"Five Seconds of Silence"

All present stood frozen, unable to process what had just happened. A dense, oppressive silence filled the courtroom.

It took five seconds—five seconds of pure silence, five silly seconds—for the audience, for everyone present, to process the reality.

After those five seconds, as if a spell had been broken, Roland's head separated from his body. The torso, once imposing, knelt slowly, like a felled tree, before collapsing to the ground with a heavy, dull thud. The sound of the head rolling across the stone floor, grotesque and unnatural, echoed through the courtroom. Roland's glazed eyes, once full of defiance, now stared at nothing, fixed on a distant, unreachable point.

The great bear of Dunkel, the legendary Devil's Hand, lay inert on the floor of that fateful courtroom. Life, strength, indomitable fury... all extinguished in a single, terrible instant.