Chương 195: A Ghost in the Palace

On the final night, before Dex made his way to the secret hideout to meet his father, there was one remaining matter he had not yet resolved. A matter unrelated to military strategies or the mustering of forces, but concerning something deeper and far more destructive: pure psychological warfare. Dex decided to make one last, intensely personal move, a move aimed at tearing apart Sylvester's arrogance and completely destabilizing his mental and psychological equilibrium before the actual battle began.

He wanted Sylvester to face his death already broken from within.

"I am going to bid my dear uncle good evening," Dex said to Lumia as he stood on the rooftop of a building facing the palace, a cold and scheming smile etched on his lips, while the winds played with his black cloak.

"Be careful, Dex, the palace tonight is swarming with demons," Lumia warned him with genuine concern.

"The Shadow Organization has deployed its finest killers, and Sylvester has doubled the guard around his wing to the point of obsession." Despite her warning, she raised her hands and traced complex magical symbols in the air.

"Void Silence Steps," she whispered, and wrapped a transparent aura around Dex's body: one that suppressed not only sound, but absorbed heat, shadow, and even the body's scent. With this exceptional magical support, Dex slipped toward the towering walls of the ducal palace. He leaped from wall to balcony like a black cat in a pitch-dark night. He reached the upper floor of Williams Palace, the most heavily fortified zone in the entire province.

The corridors were lit by magical torches and carpeted with thick red rugs that swallowed footsteps. Dex advanced with confident strides. Through Lumia's void magic, which he reinforced with intense concentration to suppress his own mana, he passed the personal guards as though he were nothing but a transient breath of cold air. He saw Shadow Organization killers standing like statues in the dark corners, wearing their tight black suits.

Their faces were rigid as the faces of the dead, and their trained senses were charged to the maximum to catch any strange mana pulse or suspicious movement. Dex walked directly past them, so close that his cloak almost grazed their swords. They felt nothing, not a blink from their eyes.

One of them, a scarred veteran killer, suddenly furrowed his brows and scratched his neck with his hand, as though he had felt a strange and inexplicable cold sting crawl down his spine, without realizing that death itself had just passed beside him. Dex continued until he reached his final destination: the massive door of Sylvester's private study. The study that had once served as his father Marcus's office, the space that Sylvester had defiled by sitting in it.

The door was a grand artistic masterpiece, crafted from rare black ebony wood and inlaid with engravings and decorations of pure gold depicting the family's victories. Dex stood before it in complete silence. From within, through the fine cracks, he could clearly hear Sylvester's voice. He was laughing loudly and boisterously, the laugh of a victor who believes he has toyed with fate.

He was speaking with his mercenary guard commander, exchanging toasts, talking about tomorrow's arrangements, how the coronation square would be decorated, how the crowds would bow before him, and how he would crush any clan that contemplated rebellion after what had happened to Elder Orgon. Dex stood there, his hand resting on the hilt of his dagger. He could have entered now. A single mana-augmented kick would shatter the door, and within three seconds his dagger would be lodged in Sylvester's throat.

It was far too easy given his current capabilities. But he stopped. A covert assassination in the dead of night would not be enough. A swift death was a mercy Sylvester did not deserve. If he killed him now, he might be viewed as a victim or martyr in the eyes of some nobles, and gang warfare might erupt in the city among his followers. No, Sylvester had to be defeated publicly in broad daylight, in the sight of all. He had to be humiliated.

And before all of that, he had to collapse psychologically, he had to taste the pure terror he had made others taste. Dex raised his index finger and concentrated mana with extreme slowness to avoid triggering any magical detection. He ignited his finger with a highly concentrated blue flame, compressed to an inconceivable degree until it resembled a burning, precise laser beam. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

And with the quiet composure of a terrifying artist, he began writing on the precious ebony wood of the door. He did not write words or childish threats, words can be erased. Instead he began carving a deep image. He carved the Old Lion's Crest.

Not the modern, modified crest Sylvester had adopted to conceal his inferiority complex, but the archaic original, the crest Marcus had used with pride in his youth during his first wars: a furious golden lion roaring savagely, standing on its hind legs on two crossed swords, surrounded by a plaited halo of flames. The solid wood burned in silence beneath the heat of his finger, melting like wax.

The faint smell of charring and the ozone scent left by the concentrated mana dissipated instantly thanks to the magical veil protecting him. He drew with absolute precision, drilling his message into the heart of the door's wood. When he finished the crest with meticulous exactness, he made his final touch, pressing his left palm to the center of the crest and releasing a pulse of blue flames, leaving the imprint of his hand carved and burned with a fire that would not easily go out.

He regarded his artwork with a cold and satisfied gaze, then withdrew as he had entered: retreating into the shadows step by step, descending from the balcony like a true ghost seen by no one, leaving behind nothing but the nightmare. On the morning of the following day, the awaited Coronation Day, Sylvester woke in an exceptional and supremely elated mood. The sun was shining despite scattered clouds.

He rose from his silken bed, ate his lavish breakfast, and donned his white ceremonial robe embroidered with gold thread, crafted specifically to make him appear like a saint or a miniature emperor. He stood before the tall mirror, arranged his hair, and contemplated the Lion medal on his chest. He felt he was the cleverest man in the world, the man who had seized everything without being forced to fight a real war.

He lifted his favorite morning wine goblet and headed toward the door of his wing to go out to the corridor and meet his commanders, to give them the signal to begin the joyous ceremonies. But when the guards opened the double doors from the outside, they did not bow. They did not offer a salute. Instead they froze in their places as though struck by lightning, their eyes wide with genuine terror, staring at the opposite door. The door of his study.

"What is this hesitation, you fools? Clear the way for the governor!" Sylvester barked arrogantly as he emerged from his wing, but he quickly stopped, then slowly followed their gazes. On the outer door of his study, the ebony door standing at the heart of the most heavily guarded and secure zone in the entire palace, Marcus Williams's old crest was carved deep into the wood.

It was not merely carved, it still glimmered with a faint blue magical radiance, a pure magical glow that had not extinguished even after hours had passed, and at its center was a clear handprint. Sylvester's fingers slipped slowly, and the precious crystal wine goblet fell from his hand, shattering on the marble floor, the red wine scattering like splatters of fresh blood around his feet.

Sylvester staggered backward with stumbling steps, his face draining of color at a terrifying speed, as though the blood had been siphoned entirely from his body to the point of death. His pupils dilated as he stared at the blue flames. This was no mere act of vandalism. It was a clear message, a silent scream penetrating his skull and telling him: I was here. I stood at your door while you slept and drank. I could have opened this door and slaughtered you in your bed like a pig. But I chose not to.

I chose to let you wake and live your final hours in absolute terror. I am inside your home, which you believe to be your fortress, breathing your air, and I know every one of your sins.

"How?!" Sylvester whispered in a strangled voice, before his whisper transformed into a hysterical scream that tore apart the morning's dignity.

"How?! How did someone reach this place?!" Sylvester lost every shred of his false royal composure and his manufactured coldness. In a single second he transformed from a confident ruler into a cornered and terrified animal.

"Where are the guards?! Where is the cursed Shadow Organization I pay a fortune for?! Traitors!" He drew his ceremonial sword from its scabbard and, in a fit of blind rage and complete paranoid madness, spun and stabbed the personal guard standing beside him directly in the neck. The guard fell convulsing in his blood amid the others' terror.

"You are all traitors! You are conspiring against me! Who let him in? Who opened the doors?!" Panic and chaos spread through the palace like wildfire. Sylvester began to suspect everyone. He ordered his soldiers to execute the entire night guard unit in the palace courtyard immediately without trial, and ordered the arrest of the Shadow Organization commander for interrogation.

Within a single hour, he changed the palace and city defense plan three consecutive times and ordered troops moved in a random fashion, exhausting the soldiers and confusing the commanders. He ran through the corridors like a madman, looking over his shoulder at every corner, expecting an assassin or a specter to emerge from the walls.

And miles away, sitting in complete calm on the edge of a high rooftop overlooking the ducal palace, Dex Williams was watching the chaos beginning to stir in the palace courtyards, observing the disordered movement of soldiers through a small magical scope. Dex smiled coldly, his blue eyes gleaming beneath the morning sun's rays.

"We have already begun," he murmured to himself, the wind carrying his words.

"I have broken your mind, Sylvester, and made you destroy your own defenses with your own hands. And now, now I will break your body."