Stanislav Skshetuski

Stanislav arrives at Zagloba's door as a near-double of his cousin Yan, so alike in face and bearing that Zagloba mistakes him at first glance. He is no mere messenger: he stood at Uistsie and watched fifteen thousand men dissolve into negotiations before a single shot was fired, and he recounts the betrayal with a soldier's exactness rather than a courtier's spin. His eyewitness testimony transforms the Swedish threat from vague anxiety into a concrete, shameful fact — the spark that pulls this circle of veterans back toward war.