailed architectural and tactical maps of the palace, the forgotten sewage tunnels, the mana distribution networks, and the positions of the primary and secondary watchtowers. To his right stood Lumia in her new appearance, with her silken hair as black as a moonless night and her pure blue eyes as deep as the ocean.
She appeared as a true Williams noblewoman, yet her lethal calm and her silent movements made her appear more dangerous and beautiful than at any time before. Her mere presence standing beside Dex instilled dread in the hearts of the veteran warriors assembled in the room, though they did not know her celestial truth.
"Tomorrow at noon, the moment the sun reaches the zenith of the sky," said Dex in a steady, cold voice, moving his index finger across the map while a small concentrated blue phoenix flame followed it, burning the paper slightly to trace the attack routes in a fine line.
"When Sylvester stands in the great hall, and when he raises his cup to declare himself master of the Williams family at the peak of his euphoria and arrogance, the city's lights will be extinguished entirely. The fountains will stop, and the defensive magical gates will fail."
Dex raised his eyes from the map and looked directly at Torin and Okon, the old military commanders who had survived Sylvester's purge, and who had gathered in this hideout the elite of the most loyal men who preferred death to seeing the traitor on the throne.
"This interruption will not be due to a technical malfunction in the array, but because we, at that precise moment, will cut the central mana flow from the heart of the thermal generator beneath the palace. We will plunge them into impenetrable darkness for counted seconds, seconds sufficient to sow terror and chaos in their ranks."
Dex struck the map with his fist to drive home his words. "But hear me well, I want no random assault. We are not highway bandits and not invaders. Our goal is not to destroy our city or terrorize our people, it is to excise the malignant tumor at its roots. Sylvester and his inner circle are the primary objective."
Dex picked up a small stone piece and used it as a pawn on the map. "The regular guards, the conscripts forced into his obedience for their wages or out of fear for their families, they are sons of this province. I want you to neutralize them, strip them of their weapons, strike them with the flat of your swords to render them unconscious, but make every effort not to kill them. Their blood is forbidden to us."
Then Dex paused, and his features changed entirely. The temperature in the room dropped suddenly, and his blue eyes blazed with a terrifying flash, a flash carrying the memories of the hell he had lived through in Falus Forest. "But, the filthy mercenaries he brought from outside? And the Shadow Organization members disguised among the guards? Those who killed your brothers and sold their honor for gold?"
Dex smiled a smile that never reached his blazing eyes. "For them, no mercy. Accept no surrender from them, and take no prisoners. Burn them where they stand, and make their blood a message to every soul who contemplates betraying this family."