The silence of graveyards reigned over the vast, sprawling square. Thousands of people, nobles, knights, and ordinary citizens, had nearly stopped breathing. Every eye was fixed and riveted on the shattered balcony from which smoke was rising.
Even the fierce winds that had been battering the city seemed to calm and recede in reverence and awe at the gravity of the scene unfolding.
In that moment, from the dark rear entrance of the balcony, a massive and imposing shadow appeared. Heavy, metallic, regular, and confident footsteps were heard, footsteps that made the shattered marble floor tremble slightly beneath their weight.
Lord Marcus Williams, the legitimate Duke of Seiron, stepped from shadow into light. His legendary golden armor, "The Lion's Plate," was stained and covered entirely with the blood of the mercenary commanders and Shadow Organization leaders he had crushed below, yet his majestic face was radiant with an overwhelming aura: the aura of a ruler returning to his throne after a long absence.
Marcus stood beside his son Dex, who was now blazing with a faint phoenix light. Marcus looked downward at his younger brother prostrate at his feet like a lowly worm.
Despite everything Sylvester had done, Marcus's cold gaze held no cheap gloating, only deep pain, an indescribable disappointment, and an old grief that tore the heart.
In those silent seconds, Marcus recalled the distant days, the days of an innocent childhood when the two of them ran through the palace gardens, playing with wooden swords. He recalled the sacred promise he had made their father on his deathbed: "I will protect my little brother, Father, with my life."
Marcus had tried to honor that promise, but it was Sylvester who had destroyed the covenant and torn the bonds.
"You have brought permanent shame upon our name and our storied history, Sylvester," Marcus said in a deep, rough, and frightening voice in its calmness.
A voice heard with complete clarity by every person in the square, thanks to the absolute silence enveloping everyone and the magical amplification crystals distributed throughout the square's corners that were still functioning.
With extreme slowness and solemnity, Marcus drew his great sword from its gilded scabbard. The sound of heavy steel scraping the inner leather of the scabbard sent a cold shiver through the bodies and bones of every person present.
Marcus raised the broad sword high above his head with both hands, the pale afternoon sun reflecting off its sharp, blood-yet-unslaked blade.
"The punishment for high treason against the province, attempted premeditated murder of the ruling Duke, and secret collaboration with the Empire's enemies to bring down the city, is death by sword."
The audience in the square was holding its breath to the point of suffocation. Some closed their eyes in fear of the sight of blood, others looked with hungry eagerness and tension to see the tyrant's head roll across the marble.
Marcus brought the great sword down with enough force to cleave a colossal boulder.
But, just a few scant centimeters before the sharp blade could touch Sylvester's frail neck and separate it from his body, the blade stopped suddenly.
The sword did not stop because of hesitation on Marcus's part, but because a steel hand, sheathed in blazing white fire mana, had seized the sword's unsharpened back and halted its lethal momentum with unshakeable steadiness.
It was Dex.
Marcus looked at his son in genuine astonishment. He was surprised not only by his son's audacity in stopping the Duke's sword, but by the enormous physical and magical power that enabled the young man to halt a full-force blow from the Williams Lion.
"Step aside, Dex," said Marcus in a voice carrying the tone of a military command. "This is my duty as Duke and as an elder brother. I must bear the weight of this decision and purify our family of this shame with my own hands."
"No, Father," said Dex in a very quiet yet firm and decisive voice, as cutting as steel. His eyes still carried the glow of the preceding battle, yet they radiated a wisdom surpassing his youthful age.
"Death at this moment is far too easy an exit for him. Death by a single sword stroke is a mercy and a deliverance he does not deserve."
Dex withdrew his hand slowly from the back of the sword, yet remained standing like an impenetrable wall between his father's blade and his collapsed uncle.
He looked downward at Sylvester, who was trembling violently and weeping in absolute silence, drowned in a pool of his own humiliation, stripped of every remaining shred of dignity.
"Look at him, Father. This man spent his entire life chasing power, worshipping prestige and position, living for people to look at him with fear and admiration. He fed on his own hollow pride. If we grant him the honor of death now, by the Duke's sword and before the eyes of thousands, his pain will end in a single second. And perhaps, as time passes and people forget his foul deeds, he will become in the eyes of some fools and rebels nothing but a political memory, or even a 'martyr' for a dissident faction!"
Dex turned slowly to face the vast square, confronting the assembled and stunned crowd, then directed his piercing gaze deliberately and with calculated intent toward the isolated upper corner where Inspector Croft and his assistants stood, watching every detail.
"The Supreme Imperial Inspector Croft, representative of His Imperial Majesty, is present among us today, and has witnessed with his own eyes everything that occurred in this square," said Dex in a loud and clear voice carrying a veiled challenge and absolute confidence.
"He saw the blatant treason himself, he saw the use of the forbidden magic and demonic substances that the Empire prohibits. Imperial law, and before it the independent law of our own family that he defiled, grant us the complete and absolute right to issue and execute judgment upon traitors on our own soil."
Dex pointed his finger with force toward the ground, toward the dark depths of Seiron's palace.
"Therefore, in my capacity as heir of the Williams family, I declare that Sylvester Williams will not be executed. Execution is the fate of heroes who err, or warriors defeated with honor. But this traitor will be stripped of his name, and cast alive into The Cell of Silence."
A collective gasp rose from those present that was heard by all. The Cell of Silence was no mere prison, it was a terrifying legend told to children in Seiron: a genuine nightmare located at the deepest and darkest point beneath the foundations of the ancient Seiron palace.
A cell built in the dark ancient ages specifically to imprison dangerous sorcerers and rebels. A place hewn from solid rock, completely and absolutely isolated: magically, acoustically, and from light.
"He will spend what remains of his wretched life in absolute and impenetrable darkness," Dex continued, his voice tolling like the bells of the end.
"In the same cold, desolate, and forgotten place where he intended to bury my father the Duke alive. He will live there, eating scraps, yet possess not a single atom of mana in his body to illuminate his darkness or ease his maddening solitude."
Dex raised his voice further to reach the farthest corners of the square. "He will live long, so that through the small magical ventilation openings in his cell's ceiling, he may hear the sounds of our celebrations of this victory. He will live to hear the voices of the people he betrayed, chanting the name of Duke Marcus, and the name of the prosperity he tried to destroy with his injustice. He will live to understand, every single day, the full extent of his own worthlessness."
Dex turned once more, looking directly into his father's wide eyes. "Let him rot alone with his failure and his absolute defeat, Father. This is the true punishment, and the most painful one possible, for a man who believed he would touch the sky: to watch our glory shining while he crawls at the bottom of hell, incapable even of ending his own life."
Marcus was silent for a long moment.
He looked at his young son, who only months ago had been a boy needing protection, and saw before him now a man: a wise commander, possessing a justified severity and a strategic vision surpassing the revenge of the moment.
Marcus saw the cold and harsh wisdom in his son's decision. Death would liberate Sylvester, while the Cell of Silence would imprison him with the demons of his remorse forever.
Marcus returned his great sword to its scabbard with a forceful motion and a resonant sound, announcing the end of the conflict.
"So be it, Dex Williams. Your judgment stands," Marcus declared in a voice carrying absolute pride and acceptance. Then he turned toward his loyal guards who had just ascended to the balcony.
"Guards! Take this filthy thing from before me. Throw it into the depths, and do not let me hear its voice or see its face for as long as I live."
Two large soldiers from the Old Guard's elite stepped forward, their faces entirely devoid of any sympathy, and seized Sylvester by his armpits.
Sylvester was a body without a soul, he offered no resistance whatsoever: merely a mass of collapsed flesh dragging his bare feet across the destroyed marble floor, leaving behind him a trail of humiliation as he was hauled toward the eternal darkness.
In that precise moment, as though a massive dam had finally collapsed after holding back its waters for so long, the crowds in the square erupted in cheering. It was no organized or political chant, it was a genuine roar from the depths of thousands of hearts.
"Marcus! The Lion has returned! Dex! Hero of Seiron! Marcus! Dex! Glory to the Williams family!"
Amid this joyful chaos and the tears filling the citizens' eyes, a young soldier, weeping from the intensity of his emotion and his joy, moved toward the great flagpole erected at the center of the square, overlooking the balcony.
With a swift and furious motion, he lowered Sylvester's new purple banner, which had been fluttering there, its owner never having completed his joy in it, and tore it with his sword. In its place, he raised the original, ancient family flag, the flag that had been absent for long months: a massive, terrifying golden lion roaring with strength against a backdrop as dark blue as the color of the night sky.
The flag rose slowly toward the summit, and the moment it arrived, a powerful and clean wind suddenly arose, making the flag billow high, fully unfurled, announcing to the entire world, and to the watching Empire, that the cloud of darkness had cleared, and that the city of Seiron had finally and definitively returned to its true masters.