Inside the isolating transparent dome that Lumia had crafted with incomparable magical mastery, time appeared to have slowed until it had nearly stopped entirely.
The air inside this isolated space had become heavy, viscous, and suffocating, saturated with the smell of corrupted mana burning, the sharp ozone scent produced by the collision of pure phoenix energy with the black poisons, and the smell of human flesh charring slowly.
On the luxurious marble floor, large portions of which had transformed into molten glass and black engraved patches from the battle, Sylvester Williams was crawling.
He was not crawling like a defeated ruler attempting to preserve what remained of his dignity, but crawling like something that had lost its humanity entirely, like a crushed insect wrestling with the throes of death.
The forbidden compound he had swallowed in a moment of desperation, the Black Mana Stimulant, had not granted him that fantastical power and devastating speed for free.
Now, with the flow of toxic mana broken by Dex's purifying flames, the compound began demanding its terrible price.
Sylvester's body was undergoing a terrifying process of disintegration. His veins, which had previously swelled to obscene proportions, were now convulsing violently beneath his thin skin, as though they were living black worms savagely attempting to tear the flesh to escape his dying body.
His skin, which had lost its elasticity, began cracking slowly in various areas of his arms and neck, and from these deep fissures seeped a sticky, foul-smelling black substance that produced a sound resembling the hissing of serpents or water droplets on a hot pan the moment it touched the relatively cooler air inside the dome.
The pain gripping Sylvester now was not of the kind humans can endure. It was not pain resulting from an external wound, it was cellular pain. He felt as though hundreds of thousands of fine needles, dipped in boiling volcanic lava, were being driven simultaneously into every cell of his body, into his spinal cord, and into the center of his brain, without pause.
"Stop, please, please stop this torment..."
Sylvester's voice emerged choked, broken, and extremely weak. It was the voice of a man who had seen the abyss, and seen death staring at him with two empty eyes.
He raised his violently trembling hand with great difficulty toward Dex, that hand which minutes ago had ended in lethal claws, now scorched, paralyzed, and dripping black blood.
"I will give you, I will give you everything you dream of, Dex..." Sylvester began to rave, his reddened eyes overflowing with tears of cheap pain.
"The keys to the secret treasury, wealth sufficient to purchase kingdoms! The names of every spy and agent I planted in the Imperial capital, the secret contracts with the Shadow Organization, I will give you everything I collected and built throughout my entire life, just, just stop this fire consuming my organs from within!"
Dex stood before him, steady as a great mountain unmoved by storms. He was not affected by his uncle's pleas. His two blue eyes radiated an icy brilliance that knew no mercy.
He was not looking at Sylvester with blind hatred or reckless anger, but with a cold, deep, and frightening gaze in its calmness: the gaze of a heavenly judge looking at a criminal who had been given a thousand chances at reform and chose corruption every single time.
Behind Dex's young body, the blue and white mana began to gather and condense with slow majesty. The energy flowed from his core to form in the air a massive, majestic, and semi-material halo of the legendary phoenix bird.
The firebird spread its two immense wings, which nearly touched the edges of the void dome, filling the space with a bright and warm light: a light that stood in stark contrast to the darkness swallowing Sylvester's soul. This light penetrated bones, revealing every dark corner and every malicious intent in the collapsed tyrant's soul.