The air in the hidden warren didn't just freeze; it screamed. Hoarfrost exploded across the roughhewn walls with the sound of shattering glass, jagged white lightning bolts spreading faster than thought. The lone lantern's flame guttered and died, plunging the cavern into near total darkness, broken only by the frantic crimson pulse of the Twin Star scars on Shiro and Kuro's forearms and the icy constellations swirling in Ryota's and Corvin's eyes. Breath misted and froze instantly, falling like diamond dust. A wave of absolute, soul numbing cold rolled forth from the tunnel Mira had indicated, the passage meant to be their escape route, carrying a sound like a million frozen voices whispering in unison, an echo of the Frostway's suffocating dread and the Garden's petrified screams. Beneath it, the horrifyingly distinct scrape scrape scrape of crystalline claws on stone grew louder, closer.
"It ends where it began." Shiro and Kuro's voices, grim and perfectly synchronized, hung in the sudden, suffocating silence that followed their declaration. The words weren't defiance; they were grim acceptance, a recognition of the nightmare circling back to claim them.
Then chaos erupted.
"LIGHT! NOW!" Ryota's roar shattered the paralysis. He surged forward, a mountain of scarred plate and fury, planting himself between the encroaching darkness and the group. Starbreaker ripped from its harness, the massive blade flaring with Polaris light, a sudden beacon that pushed back the shadows, revealing the horror advancing from the tunnel mouth.
It wasn't a Hound. It was wrongness given form. A shifting, multi limbed silhouette woven from jagged shards of absolute zero ice and solidified void shadow. It had no distinct shape, flowing like spilled ink across the frozen floor, but the claws, dozens of them, needle sharp, crystalline, scraping the stone with that awful sound, were terrifyingly real. Eyes, or voids that served as eyes, pulsed with a sickly blue white light deep within its shifting mass. The cloying sweetness of decaying lilies, thick as Nyxara's Garden, washed over them, mixed with the sterile reek of deep space.
Mira shrieked, stumbling back, clutching her fractured crow lens. "The cold! It's thinking! Hungry! So hungry!" Her crow let out a deafening KRAWWK!, wings beating frantically against the unnatural freeze.
Juro was already moving, a shadow with knives. He darted low, not towards the main horror, but towards the periphery where the frost was rapidly spreading up the walls, seeking to encase them. His blades flashed, hacking at the encroaching ice tendrils with desperate speed. "Don't let it seal us in! Move! Find another way!"
Corvin didn't shout. He flowed like oil on water towards the advancing entity. His gloved hand, bearing the dark stone ring that seemed to devour the scant light, snapped upwards. Not towards the creature, but towards the ceiling above it. He didn't snap his fingers; he twisted his wrist. There was no sound, but a massive, ice encrusted stalactite directly above the shifting void form detonated inward. Frozen shrapnel and tons of rock hammered down onto the creature, driving it back into the tunnel entrance with a screech of shattered ice and furious, subsonic vibration. The ground shook. Dust and ice rained down.
The ring. That fucking ring. The thought was a jagged ice shard in Kuro's mind, piercing through the blinding agony radiating from his corrupted arm and the terror of the advancing void. As Corvin moved, the ring glinted dully in the Polaris light, the dark stone absorbing the radiance around it. Where…? It wasn't just familiar; it was a ghost from a half remembered nightmare, a shape glimpsed in forbidden archives his father had once drunkenly bragged about melting down. Oji vaults? Before Ryo purged them? A sigil of the Old Families? Gelidus? His mind scrabbled, a battlefield choked with pain and static. The heavy setting, the way it seemed to drink light… Mother? Did she…? The slippery memory vanished, drowned instantly by a fresh, searing lance of agony as the frost tendrils in his arm pulsed violently, reacting to the proximity of the Blight entity. Never mind just the Ice fucking with me again. Kuro dismissed it as an illusion created by the agony.
Haruto was beside Shiro, his starlit dagger humming, its light a thin silver shield against the encroaching cold. "Shiro Kuro! The scars! Can you push it back? Like in the cavern?" His voice was tight, analytical even amidst the terror.
Shiro gritted his teeth against the white hot fire grinding in his fused wrists. The scared palm pulsed erratically, resonating with the entity's entropy of cold. "Kuro! Now! Harmony, not force!" He thrust his scarred palm forward, not at the creature Corvin had momentarily stalled, but at the wave of absolute cold radiating from it, threatening to freeze their blood solid. He focused not on destruction, but on barrier, on the memory of Aki's hand clutching his, on the shared oath burning in his communion stone.
Kuro gasped, staggering. The static in his arm was a deafening roar, the frost tendrils writhing beneath his skin like trapped serpents tasting their kin. Harmony. Not force. Shiro's words cut through the chaos. He slammed his good hand against Shiro's outstretched arm, palm to scarred forearm. The contact sent a jolt through them both, Shiro's agony, Kuro's invasive cold, their shared terror and defiance.
FZZZZTTT WHUMPPP!
A ragged helix of swirling crimson and amber energy, laced with visible sonic distortions, flared into existence just as the wave of devouring cold hit. It was still raw just like every other time a last resort; it was raw, desperate, fuelled by immediate peril. The helix screamed as the absolute cold slammed into it, ice crystals forming instantly on its surface, cracks spiderwebbing through the helix.
The backlash was immense it took a few seconds to kick in but once it did.
Shiro felt the agony laced with death as white hot agony detonated in his nerve flayed wrists. It felt like the scar tissue was tearing open again, exposing raw, screaming flayed nerve endings to liquid nitrogen. The bones within, fused into a permanent, aching mass, vibrated at a frequency that threatened to shatter them into dust. He felt the crystal in his palm superheat, burning his flesh from the inside, a molten brand searing his life force. His vision swam with black spots edged with crimson fire. Every tendon in his arms felt stretched to snapping, muscles locking in sympathetic torment. A guttural scream tore from his throat, raw and ragged, echoing the shield's sonic distortion. TOO MUCH! IT'S RIPPING ME APART!
Kuro felt the invasive frost in his arm EXPLODED in response. It wasn't just spreading; it was digging. Needles of pure, alien cold burrowed deeper into marrow, scraping along nerve pathways with the sound of broken glass grinding on bone. The static buzz wasn't noise; it was a physical violation, a million insectile legs scrabbling inside his veins. He felt the grey translucence surge past his elbow like spilled poison, skin tightening, becoming brittle parchment over frozen stone. A fresh wave of nausea, thick and metallic, rose in his throat as the Blight feasted on the volatile energy they unleashed, mapping the pathways with predatory glee. His corrupted hand spasmed uncontrollably, fingers clawing at empty air, tendons standing out like frozen cables under impossible strain. He choked back vomit, tasting ozone and decay. IT'S EATING ME! FROM THE INSIDE!
But the helix held, barely, turning the lethal wave into a bone aching chill that still stole their breath but didn't instantly freeze them solid.
"THROUGH HERE!" Juro yelled from the opposite side of the chamber. He'd hacked through a curtain of thick, frozen roots partially concealing a narrow fissure in the rock. "Go! GO!"
Ryota didn't hesitate. "MIRA! HARUTO! NOW!" He grabbed Mira, practically throwing her towards the fissure. Haruto was right behind, his dagger flickering, slicing at ice tendrils trying to seal the opening. Corvin gave one last twist of his ringed hand towards the tunnel entrance where the void entity was already reforming, shoving another section of rockfall down. He then turned and flowed towards the fissure, a silent, dark shadow.
"Shiro! Move!" Kuro rasped, shoving Shiro towards the fissure. The shield flickered and died as they broke contact. The wave of cold hit them fully, stealing Shiro's breath, making his fused bones shriek. They stumbled after the others, scrambling through the jagged fissure just as crystalline claws scraped the stone where they'd stood moments before.
They spilled into a narrower, lower tunnel, the air marginally less frigid but still biting. The sounds of the void entity's frustrated screeches and the grinding of rock echoed behind them, muffled by the collapse Corvin had triggered. They ran, a ragged, pain wracked group, guided only by the pulsing light of their scars and Ryota's Polaris gaze. Kuro clutched his corrupted arm, the grey pallor now past his elbow, the static a constant, maddening counterpoint to his ragged breathing. Shiro cradled his wrists, every jarring step sending fresh bolts of agony up his arms, each impact a hammer blow on raw nerves.
Mira, guided by fragmented crow visions and whispered memories from the avian chorus only she could hear, led them through a series of twisting, downward sloping passages. Finally, she stopped before a section of the tunnel wall that looked no different from any other, rough, damp stone crusted with hoarfrost.
"Here," she whispered, her voice raw. She placed a hand flat against the stone, her fingertips tracing a pattern invisible to others. "Old barracks. Lady Veyne's. Sealed long ago. The crows remember... a hidden way." Her fractured lens caught the faintest glimmer on the stone, a stylized hearth flame intertwined with a star, etched with fading precision.
Ryota stepped forward, his Polaris eyes widening. Recognition, sharp and painful, etched lines of grief onto his weathered face. "Elara..." he breathed, the name thick with memory. He placed his massive, gauntleted palm directly over the faint sigil, the metal scraping softly against the frozen stone. With a groan of long unused mechanisms protesting the frost, and a shower of ice dust like frozen tears, a section of the wall slid inwards and then aside. A wave of stale, cold air rushed out, carrying the scent of old leather, dry rot, faint woodsmoke, and the ghost of lamp oil.
They stumbled through into a cavernous space. Ryota's Polaris light flared, illuminating Lady Elara Veyne's Sky Hearth Barracks. It was a sanctuary reclaimed by time and frost. Low stone platforms lined the walls, each bearing neatly folded, thick wool bedding, now dust laden sculptures under rime ice. Wooden weapon racks stood sentinel, empty save for a few training staves leaning precariously, their wood bleached pale by cold and age. A massive central hearth, cold and filled with decades of compacted, frozen ash, dominated the space like a dead heart. Tapestries hung on the walls, faded masterpieces depicting celestial maps, swirling nebulae in vibrant sapphire and amethyst, and constellations Haruto recognized, Kaya's intricate work. One large tapestry showed the magnificent Star Tree in full bloom, heavy with bioluminescent flowers under a vibrant night sky, just as Ryota had described it, a stark contrast to the weeping, poisoned corpse they'd fled in the Garden. The air hung heavy, not just with cold, but with the palpable ghosts of camaraderie, disciplined study, and the unique warmth of a place dedicated to protecting wonder. Faint scratches on the stone floor near the hearth might have been from booted feet practicing drills, now filled with ice. The silence here was profound, layered over the memory of laughter and earnest debate.
"This was her 'Sky Hearth'," Ryota said, his voice thick, echoing slightly in the vast, cold space. He gestured around, his Polaris light tracing the faded tapestries, the empty racks. "Not just soldiers. Stargazers. Archivists. Engineers. Protectors of the celestial currents Kaya charted. Elara believed joy was a shield against the dark... and trained her people to be the flame." He walked to the cold hearth, placing a gauntleted hand on the soot blackened stone mantle. His knuckles, bruised and scraped from the Frostway fight, were bone white against the dark stone. "She hosted the last Star Fête here. Weeks before Kaya vanished. Laughter shook the rafters. Spiced wine flowed... starlight danced with the blossoms..." His voice hitched. He slammed a fist against the hearthstone, the impact a hollow THUD that echoed like a funeral drum in the stillness. "Now it's just another frozen tomb. Another exhibit in Nyxara's gallery of despair."
They collapsed onto the cold stone platforms. Shiro leaned back against the wall, the rough, icy stone biting through his thin shirt. The adrenaline was gone, leaving only the raw, throbbing agony in his wrists and a hollow exhaustion that felt like his marrow had been replaced with lead. Every breath Kuro took was a visible, shuddering effort, his face ashen, sweat freezing anew on his brow despite the barracks chill. He clutched his corrupted arm, the grey translucence now visibly pulsing past his elbow, the skin stretched tight and brittle. The static buzz was a constant, maddening drone, punctuated by sharp, internal jabs of cold agony that made him flinch.
The desperate flare of power during the shield hadn't just been volatile; it had been mutually destructive. The backlash wasn't abstract; it was a living, screaming thing within them.
Shiro: His wrists weren't just aching; they were crying. The fused bone fragments felt like shards of broken glass grinding against each other with every micro movement, sending white hot, nerve flaying agony radiating up his forearms into his shoulders. The scar tissue itself burned as if freshly cauterized, the crystal in his palm a throbbing ember of pain. He could feel microscopic fissures in the fused bone, tiny fault lines stressed to breaking by the uncontrolled surge. Phantom sensations of the thorn manacles tearing his flesh anew ghosted over the scars. He cradled his arms to his chest, knuckles white, teeth gritted against the groan threatening to escape. Broken. Useless. A cracked vessel leaking power and pain.
Kuro: The invasive frost hadn't just advanced; it had digested the surge. It felt like the tendrils had grown barbs, hooking deeper into muscle fibre and nerve bundles. The static buzz wasn't just noise; it was a million tiny, icy teeth chewing on his synapses, whispering promises of numb surrender directly into his consciousness. A fresh tremor, utterly independent of his will, wracked his corrupted arm, fingers spasming into a claw like shape. The grey translucence had a faint, sickly sheen, mirroring the petrified noblewomen more closely. He could feel the cold fire spreading into the joint of his shoulder, a glacial termite burrowing towards his heart. He hunched over, pressing his good hand hard against the corruption as if he could physically hold it back, his breath coming in ragged, pain torn gasps. Fuel. I'm just fucking fuel for it. A walking weak spot.
Corvin's words from the warren echoed in the cold air, sharper than Starbreaker's edge: "This power you unleashed? Lethal? Yes. But it's a wild beast. Unbroken. Uncontrollable. Not like this. Charging out now? It's suicide... You are NOT READY."
Shiro looked down at his trembling, ruined hands. He'd roared promises of tearing Akuma apart, but when faced with the Blight entity, his power had been a clumsy, self destructive flare that nearly shattered him and fed the corruption devouring Kuro. A burden. The thought was a glacial spike driven into his gut. I'm a liability. My power breaks me as much as it might break the enemy. Kuro... He looked at the prince, seeing the same hollowed out understanding in his single eye.
Kuro met his gaze. There was no defiance now, only a raw, shared humiliation. He flexed the fingers of his corrupted hand; they responded sluggishly, jerkily, like poorly strung marionette limbs. "That... thing we did," Kuro rasped, each word scraping his damaged ribs like gravel. "It wasn't a power. It was a fucking seizure. For both of us." He looked at his arm with utter revulsion. "It feasted on it, Shiro. I felt it get stronger. Hungrier. Every time we use it like that... uncontrolled... we feed the enemy and cripple ourselves." He slammed his good fist weakly against his thigh in frustration. "Vorag won't need knives. He'll just point his Hounds at us and let our own fucking power tear us apart!" The admission hung heavy, thick with shame and the chilling echo of Corvin's warning, a verdict on their crippling weakness.
Ryota paced before the dead hearth, Starbreaker's light casting long, agitated shadows that danced over the faded tapestries of stars. "Vorag won't stop hunting. Akuma desecrates Kaya's sky now. The Blight chews the Warrens' foundations now." His Polaris gaze swept over Shiro and Kuro, not with accusation, but with the crushing, undeniable weight of reality. "The Observatory is the key. But walking into Vorag's killing ground like this?" He gestured at their ruined states, Shiro cradling his shattered wrists, Kuro hunched over his corrupted arm. "It's not courage. It's signing our death warrant. And theirs." He nodded towards Mira, Juro, Haruto. "A betrayal of everyone counting on us." The unspoken words hung heavier, colder than the barracks air: A betrayal of Kaya. Of Elara. Of the light they died for.
Haruto, checking Mira for frostbite on her fingertips, spoke without looking up, his voice taut. "Corvin spoke truth. Volatile power is a double edged blade turned inward. The Plaza is a fortress woven with frost magic and Temple fanaticism. Vorag anticipates rage, not precision. We need mastery." He finally met their eyes, his gaze sharp as his starlit dagger. "Or we fail. Utterly. Catastrophically."
Juro, wiping frost from his blades with a scrap of hide, nodded grimly. "Power is great. But against trained killers with steel and ice magic? power just delays the inevitable." He pointed a knife tip at Shiro's wrists, then Kuro's arm. "What you got in there? It's like finding a Blade sharp at starbreaker in a scrap heap. Powerful? Fuck yes. But without knowing how to aim it, without being strong enough to hold it... it blows up in your face. Which then becomes a liability."
Mira nodded weakly, her crow ruffling its feathers against the cold. "The paths to the Plaza... they are cracks in ice. They need... quiet. Control. A single, focused spark. Not... not a wildfire that burns the hand that holds it."
Shiro closed his eyes. He saw Aki's terrified face in Mira's vision, superimposed over Akuma's mimed slicing motion. He saw the frost creeping up the stool leg in their shared nightmare. He felt the phantom grind of bone in his wrists and the invasive chew of the frost in Kuro's arm. His fury was a cold, hard knot, but it was useless, dangerous, without focus. Weak. He was weak. Kuro was vulnerable. Together, untrained, they were a danger to themselves and the fragile hope clinging to them. Corvin was right. Ryota was right. They weren't ready. They were a burden.
He opened his eyes, meeting Kuro's haunted gaze. "We're not strong enough," Shiro stated, the words tasting like frozen ash. "Not like this. We're a crack in the wall. A flaw in the blade."
Kuro flinched but didn't look away. He gave a single, sharp nod, the movement tight with pain. "Yeah. We are." He looked down at his corrupted arm, the sickly pulse beneath the grey skin, then back at Shiro, a spark of grim, desperate determination igniting in the depths of his despair. "So we fix it. Here. Now. Before that fucking void fucker sniffs us out or Vorag kicks down the door."
Ryota stopped pacing. He looked at the faded tapestries, the cold hearth, the empty training staves. A flicker of his aunt's fierce warmth, her belief in honed skill and joyful defiance, seemed to linger in the very stones. "This place... Elara trained her Sky Hearth here. Honed minds and bodies to protect the light. Maybe... maybe it remembers." He turned to Shiro and Kuro, his voice shifting from desperate commander to resolute general issuing a vital, non negotiable order. "You train. You learn control. You master that storm inside you. Haruto, Juro, Mira, secure this place. Find water. Scout the immediate tunnels for signs of pursuit. Corvin..." He looked at the cloaked figure who stood observing a tapestry of the Corvus constellation, his ringed hand resting lightly on the stone. "Paths. We need to know the ways out, and the ways they might come in. How long?"
Corvin's hood tilted slightly. Within its depths, the swirling stars seemed to pulse. He pressed his palm flat against the barracks wall, feeling its resonance. "The frost seeks. Vorag hunts. But these stones... they hold old wards. Faint, but present. Echoes of the Sky Hearth's purpose." He paused, listening to the deep silence. "A day. Perhaps two. The void's hunger presses close. Use the time. Or perish." His distorted voice offered no comfort, only the stark currency of survival.
As Haruto, Juro, and Mira moved to secure the perimeter, Ryota began methodically checking old storage alcoves carved into the barracks walls, his Polaris light probing the shadows for anything usable. Corvin drifted silently along the perimeter, his gloved hand tracing the frozen stone, seemingly communing with the hidden pathways within.
Shiro pushed himself upright, ignoring the scream from his wrists, a sound that felt like it originated in his own bones. He walked to the centre of the barracks floor, near the dead hearth. Kuro followed, each step a careful negotiation with his grinding ribs and the invasive cold chewing his nerves. They faced each other, the air crackling not with power, but with the shared, humiliating weight of their insufficiency and the visceral memory of the backlash.
The ring... Kuro's gaze flickered to Corvin again, the familiar unfamiliar shape a cold stone in his mind. Later. Survive first. Become less of a liability.
Shiro held up his scarred palm, the crystal pulsing faintly, a molten coal burning against the raw nerves beneath the scar tissue. "Harmony," he said, his voice raw but steady, laced with the pain he forced down. "Not force. Control the wildfire. Make it a blade we can hold without burning to ash."
Kuro raised his left hand, the crimson scar flaring weakly, a guttering candle against the glacial dark spreading in his right arm. He took a slow, agonizing breath, trying to push past the static scraping like broken glass in his veins, to find the cleaner, fiercer pulse of their bond beneath the invasive cold. "Just... try not to blow us both into frozen chunks before Vorag gets the chance, Slum Rat," he managed, a ghost of dark humour masking the tremor of pain and effort.
The training arc began not with a surge of power, but with a sputter of agony and focus. A tiny, unstable spark of amber light flickered erratically above Shiro's palm, snuffing out almost instantly as a fresh wave of grinding pain lanced up his arm. Across from him, Kuro's brow furrowed in intense concentration, a bead of sweat tracing a path through the grime on his temple despite the cold. A faint crimson glow answered from his scar, flared, then dimmed as a violent tremor wracked his corrupted limb, forcing a choked gasp from his lips. In the frozen silence of Elara Veyne's barracks, amidst the ghosts of stargazers and protectors, the Twin Stars, humbled, hurting, and terrifyingly aware of their fragility, began the desperate, painful work of forging their chaotic, self destructive power into a weapon worthy of Kaya's legacy. The crucible wasn't the Observatory yet; it was here, in their own broken bodies and the echoing stillness of a sanctuary reclaimed from ice and time, where every flicker of power was paid for in searing agony. The path ahead remained shrouded in frost and shadow, guarded by Vorag's hunters and Nyxara's nightmares, but the first, vital step, the excruciating acknowledgment of weakness and the resolve to overcome it, spark by painful spark, had been taken in the cold, remembered hearth of defiance.