While Lumia was watching the palace, Dex began executing the second part of his plan: the restoration of the Williams family's Old Guard loyalty. He knew with absolute certainty, through his reading of the novel's events and his hard-won field experience, that these stalwart men and women had not betrayed his father out of love for Sylvester or any conviction in his legitimacy. They had done it because they believed their commander was gone forever, and because Sylvester had been threatening to crucify their families on the city gates with the mercenary swords of the Shadow Organization.
At midnight on the fifth day, Dex slipped like smoke across the rooftops until he reached the dwelling of Commander Torin, the man who had led the Williams heavy cavalry for ten full years alongside Marcus, the man known by the epithet "Hammer of the West." Torin now lived under strict house arrest in a small, modest dwelling on the edges of the military district, surrounded by guards who monitored his every breath.
Dex did not reveal his face to Torin, in this phase, caution was the thin line separating victory from the guillotine. Instead, he exploited a moment of inattention from the guards during the shift change, and slipped like the night's darkness into the old commander's bedroom. He did not wake him, and did not speak to him, he placed only one single thing on the bedside table, beneath the pale moonlight: his father's old dagger, "Lion's Claw." This dagger was one of Lord Marcus's most treasured possessions. Torin knew every engraving and every scratch on that blade more intimately than he knew the lines of his own face in a mirror.
When Torin woke at the following dawn and his eyes fell on the blade gleaming in the weak morning light, a wave of astonishment struck him so forcefully that his breath stopped. His roughened hands trembled hysterically as he extended his fingers to grasp the blade. He dropped to his knees beside the bed, tears streaming in torrents through his thick, unkempt beard, mingling with the sound of a choked-back gasp. "Impossible... this blade never leaves the Lord's belt... Is, is Lord Marcus still breathing? Has the Lion not died?" he whispered to himself in a tone swinging between madness and hope.
In that moment, a deep, cold voice arrived, carrying the resonance of absolute authority that brooked no debate, a voice that seemed to emanate from the shadowed corner of the room: "The Lion has not died, Torin. He has been sleeping in the depths of treachery, testing the mettle of men, and now he has begun to open his eyes. He is waiting for his loyal knights, those who have not forgotten the oath, to cleanse the den of the filthy foxes that have defiled it with their stench."
Torin hurled his massive body toward the corner from which the voice had come, but found no one. There was nothing but an open window with its curtains fluttering in the morning wind, and an empty chair. But the message had arrived, and a fire had ignited in the soul of the shattered commander.
These silent and enigmatic messages began spreading like wildfire among the old loyalists hiding in the city's corners. A dagger placed in a commander's hand, an old medal hung on a former soldier's door, or simply the phrase "The western winds will blow soon" written in chalk on the wall of an abandoned stable. Dex was not asking them to attack now, he was asking them for patient waiting, cautious watchfulness, and complete readiness. He was building a ghost army of the aggrieved inside the heart of the city, an army Sylvester regarded as nothing more than broken servants, but an army that would feel its blade plunge into his flank the moment the first spark of blue fire ignited.
At noon on the seventh day, Dex made his way to the most humiliating place imaginable for the dignity of Williams knights: the mercenaries' filthy city stables. There, amid horse dung and the stench of sweat, worked Okon, the former commander of the Golden Elite Knights, stripped of his rank and sentenced to labor as a stable hand, polishing the boots of the mercenaries who had taken his place.
When Dex approached him in a tattered robe covering his face, Okon was carrying a heavy water bucket, his face covered in bruises. He waved a dismissive hand in anger without raising his head: "Get away from me, you wretched beggar, I have no money to give you, leave with your skin before the drunk guards inside see you and kill you for entertainment."
Dex did not retreat. He took one steady step forward and leaned in to whisper in Okon's ear the words of the Williams family's Secret Covenant, words known only to the heirs in closest confidence with the Duke: "The Lion does not sleep in a stable, Okon, and loyalty does not die of empty pockets, only of dead hearts and absent dignity. Has the Lion's heart died in your chest?"
Okon froze where he stood, and the bucket fell from his hand, spilling water across the floor. He raised his head slowly to look into the eyes of the person standing before him. And despite the dust-mask and the masterful disguise, Okon recognized those sharp blue eyes, the eyes Dex had inherited from his father Marcus, with all their fierceness and ferocity. "My Lord... young Lord Dex?! How, did they not kill you?"
"Shhh," Dex silenced him by placing a finger on his lips, watching the distant guards with caution. "Tell every man still shining the dogs' boots. Tell them to gather the swords they have hidden underground. Coronation Day, three days from now, when blue fire blazes atop the clock tower instead of ordinary daylight, that will be the final call. Be ready to march on the palace from every direction. We will reclaim our home, and we will purge Seiron with blood and fire."
Dex vanished before Okon could utter another word, leaving behind a commander who no longer felt fatigue, only a fierce and ravenous hunger for justice.