Inside that terrifying cosmic bubble that Lumia had crafted with consummate skill, a strange kind of stillness descended, a stillness bearing no resemblance to the quiet that precedes storms, but closer to the silence that reigns in ancient cemeteries after the living have departed.
Every external sound was severed completely: the screams of the mercenaries being annihilated in the square, the cries of thousands of citizens chanting Marcus's name, the ringing of steel, and even the howl of the winds that had been battering the palace balconies, everything dissolved and melted into the transparent void wall surrounding them.
In this theater sealed off from the fabric of spacetime, Dex stopped a few meters from his collapsed uncle.
The phoenix flames surrounding his young body had dimmed slightly, and this was no evidence of weakness or a retreat in his energy, but a conscious decision by Dex to concentrate the gravity of the moment on the decisive words before moving to physical action.
The tongues of flame swayed calmly around his feet like tame animals awaiting the signal to attack, radiating a silent heat that made the air ripple around them.
Dex looked at his uncle lying on the floor in a state of shame and dread. Sylvester was breathing with great difficulty, his back pressed fully against the cold transparent wall that prevented his escape.
His eyes were darting, searching the void for an impossible exit.
"Why?"
Dex pronounced that single word. His question was simple and direct, yet it carried within it the weight of long years of suppressed pain, and decades of questions that had found no answer in the young man's mind.
His voice reverberated with a deep and frightening echo inside the isolated dome, as though it were the voice of conscience putting a guilty man on trial in the depths of hell.
And Dex continued, his voice growing sharper and heavier: "I want only to understand, Uncle, what was it that you lacked? My father, Duke Marcus, loved you with all his heart. He never once regarded you as a subordinate, he spoke of you in your absence and before all as his indispensable right hand and the eye through which he perceived the hidden truth of matters.
He gave you absolute administration over the city's finances, entrusted you with the keys to the treasuries, granted you an esteemed position that made the greatest nobles bow to you in respect, and placed in you a blind trust that proved his undoing in the end.
You ate from our same plate, slept safely beneath the roof of our palace, and enjoyed the protection of the great name 'Williams.' Why? Why did you betray him in that filthy and twisted manner? Why did you dare to poison your own brother, of your blood and flesh, with Beelzebub's Tear, to make him suffer paralysis and slow death day after day?"
Upon hearing these words that confronted him with his naked truth, something strange occurred in Sylvester's features. He suddenly stopped trembling and crawling, and his body stiffened against the wall.
His eyes no longer displayed that absolute animal terror of death, instead the expressions on his pale face shifted slowly into something entirely different: something dark, complex, and twisted that had accumulated in his depths across decades.
Sylvester began to laugh.
At first it was a low, smothered laugh, resembling the hissing of serpents in their burrows, emerging from between his clenched teeth. But it quickly rose in pitch and transformed into a hysterical, mad, and terrifying laugh that filled the silent dome's space.
It was the laugh of someone who had lost his mind completely, or someone who had finally been liberated from the mask of falseness he had worn his entire life.
"Gave me everything?"
Sylvester screamed suddenly, and his throat erupted with words that had been imprisoned in the dungeons of his dark chest. His face flushed violently, and the veins of his forehead protruded like taut strings driven by a buried hatred that had finally erupted like a dormant volcano.
"You know nothing, you wretched boy! You are nothing but a child born in luxury who has never tasted the flavor of shadow! He gave me scraps, scraps and nothing more! I am his younger brother, I am the one who spent my nights studying politics, economics, and the arts of administration and intrigue to keep this province standing on its feet!
I am the one who managed the real affairs of governance while your great father was busy waving his stupid sword at the borders and reaping the glory of battles! But who claimed all the glory in the end? Who was crowned with the title of Duke and received the nobles' bows? Who did the people chant for in the squares and consider a protective deity? It is Marcus! Always Marcus!"
Sylvester rose to his feet with difficulty, swaying like a drunk man, pointing his trembling hand toward the transparent wall overlooking the square, where the people outside, silently, from their perspective, were raising their hands and chanting with unparalleled enthusiasm for Marcus.
"Look at them! They look at him as though he were their divine savior! Our father, that senile, foolish old man who ruled before us, always looked at me with a cold gaze full of disappointment because I possessed no extraordinary combat magical talent.
He looked at Marcus with eyes gleaming with absolute wonder and pride. Everyone repeated: 'Marcus the gifted,' 'Marcus the miracle,' 'Marcus who awakened the Golden Lion aura!' And I? What was I in their eyes? I was merely 'the clever Sylvester', the financial manager, the accountant who sits behind ledgers!
I spent my entire life as nothing but his faded shadow. Whenever I completed a great project for the city, it was attributed to the Williams family, meaning to Marcus in his capacity as the family's head!"
Sylvester spat on the luxurious marble floor with an indescribable hatred, his eyes blazing with the madness of the jealousy that had consumed his soul.
"His very existence choked me, stole the oxygen I breathed! His confident laughter, his excessive kindness that I saw as stupidity, his terrifying physical strength, all of it were constant daily reminders of what I am not and will never be!
He had to die! His death was not merely a desire for power, it was the only way for me to breathe freely without a mountain standing between me and the sun! It was the only way for history to record in its pages the name 'Sylvester Williams' as a great, independent ruler in his own right, not merely as a footnote in the story of his heroic ruling brother!"
Dex looked at him with complete calm. In that moment, every fierce anger he had been feeling evaporated, replaced by a strange feeling: a feeling of profound pity intermingled with absolute revulsion at the pettiness of the human soul when it surrenders to its darkness.
"So, all this destruction, all these betrayals, and all this pain you caused the family and the city, were rooted only in a trivial inferiority complex? Because you could not accept the reality that someone was stronger and better than you?" Dex said in a sorrowful tone.
"Jealousy is the fuel of the greatest ambition in this world!" Sylvester retorted with hysterical screaming, his hands waving wildly in the air with madness.
"You will never understand this feeling, Dex. You were born with a golden spoon in your mouth, but I will show you now, I will show you that talent and pure genes can be crushed and exterminated entirely through power and decisive action!"
In a desperate, sudden, and extremely swift motion, unexpected from a man in his collapsed psychological and physical state, Sylvester plunged his hand into a very deeply concealed secret pocket inside the sleeve of his torn silk shirt.
When he withdrew his hand, it was gripping a small glass vial crafted from dark black crystal, engraved with strange symbols resembling weeping skulls, and emanating a malicious and repulsive magical aura that was able to pierce through the pure phoenix aura in the place.
"Don't!" Dex cried out, recognizing instantly what this was, and lunged forward attempting to stop him and seize his hand.
But Sylvester, driven by the adrenaline of terror and complete madness, was faster by a fraction of a second. With his teeth, he pulled the leather stopper from the vial, raised it to his mouth, and swallowed the black, viscous, thick liquid inside it in a single gulp, down to the last drop, without hesitation or thought for the consequences.
"If I am to die today at your hands or your father's, I'll take you with me on the road to the depths of hell, Dex!" Sylvester screamed, his eyes rolling back.
The empty crystal vial fell from his hand onto the marble floor and shattered into small fragments. And suddenly, Sylvester's entire body convulsed with terrifying force, as though a current of thousands of volts had struck him.
"AAAAAGHHHHHH!"
Sylvester let out a thunderous scream, a scream of pain and torment unlike any human sound, a scream that tore his vocal cords and his throat, its violent echo reverberating inside the transparent dome until it nearly shattered its magical glass.
Sylvester had swallowed what is known as the Forbidden Mana Stimulant.
This compound was no mere medicine or ordinary magical dose, it was a chemically magical substance internationally prohibited by the mages' alliance and the Empire simultaneously.
It is manufactured by mixing the blood of cursed demonic beasts with the veins of mages who died hideous deaths. This compound functions with brutal mechanism:
Shattering the locks: It breaks all genetic and magical locks in the user's body at once by force. Multiplied power: It grants the user mana power multiplied dozens of times, elevating his magical rank temporarily to fantastical levels surpassing his body's absorption capacity.
The lethal price: The price paid by the user is the destruction of his nervous system, the disintegration of his magical core, and the total consumption of his entire Life Force within counted minutes. It is the final option of suicidal individuals who have nothing left to lose and wish to cause the maximum destruction possible before their demise.
The horrifying physical effects of the forbidden compound began to appear on Sylvester immediately and at an accelerating rate, which Dex followed with astonishment mixed with dread.
First, black swollen veins, thick and branching like a network of rotting roots, began to appear clearly on his neck and face, creeping and moving beneath his pale skin as though they were living worms searching for an exit.
The whites of his eyes, which had been filled with fear, receded completely, transforming into a pitch blackness like the darkness of the deep void of space, while his pupils colored themselves a radiant crimson resembling fresh blood.
Then the muscles in his frail, emaciated body began swelling with abnormal and nauseating rapidity. His muscle fibers stretched and their mass doubled in seconds, tearing what remained of his fine clothing and royal robe, which crumbled and fell as tattered rags.
Dex heard clearly the cracking and splintering sound of his bones as they elongated and forced themselves into new, deformed shapes to bear the immense and impure mana now flooding through his veins.
Sylvester's height grew until he was twice Dex's size, and black, sharp claws grew at the tips of his fingers capable of tearing steel.
From his transformed body emanated a dark aura, like thick black smoke from a burning inferno, an aura filled with hatred, madness, and magical corruption, an aura that collided violently with the blue phoenix aura, causing electrical sparks and small explosions in the air between them.
The humanity of Sylvester Williams had vanished entirely in that moment, and there was no longer a pleading uncle or a power-hungry ruler.
What stood before Dex now was a hybrid abomination driven by forbidden mana and a blind destructive instinct, ready to burn everything in its path in one final, tragic battle of life or death.