The obsidian throne room held its breath, thick with the reek of copper blood, burnt ozone, and the cloying decay of lilies that seemed to bloom from Ryo's very presence. Akuma's boot pressed down, a glacier grinding Kuro's broken ribs into dust. Shiro knelt nearby, his amber eyes wide, fractured mirrors reflecting Kuro's agony and the monstrous satisfaction on his father's face. Ryo had just finished painting the masterpiece of Kuro's mother's death, the screams, the hounds, the hours of it, all laid at the feet of a six year old boy. The guilt, the crushing, soul annihilating weight of believing he'd caused her horrific end, had been Ryo's favourite leash for decades.
But something had snapped.
Not just bone. Something deeper. Something cosmic.
Kuro didn't scream. He didn't weep. A terrifying stillness descended upon him, deeper than the throne room's shadows. The torrent of pain from his jaw, his ribs, the thorned manacles tearing his wrists, it all receded, swallowed by a rising tide of something infinitely colder and more powerful: Pure, undiluted, universe scorching Hatred.
He moved.
Not a lunge born of desperation, but an eruption of contained fury. Chains of star forged iron, thick as a man's thumb and colder than the void, shrieked as he surged forward against them. The sound wasn't metal on metal; it was the protest of reality itself stressed by the force of his will. He didn't just strain; he flowed, a dark comet against gravity and agony, stopping only when the chains snapped taut, inches from the obsidian dais where his father sat, a monument to rot. Blood, black in the guttering torchlight, sheeted down his arms from the manacles, pooling hotly on the freezing floor where it sizzled and spat, releasing coils of acrid, metallic steam that stank of scorched void.
His head lifted. One eye was a ruin, swollen shut, crusted with blood and frozen tears. The other… the other was an open gateway to a dying star. No pupil, no iris… just a maelstrom of white gold fury, crackling with arcs of impossible energy that cast jagged, monstrous shadows on the mutilated constellations above. Blood streamed freely from his shattered jaw, painting his chin and neck crimson, but his voice, when it came, wasn't a rasp. It was a sonic avalanche, ground glass and thunder, vibrating the very air, making the torches recoil.
"YOU PATHETIC, WORM RIDDEN BAG OF FESTERING FUCKING SHIT!" The profanity wasn't shouted; it was projected, each syllable a hammer blow against the oppressive silence. "YOU THINK GUILT WILL BREAK ME? YOU THINK THAT ROTTING, MAGGOT SHIT BURDEN YOU HAD SEWN INTO MY SOUL WHEN I WAS A CHILD STILL HOLDS WEIGHT?" He laughed, a sound like glaciers calving in the heart of a supernova. "I'VE CARRIED THAT FUCKING ANVIL FOR YEARS! CARRIED THE SOUND OF HER SCREAMS YOU PUT THERE! CARRIED THE BELIEF THAT I KILLED HER! BUT YOU…"
He leaned forward, chains groaning in protest, his star blasted eye pinning Ryo, who had finally, finally lost that mask of bored contempt. A flicker of something primal, not fear, not yet, but the unease of a predator facing something unknown, crossed the King's face.
"YOU," Kuro spat, a gobbet of blood and phlegm landing with a sizzle near Ryo's boot, "ARE A CANCER. A SENTIENT PLAGUE. YOU FEED ON PAIN BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO FUCKING EMPTY TO FEEL ANYTHING ELSE!"
With a movement fuelled by rage that transcended physical limits, Kuro wrenched his right arm up against the biting chains. The muscles in his forearm stood out like steel cables, veins bulging black against skin gone corpse pale. He slammed his fist down onto his own left forearm, just below the elbow. Not to injure, but to expose. He rolled up the tattered, blood soaked sleeve of his ruined tunic, revealing the skin beneath.
There it was. The Royal Seal of the Oji Dynasty. Not a tattoo. A brand. Seared into his flesh when he was eight, a "gift" after his first "disciplinary correction" for questioning Temple doctrine. A snarling moon, crescent gaping, forever frozen in mid snarl, its lines thick and raised, the flesh around it puckered and pale. Ryo's mark. Ryo's claim. Ryo's leash.
Kuro didn't look at it. His burning eye remained locked on Ryo's. His free hand, slick with his own blood, dipped into a hidden fold of his torn tunic. It emerged clutching not a noble's dagger, but a shard of black ice. Not just any ice, it was ice from the sanctum, cold enough to burn flesh, sharpened to a razor edge on the whetstone of despair. It glinted with its own internal, malevolent light, reflecting the fury in Kuro's eye.
"THIS?" Kuro roared, pressing the freezing shard directly onto the centre of the snarling moon brand. The sound was horrific: a sizzle like fat on a griddle combined with the crackle of freezing cellular fluid. Smoke, smelling of burnt lilies and ozone, coiled upwards. The brand itself seemed to writhe under the assault, the moons snarl twisting in agony. "YOUR LEASH? YOUR FUCKING COLLAR?"
Ryo took an involuntary half step back, his obsidian eyes widening slightly. "Boy…" he began, a warning devoid of its usual power.
Kuro ignored him. His face contorted, not with pain from the ice shard searing his flesh, but with the ecstatic agony of liberation. "I AM DONE WEARING YOUR FILTH!"
With a roar that shook the foundations of the obsidian chamber, a sound ripped from the core of a collapsing star, Kuro dragged the ice shard across the branded moon.
It wasn't a cut. It was an excision. A cosmic amputation. The ice shard didn't just slice skin; it parted flesh and scar tissue with a sickening, wet schlllck. Dark arterial blood, shockingly vibrant against the pale skin and black ice, cascaded down his arm, not dripping, but pouring in a hot torrent. It hit the obsidian floor with a sound like acid on stone, hissing violently, sending up plumes of that acrid, void tainted steam. The blood didn't just pool; it seemed to boil where it landed, etching tiny, smoking craters into the polished black rock.
But the horror wasn't just the blood. It was the brand itself. Where the ice shard passed, the raised scar tissue of the moon didn't just peel away. It melted. Like wax held to a star's heart, the proud Oji symbol slumped, its lines blurring, its form dissolving into viscous, shimmering sludge that dripped with the blood. Beneath it, where unblemished skin should have been revealed… something else happened.
The raw, bleeding flesh reformed. Not into smooth skin, but into a constellation of scars. Tiny, intricate, interlocking lines, glowing faintly with an internal starlight the colour of dying embers. They formed a complex pattern: shattered chains, links snapped and scattered, dissolving not into nothingness, but into minute motes of pure stardust that rose from the wound like inverse snow, glittering in the dim light before winking out. It was a wound, yes, but it was also a map. A map written in pain and defiance, leading away from the Oji legacy, into the unknown dark.
The transformation was instantaneous and absolute. The physical leash was gone, replaced by a bleeding sigil of absolute rejection. The psychic weight, the guilt engineered chain Ryo had forged, shattered. Kuro stood straighter, despite Akuma's boot, despite the agony, radiating an aura of terrifying, unbound potential. The blood flowed, the steam rose, and the starlight scars pulsed.
"YOUR CHAINS ROT, OLD MAN," Kuro declared, his voice now terrifyingly calm, a whisper that carried further than any scream. It echoed with the vastness of the void. "LIKE EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH. THEY ARE RUST AND ASH. I. AM. FREE."
King Ryo Oji, the Butcher King, the architect of empires built on bones, recoiled. It wasn't a flinch; it was a full body jerk, a primal step backwards that cracked the heel of his boot against the dais step. His obsidian eyes, for the first time Shiro could ever recall, held genuine shock, rapidly curdling into something colder: fear. The sight of his symbol dissolving, of the stardust rising from his son's self inflicted wound, of the raw, cosmic severance in Kuro's burning eye… it bypassed cruelty and struck at the core of his control.
Kuro saw it. Saw the crack in the invincible façade. And he struck into it.
Before Akuma could react, before Ryo could compose himself, Kuro lunged the few inches his chains allowed. He didn't reach for a weapon. He gathered the blood and saliva pooling in his ruined mouth, mixed it with the pure, incandescent hatred burning in his soul, and spat.
It wasn't just phlegm. It was a globule of defiance, thick with blood, landing with wet finality directly on Ryo's cheek, just below his left eye. It sizzled faintly against the King's cold skin.
The insult was absolute. The desecration, profound. The throne room froze. Akuma's frost swirl ceased. Shiro's breath caught. Even the torches seemed to hold their flames.
Kuro laughed. Not the wild, unhinged sound from before. This was lower, darker, vibrating with the promise of annihilation. It echoed in the sudden silence, a sound that promised glaciers grinding continents to dust.
"YOUR HEIR?" The word was a curse. "YOUR LEGACY? YOUR ROTTING, BLOOD SOAKED THRONE?" He threw his head back, chains clanking, the starlight scars on his arm pulsing with his fury. "I WOULD RATHER BE FLESHED ALIVE BY ALGOL'S HOUNDS! I WOULD RATHER HAVE MY EYES CARVED OUT WITH A BLUNT CHISEL! I WOULD RATHER BURN TO FUCKING ASH AND HAVE MY CINDERS SCATTERED INTO THE VOID BETWEEN STARS THAN WEAR YOUR POISONED CROWN FOR A SINGLE HEARTBEAT!"
He leaned forward again, the intensity in his single eye like a physical force pressing against Ryo. "YOUR GRAVE, YOU SACK OF SENTIENT CANCER?" A bloody grin split his ruined face. "I WILL FIND IT. I WILL PISS ON IT. I WILL SHIT ON IT. AND I WILL DO IT WHILE THE STARS YOU CLAIM TO OWN ARE STILL FUCKING BURNING IN THE SKY!"
He drew a ragged, blood choked breath, gathering the final, irrevocable pronouncement.
"I RENOUNCE YOU!" The words weren't shouted; they were decreed, echoing with the finality of a slamming tomb door. "I RENOUNCE YOUR THRONE! YOUR NAME! YOUR BLOOD IN MY VEINS! EVERY ROTTING, STENCHING ASPECT OF YOUR BEING! I AM NO LONGER KURO OJI THE BLACK PRINCE!"
He paused, letting the renunciation hang, the silence heavier than the obsidian walls. Then, he spoke his new truth, a name forged in betrayal, carved in pain, and ignited by cosmic fury. A name designed to haunt Ryo's every waking moment and stalk his nightmares:
"I AM KURO, THE UNFORGED STAR!" The title crackled with power. "THE UNBOUND VOID! THE DYING LIGHT THAT WILL CONSUME YOUR KINGDOM OF SHADOWS!" His voice dropped to a venomous whisper that slithered through the frozen air. "AND I SWEAR ON THE ASHES OF MY MOTHERS CARVED OUT EYES, ON EVERY STAR YOU'VE EVER EXTINGUISHED… I WILL HUNT YOU. I WILL TEAR YOUR EMPIRE DOWN, STONE BY BLOOD SOAKED STONE. I WILL UNRAVEL EVERY LIE YOU'VE SPUN. AND I WILL STAND OVER YOU AS YOU DRAW YOUR LAST, RATTLING BREATH, AND WATCH YOU CHOKE ON THE RUBBLE OF EVERYTHING YOU EVER BUILT ON PAIN. YOUR REIGN ENDS IN MY LIGHT, FATHER. AND IT WILL BE A LIGHT THAT BURNS."
The final word, "BURNS," hung in the air, not an echo, but a lingering curse. Kuro, The Unforged Star, stood bathed in his own blood and the faint, dying ember glow of his self made constellation scar. He bled, he broke, but he was utterly, terrifyingly free. The leash was ash. The hunt was declared. And the obsidian throne room, once a monument to Ryo's suffocating power, now felt like the antechamber of his inevitable, violently promised doom. The air vibrated with the unsheathed fury of a son transformed into a weapon of celestial vengeance.
The silence after Kuro's declaration ;"I AM KURO, THE UNFORGED STAR!", wasn't silence at all. It was the pressure drop before a supernova. The obsidian air vibrated with the aftershock of his renunciation, thick with the coppery stench of his blood steaming on the floor, the ozone tang of expended cosmic fury, and the cloying decay of lilies that seemed to emanate from Ryo's frozen rage. Kuro stood, swaying slightly, a ruined monument of defiance, his self excised brand weeping ember bright stardust onto the polished black rock. Ryo, his cheek still smeared with Kuro's bloody spit, stared at his son not with paternal fury, but with the cold calculation of a strategist facing a newly weaponized threat. The leash was severed. The hound had fangs.
It was into this charged, shattered stillness that Akuma flowed. He moved like shadow given sentience and malice, his obsidian armour drinking the guttering torchlight, the frost swirling around him agitated, forming tiny, snapping jaws of ice. His star pupiled eyes, voids rimmed with cold fire, fixed not on the defiant prince, but on Shiro, still kneeling, bound, drowning in the revelations about Yuki and the horrific vision of Aki's impending death.
"Pathetic," Akuma hissed, the word slicing through the tension like a shard of black ice. His voice was ground glass soaked in venom. "All this noise. All this… bloody theatre." He stopped before Shiro, looking down at him with the dispassionate interest of a taxidermist examining a specimen. "And for what? A slum rat who doesn't even know his own mother's screams."
With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, something small and metallic clattered onto the obsidian floor between Shiro's knees. It wasn't a noble's dagger. It was a crude, bone handled skinning knife, the blade nicked and stained with old, dark fluids. The kind of tool used for gutting fish… or flaying skin.
"Yuki Aratani," Akuma purred, savouring the name like a rancid delicacy. He crouched, bringing his star pupiled gaze level with Shiro's wide, fractured amber eyes. The proximity was an assault, the smell of Akuma was ozone, grave dirt, and the metallic tang of old, congealed blood. "Your real mother. Pretty thing. For a heretic. Pity about the screaming. Went on for… oh, quite a while after the kindling caught." He tilted his head, a predator feigning curiosity. "You want to know her last words, gutter filth? Before the smoke stole her voice?"
Shiro couldn't breathe. The obsidian walls pressed in. The scent of burnt stardust and charred flesh, real or imagined?, flooded his nostrils. Yuki's phantom laughter, the ghostly touch of ink stained fingers, the lullaby… they all curdled into ash. His throat locked, a vise of grief and incipient rage squeezing tight. The locket in his bound hands felt like a branding iron, searing the starflower into his frostbitten palm. He clutched it tighter, the pain a desperate anchor.
Akuma leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that slithered into Shiro's ear like frozen oil. "'Tell my son…' he mimicked, a cruel parody of a dying woman's gasp, '…I'm sorry.' Sorry she birthed you? Sorry she left you to rot in the gutter? Sorry she was weak enough to burn?" He chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "Pathetic. Just like her spawn."
Inside Shiro's clenched fist, pressed against the locket, the crystal embedded in his palm pulsed. Not the agonizing flare of the star scar, but a deep, resonant thrum, like a single, powerful heartbeat echoing in a cavern. Thump. It vibrated up his arm, a counter rhythm to the frantic hammering of his own heart. Thump. It felt ancient. It felt like… acknowledgement.
"But worry not, little rat," Akuma continued, straightening slightly, his gaze flicking towards the fading frost window image of Aki's shack, where the swirling void figure still lingered. "You won't be motherless for long. Aki's been playing surrogate, hasn't she? Teaching you her filthy star lore? Carving her useless hopes into wood?" A slow, sadistic smile spread across Akuma's thin lips. "I think I'll return the favour. Before the frost takes her completely… I'll carve her."
Shiro's blood turned to ice water. No.
"Oh yes," Akuma murmured, his star pupils dilating with anticipation. "All that skin… covered in her precious little stars. Makes for a unique tapestry, don't you think? A testament to wasted devotion." He picked up the bone handled knife, turning it over in his gauntleted hand, the blade catching the torchlight with a dull gleam. "Maybe I'll start small. Send you… tokens. A fingertip first? The one she used to trace constellations on your heretic planks?" He mimed a delicate slicing motion. "Then another. And another. Let her watch. Let her understand the cost of defying the Temple. The cost of coddling… defective things."
Something inside Shiro SNAPPED.
The grief, the shock, the paralyzing fear, they didn't vanish. They were consumed. Incinerated by a rage so pure, so white hot, it felt like the core of a newborn star detonating in his chest. It flooded his veins with liquid fire, burning away the cold, the despair, the chains of helplessness.
"YOU TOUCH HER!" The roar tore from Shiro's constricted throat, raw and primal, a sound ripped from the depths of a wounded animal pushed beyond endurance. It wasn't just loud; it resonated with the thrumming pulse of the crystal in his palm, amplifying it into a physical force that made the nearby torches gutter violently. "YOU LAY ONE FUCKING FINGER ON HER, YOU STARVING, VOID SHIT CUNT, AND I SWEAR BY EVERY EXTINGUISHED STAR IN THIS ROTTING KINGDOM ILL HUNT YOU DOWN TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH AND NOTHING WILL SAVE YOU, YOU FUCKING PARASITE!"
He LUNGED. Not towards Akuma, but against his chains. He threw his entire weight forward with a violence born of absolute, unhinged fury. The star forged manacles, lined with their cruel, thorned ice, bit deep, tearing through already lacerated flesh. Blood, bright arterial crimson now, not sluggish black, sheeted down his forearms, spraying in arcs, hissing like acid where it struck the frost swirling around Akuma's boots. The pain was immense, a white hot agony shredding his wrists, but it was fuel. Pure, incendiary fuel.
"I'LL RIP OUT YOUR FUCKING STAR SHATTERED EYES WITH MY BARE, BLEEDING HANDS!" Shiro screamed, spittle flying, his amber eyes no longer fractured but blazing with the incandescent fury of a comet plunging into atmosphere. "I'LL SHOVE THEM SO FAR DOWN YOUR ROTTING THROAT YOU'LL SHIT GLITTERING GARBAGE FOR THE REST OF YOUR MISERABLE EXISTENCE! I'LL FEED YOUR SCREAMING CORPSE TO THE ALGOL HOUNDS AND LAUGH WHILE THEY TEAR YOUR OBSIDIAN HEART OUT YOU'RE A CANCER TO THIS WORLD!"
The vehemence, the sheer, unadulterated hatred radiating from the broken slum rat, gave even Akuma pause. The High Inquisitor's smirk faltered, replaced by a flicker of surprise, then cold, calculating interest. He took a half step back, not in fear, but reassessment. This wasn't just defiance; it was the birth cry of something dangerous.
"Defiant little bastard," Akuma murmured, regaining his composure, though his star pupils remained slightly dilated. "But you'll watch. Just like Yuki watched her pyre ignite. Just like the bitch who whelped the traitor prince watched my hounds tear out her throat." He gestured dismissively towards Kuro, who was still gasping under Ryo's malevolent gaze, but whose single open eye now burned with shared, impotent fury at Akuma's words.
Kuro forced his head up, blood bubbling on his lips. "Her name…" he choked, each word a ragged effort against broken ribs and Ryo's suffocating presence, "...was Kaya… you starved, motherless DOG. And her ghost…" He drew a wet, painful breath. "...will fucking HAUNT you. Every breath. Every shadow. She'll be the frost in your bones… the scream in your silent moments."
Ryo, his patience for his son's existence evidently exhausted, moved. Not with Akuma's predatory grace, but with the brutal, efficient fury of a man whose absolute control was being challenged. His petrified star wood sceptre, still smeared with Kuro's blood from the jaw strike, whipped down.
CRACK THUD!
It didn't hit Kuro's face this time. It slammed into his exposed ribs, right where Akuma's boot had been grinding. The sound was sickening, a wet, splintering impact. Kuro jack knifed, a strangled, animalistic cry ripped from him, all breath driven out in a spray of crimson mist. He collapsed forward onto the blood slick floor, retching, body wracked with silent, agonized spasms.
"ENOUGH!" Ryo's voice was a whip crack of pure, icy malice, silencing any further defiance. He glared down at Kuro's convulsing form, then swept his obsidian gaze over Shiro, still straining against his chains, wrists a ruin, eyes blazing with comet fire. "Your defiance is meaningless noise. It won't save your precious slum rats. It won't fill their empty bellies." His lips peeled back from his teeth in a rictus of pure contempt. "They'll starve, those vermin. Gnawing on their own shit stained stars carved on rotting wood. Choking on their useless hopes while the frost takes them, one by fucking one. Your rebellion ends here. In blood. In ice. In nothing."