Chương 206: The Voice from Above

The great palace square was drowned in a smothering silence, a heavy, terrifying silence like the silence of forgotten graveyards. The single word, "Liar!", which had thundered from the sky like a decisive divine verdict, was not mere sound waves swimming through the air. It was an invisible hammer that fell with its full weight to shatter the facade of falseness that Sylvester Williams had built with meticulous care.

That word had pierced the magical amplifiers, reverberated between the high palace walls, struck the square's stones, and rebounded to settle in the hearts of fifty thousand people who had been holding their breath. Even nature itself seemed to participate in this dramatic scene. The raging winds, which had been striking the purple flags with violence moments before, stopped suddenly.

The thick gray clouds froze in their place, and the light rain droplets stopped falling, as though the entire cosmos had held its breath to witness what would happen in this pivotal moment in Seiron's history. Sylvester, who seconds ago had been standing with the peacock's pride, his hand raised toward the sky in triumph, ready to crown himself Duke and absolute ruler, froze completely where he stood.

The features of his face, which had been overflowing with confidence and arrogance, transformed in a fraction of a second into a distorted canvas mixing absolute stupefaction with pure terror. His raised hand remained suspended in the air, clutching the dead Heart of Seiron necklace, while his lower jaw relaxed slowly. His eyes, which had been sweeping the crowds with haughtiness and contempt, widened until they nearly left their sockets.

They became glassy and empty of life, staring at the void before them, unable to process or absorb what his ears had captured. His mind, which had been weaving complex conspiracies, stopped functioning, incapable of finding any logical explanation for the voice of his nephew whom he had personally ordered killed and whose body he had confirmed. In the balcony's corner, Supreme Inspector Croft was the only one who did not lose his composure, though surprise had reached him too.

He did not move from his velvet chair, but his left eyebrow rose slightly, and his neutral gaze shifted to a look of deep and serious interest. He leaned slightly forward, his gray eyes sweeping the sky, recognizing that the tedious play had finally transformed into a performance worthy of watching. In the midst of this terrifying stillness, broken only by the flapping of some rain-soaked flags wrapping around their poles, a laugh rang out. It was no ordinary laugh.

It was cold, icy, mocking, and provocative to the absolute limit. The laugh pierced the remnants of the wind's noise and whistling and reverberated through the square like a sharp blade cutting silk. It was not the laugh of a madman or someone who had lost his mind, it was the laugh of a person completely certain of himself, someone who holds all the game's threads, and who enjoys watching his adversary writhing in his snares.

"What a moving address, Uncle..." The voice came from above, and specifically from the direction of the ancient, towering clock tower that overlooked the palace balcony like a colossal guardian. The voice carried a clearly aristocratic tone, yet blended with the roughness of battles and the fire of suppressed fury. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The voice continued, its tone amplified by magic to reach every ear: "It is very sad, truly and remarkably pitiful, that you stand before this great people, to announce with crocodile tears the death of someone, to hold a formal mourning for him, and to lament the severing of his bloodline... while he still breathes the air of this city, and even stands above your head, watching you from the highest point of his home that you have defiled with your treachery and your filth!"

Thousands of heads in the square moved like waves of a turbulent sea struck by a sudden earthquake. The gazes of the common people, the merchants, and the clan leaders turned, along with the gazes of the palace guards who raised their lances in confusion, and Inspector Croft, and Sylvester himself who turned with a terrifying slowness as though his neck were made of dry wood, all of them looked toward the top of the ancient clock tower.

There, on the edge of the large brass clock's giant minute hand, where no ordinary human could stand balanced, a young man was standing. He wore black leather armor, crafted from treated dragon scales, gleaming with a lethal dark luster reflecting the pale light. His dark cloak, frayed at its edges, billowed violently behind him in the high winds, like the wings of a demon just descended from the sky to claim souls.

But what stole every breath, what made the entire square gasp in terror and awe, was not his clothing, nor his dangerous stance on the clock's hand. It was the aura surrounding his body. A massive aura of celestial blue flame, pure, clear, and blazing like the heart of a dying star. The flames danced around his body with vitality, not burning him, but coiling around him like a living armor, emitting a faint, continuous sound resembling the hiss of electricity or the crackling of torn air.

The young man raised his right hand, sheathed in a silver-reinforced leather glove, with extreme slowness toward his face. He gripped the terrifying metal mask covering the lower half of his face and his left eye. With a slow, theatrical, deliberately calculated motion designed to destroy his uncle's nerves, he removed the mask and threw it into the air.

The black metal mask fell hundreds of meters below, cutting through the silence, to strike the white marble paving of the square with a resonant, sharp, harsh metallic sound: CLANG!, like a bell announcing the commencement of the trial. The face appeared. It was a pale face with sharp features, yet what was most striking were the eyes. Two blue eyes deep as the ocean's depths, now radiating the phoenix's blazing radiance, carrying a gaze of contempt, derision, and boundless resolve. It was Dex Williams.

No longer the weak heir easily manipulated. And certainly not that torn corpse which Sylvester had claimed was left to rot in the forest. He was a warrior upon whom death had been imposed, and who had returned from it to exact retribution.

"Dex?!" Sylvester screamed in a strangled, high, and cracking voice, as though an invisible hand of ice had coiled around his throat and squeezed it with force. His feet stepped backward with unsteady steps. His right leg struck with violence the small, decorated wooden table on which the celebration wine goblets had been placed.

"Impossible! This, this is impossible! You are dead! I saw the blood reports! The forest swallowed you!" Sylvester began to rave, his balance completely lost. The lavish golden goblet fell from his violently trembling hand. The goblet struck the balcony's marble floor and the dark red wine poured out, flowing slowly like a spreading pool of fresh blood at the tyrant's feet.

The empty goblet rolled slowly, emitting an irritating, intermittent sound whose echo reverberated through the still-working magical amplifiers for the entire people to hear: the sound of their self-proclaimed ruler's collapse and confusion. Dex smiled from atop the tower and looked at the wine pool at his uncle's feet, then said in a resonant, deep voice filled with mana's power, like a judge reading out a verdict:"You thought you had rid yourself of me in the darkness of that forest, Sylvester.

You thought your treachery had buried me. But in truth, with these very two hands of yours, you awakened something that should have remained sleeping in the blood of the Williams line. You awakened the fire that will consume you." Dex raised his gleaming Crystal Sword, pointing its blade directly at Sylvester.

"Today, Sylvester, your clock has stopped."