Shiro and Kuro lay broken on the freezing stone of Elara Veyne's tomb sanctuary, the void entity's crystalline claws a descending forest of death inches from their flesh. The scrape scrape scrape was the drumbeat of their extinction. Shiro saw only Aki's frail body; Kuro tasted only the ash of his own futility. Is this it? The thought was a frozen stone in both their guts. Pathetic.
Then, light.
Time didn't slow; it shattered. For Shiro and Kuro, prone on the soul stone, the universe contracted to the descending lattice of crystalline claws and the suffocating certainty of extinction. The scrape scrape scrape wasn't just sound; it was the rasp of a coffin lid sealing, vibrating in their marrow. Then, defiance erupted in light and fury.
Haruto Isamu didn't merely move; he translocated. One fractured instant, he was a tense silhouette guarding the fissure, his starlit dagger a low, silver hum against the gloom. The next, he was a meteor forged from cold resolve, streaking through the vortex of swirling dust and ice crystals dislodged by Corvin's detonation. The air itself cracked in his supersonic wake, a whip snap of displaced vacuum. His path wasn't tactical; it was geometric inevitability. He placed himself not near Shiro, but precisely within the lethal convergence point of the void claws, his back momentarily eclipsing the fallen twin. His dagger, Luminae gifted to him by his late mother, wasn't raised for a parry; it was braced horizontally in both hands, low and angled, a slender, gleaming barricade against tidal force. The Polaris light reflected in his wide, analytical eyes wasn't fear; it was the terrifying clarity of a terminal equation solved: Intercept vector optimal. Mass displacement insufficient for full deflection. Probability of fatal compromise: 92.7%. Probability of primary target survival with intervention: 38.4%. Necessary loss. He hit the ground in a controlled skid, boots shrieking against frost rimed stone, directly absorbing the killing vector meant for Shiro. Luminae flared with desperate, incandescent brilliance, not as a weapon, but as a focal point for his own life force, channelled into the blade's core. He anchored, muscles coiling like steel springs beneath his tunic, bracing for the impact that would shatter bone and star metal alike. "DOWN!" The command wasn't a shout; it was the crack of glacial calving, sharp, absolute, and utterly devoid of doubt. It demanded submission to survival, even as he became the living shield, etched in desperate silver against the devouring dark. The void claws, mere inches from his chest, pulsed with sickly light, casting long, jagged shadows across his determined face.
Simultaneous, yet from a diametrically opposed axis of desperation, Juro detonated. He wasn't shadow; he was unleashed kinetic fury. Propelled by coiled power in his legs and a roar ripped from a place deeper than strategy, he launched from behind the skeletal ribs of a shattered fungal column. His target wasn't the entity's core, but the lethal focus pinning Kuro. Leather clad shoulder met coalescing shadow ice not with technique, but with the brutal, concussive finality of a siege engine. The impact was a sickening CRUNCHHHHH, a sound felt in the teeth, spraying frozen shrapnel like diamond hail. Juro grunted, a harsh expulsion of breath fogging instantly in the void chill, the impact jolting through his shoulder with white hot agony. Bone protested, cartilage screamed, but his forward momentum was a force of nature. Even as pain threatened to buckle him, his right hand was a piston. The scavenged dagger, its edge honed by relentless pragmatism, didn't seek elegance or a killing blow. It sought carnage. It plunged deep, not into yielding flesh, but into the shifting, viscous wrongness of the joint shadow where the cluster of limbs merged with the entity's torso. The sensation was horribly alien, grating resistance, then a sudden, yielding SHLUCKKKK as it buried itself to the cross guard in the freezing, semi solid void flesh. "MOVE, YOU ROYAL FUCK UP!" Juro roared, the sound raw, guttural, stripped of its customary icy disdain, vibrating with pure, protective fury that surprised even him. He didn't pause. Planting his lead boot, ignoring the searing, invasive cold radiating up the dagger's hilt and numbing his fingers, he wrenched the blade sideways and down with every ounce of strength and leverage his compact frame could muster. Tendons stood out on his neck like frozen ropes, veins bulging at his temples. The limb he'd violated spasmed violently, a shriek of fractured ice tearing from its structure. The claws meant to eviscerate Kuro scraped sparks against the stone floor inches from his leg as the limb was forcibly torqued aside, its deadly trajectory shattered by sheer, savage disruption. He wasn't fighting the entity; he was tearing its intent limb from limb with his bare hands and a piece of scavenged steel.
And Corvin… Corvin didn't flinch, didn't roar. Amidst the chaos, Haruto's silver shield flare, Juro's grunt of exertion, Ryota's world shaking bellow, he was stillness incarnate. His ringed hand, the one bearing the dark stone that seemed to drink the frantic Polaris light, completed its subtle, impossible twist. It wasn't a grand gesture; it was a surgeon's adjustment, a locksmith's final turn. The air above the void entity's densest, most vital core shimmered, not with heat, but with a sudden, localized field of absolute zero potential. It wasn't an attack on the entity itself, but on the very fabric binding the massive, millennia old stalactite hanging directly above it.
The ice encrusted stone didn't just fall; it DETONATED INWARDS. No fire, no concussion wave in the conventional sense. Instead, the colossal formation imploded with a sickening, subsonic CRUNCHHH that vibrated teeth and made bones ache. It was as if its molecular bonds were severed by the ring's command. Thousands of tons of ancient rock and hoarfrost weren't blasted outwards; they were compressed, fractured, and accelerated downwards with impossible, focused violence. The stalactite transformed instantaneously from a solid pillar into a focused meteor shower of frozen shrapnel, dagger like ice spears, fist sized chunks of granite pulverized to dust mote sharpness, and heavier, skull crushing boulders, all magnetically drawn towards the entity's core by the unnatural force Corvin wielded. The blast hammered downwards like the fist of an angry glacier god, a concentrated avalanche of frozen hate. It struck the already destabilized void mass, reeling from Haruto's interception and Juro's brutal maiming, not with random impact, but with targeted, crushing force. The entity buckled, its form compressing violently, voids flaring frantic blue white as it was physically hammered downwards, deeper into the barracks floor, perfectly positioned, perfectly vulnerable, directly into the ascending, annihilating path of Ryota's incandescent Starbreaker fury. Corvin's intervention was silent, precise, and utterly, chillingly devastating, the anvil to Ryota's hammer, orchestrated with detached, terrifying efficiency.
The shattered doorway didn't frame a man; it vomited forth retribution made manifest. Ryota Veyne crossed the threshold, and the fabric of the barracks warped. "YOU. TOUCH. THEM. YOU. CEASE!" The bellow wasn't sound; it was a physical detonation, a sonic tsunami preceding the light. It hammered the air, vibrating stone, rattling teeth in skulls, momentarily stunning the shifting entity into a fractional pause, its voids flickering erratically. Then came the apotheosis: Starbreaker.
It wasn't wielded; it was unleashed. Polaris light, concentrated through the ancient axe head with a focus Ryota had not summoned since Kaya vanished, erupted. It wasn't a beam; it was the birth scream of a captive star channelled through scarred hands and scarred soul. The void darkness didn't retreat; it was annihilated within a fifteen yard radius, scoured from existence by pure celestial fury. The light struck the entity's destabilized lower mass, reeling from Corvin's overhead demolition and grotesquely contorted by Juro's embedded dagger and brutal leverage, not with impact, but with the absolute, purifying finality of cosmic judgment.
There was no clash, no resistance. There was erasure.
Where the incandescent fury touched, absolute zero ice didn't melt or sublimate; it unravelled, its molecular bonds screaming as they were dissolved into harmless photons, vanishing with a high pitched, crystalline shriek that cut off abruptly. Solidified shadow didn't dissipate; it screamed as it was unmade at the quantum level, unravelling into ephemeral, shrieking tendrils of dark vapor that were consumed by the relentless radiance before they could dissipate. Limbs, claws, grasping tendrils of frozen malice simply ceased, dissolved into plumes of ectoplasmic frost haze that boiled away in the star fire. The entity's vast, terrifying form imploded inward. Its central voids pulsed with frantic, panicked blue white light, not malice now, but raw, alien terror as its very essence was expunged from reality. The subsonic death wail it emitted reached an impossible, skull fracturing zenith, the sound of primordial hunger meeting absolute negation, before being utterly silenced, swallowed by the all consuming roar of the Polaris light. Ryota stood immovable at the epicentre, a scarred titan channelling the wrath of dead constellations, Starbreaker held aloft like the sceptre of an avenging god, the conduit of pure, focused oblivion. In that single, cataclysmic strike, he didn't just slay the void entity; he scoured its blasphemous echo from the sacred stones of Elara Veyne's tomb. Dust, glittering frost motes, and the fading, bitter scent of void space swirled in the sudden, deafening silence, illuminated solely by the slowly dimming, righteous fury held in the Starbreaker's hands. The rescue was absolute, terrifying, and imbued with the crushing weight of power the twins could only dream of wielding without destroying themselves.
Silence crashed down, heavier than the falling dust. Only the ragged gasps of the rescuers and the frantic pulse of the Twin Star scars broke it. Ryota stood amidst the settling debris, Starbreaker held high, dripping not blood, but shimmering motes of dissipating void essence. His Polaris gaze, cold and terrible, swept past the settling dust to the two figures huddled on the floor.
Shiro hadn't moved. He lay where he'd fallen, the impact of the void whip a dull, all consuming throb in his chest, eclipsed only by the white hot, grinding scream in his fused wrists. But the physical agony was a distant echo. Inside, a vast, icy cavern had opened. He saw Haruto, panting, a shallow gash bleeding crimson blood on his forearm from a glancing claw. He saw Juro, pulling his dagger free from the dissolving residue of the limb he'd maimed, his face grim, a bruise darkening his temple. He saw Mira, huddled by the fissure, her crow trembling violently, her fractured lens reflecting the fading Polaris light and his own broken form. He saw Corvin, already turning away, his ringed hand vanishing into his cloak, utterly unscathed, utterly detached. He saw Ryota, a colossus of scarred fury and celestial light, standing amidst the unmade horror he had slain.
They did it. Without us. Because of us.
The thought wasn't a whisper; it was a glacier calving in his soul. The arrogance that had propelled him, We've got this! We're ready!, lay shattered, revealing the rotten core beneath: delusion. The desperate belief that enduring pain equated to strength. That the volatile power in his palm was a weapon, not a tumour. That they were anything but burdens. The humiliation wasn't just cold; it was absolute zero, freezing the breath in his lungs. He was a cracked vessel, leaking only weakness and drawing death towards those he loved. The image of Akuma flaying Aki's wrists, legs, hands wasn't a motivator anymore; it was a prophecy he was too weak to prevent. Pathetic.
Beside him, Kuro trembled. Not just from the glacial fire chewing towards his heart or the static shriek still echoing in his shattered mind, but from the sheer, suffocating weight of failure. He saw Ryota's effortless annihilation. He saw Juro's lethal precision, Haruto's sacrificial calculation, even Corvin's chilling efficiency. They were warriors. Protectors. He was… what? Prince Kuro the Unforged? Heir to Ash? A corrupted liability whose very presence was a beacon for the void. The grey translucence past his elbow pulsed, a grotesque mockery of the Polaris light that had just saved them. He felt it, the Blight inside, momentarily shocked, but waiting. Hungry. Feeding on his shame. Fuel. That's all I am. Fuel for the dark, and a chain around their necks. The absurdity of his earlier taunts, Royal decree, curdled into bile in his throat. He retched, dry heaving onto the frost rimed stone, the sound weak and broken.
Ryota lowered Starbreaker, the light dimming but his gaze intensifying. He took one heavy step towards them, then another, his boots crunching on frozen debris. He stopped, looming over them, a mountain carved from fury and disappointment.
"That," Ryota's voice was low, gravelly, vibrating with suppressed rage. It wasn't a shout; it was the grinding of continental plates. "Was not Volrag." He pointed Starbreaker's still glowing tip towards the fading motes of void essence. "That was a scout. A fucking vanguard sniffing for weakness." His Polaris eyes pinned Shiro, then Kuro. "Weakness it found. In fucking spades."
Corvin drifted closer, a silent shadow. His distorted voice, devoid of inflection, cut through the heavy air like a scalpel made of ice. "We told you. You were not ready. The power you carry is a wild beast. Unbroken. Uncontrollable." He tilted his hood fractionally. "Your arrogance was the key it used to unlock this tomb."
Ryota slammed the butt of Starbreaker onto the stone. The impact echoed like a tomb slamming shut. "WAKE THE FUCK UP!" The roar finally erupted, shaking dust from the ceiling. "You think this is a game? A chance to play at being heroes? You are supposed to be the fucking LIGHT TO A NEW AGE!" He gestured violently around the barracks, at the faded tapestries of stars and nebulae, the cold hearth. "Kaya's gamble! Elara's legacy! The hope the Warrens cling to in the fucking dark! And what are you?" He leaned down, his face inches from Shiro's, then Kuro's. "Broken toys! Arrogant children throwing tantrums with power beyond you control! What the FUCK is rattling around in those hollow skulls of yours? Delusion and wishful thinking?"
Each word was a hammer blow. Shiro flinched as if physically struck, the accusations stripping away the last shreds of his defiance, leaving only raw, bleeding shame. Kuro hunched lower, his corrupted arm curling instinctively towards his chest, the grey translucence seeming to pulse in time with Ryota's fury. Hollow skulls. The words echoed. It felt true.
Haruto stepped forward, his usual analytical calm replaced by a cold, hard edge. He didn't look at them; he looked at the fading crack in the door where the void had entered. "Volatile power is a liability. Today, it nearly got Mira killed. Nearly got Juro shredded. Dragged us all into your personal crucible of failure." He finally turned his sharp gaze on them. "Luck saved you today. Luck, and our intervention. Volrag doesn't rely on luck. He relies on precision. On exploiting fucking weakness like yours."
Juro wiped his scavenged dagger clean on his thigh, his movements efficient, cold. He didn't speak. He just looked at them, his eyes flat, devoid of the grudging respect that had sometimes flickered during their training. The look said everything: Liabilities. Unreliable. Dangerous.
Mira huddled further back, her crow burying its head under its wing. She didn't offer comfort. Her visible eye, wide and haunted, flickered between them and the shattered entrance. "The frost... it tasted your fear," she whispered, her voice thin and frayed. "It tasted... defeat. It remembers." The words weren't malicious; they were a chilling statement of fact, reinforcing their status as beacons for the enemy.
Ryota straightened, the fury banked but not extinguished, replaced by a terrible, icy resolve. "Get up." The command brooked no argument. "Haruto. Juro. Secure the perimeter. Check the wards. Find where it dug through." His gaze swept over Shiro and Kuro, lingering on Kuro's corrupted arm and Shiro's cradled wrists. "You two. On your fucking feet. NOW!"
Shiro pushed himself up, every movement an agony of grinding bone and screaming muscle, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the desolation inside. Kuro followed, swaying, his face ashen, the static buzz a constant, maddening counterpoint to his ragged breathing. They stood, not like warriors, but like condemned men awaiting sentence.
Ryota turned to Haruto and Juro, his voice dropping, but carrying clearly in the tomblike silence. "Double watches. Triple the perimeter sweeps. And they," he jerked his head towards Shiro and Kuro, "don't rest. They train. Dawn till the stars fucking freeze again. Harder than before. They don't eat until they can hold a stance without whimpering. They don't sleep until they can move as one without tripping over their own weakness. You push them. You break them if you have to. But you forge something useful out of the wreckage. Or you bury them here and save Volrag the trouble." He turned his Polaris gaze back to the twins, the light cold and unforgiving. "Understood?"
Haruto gave a sharp, precise nod. "Understood, Commander." His gaze, when it briefly met Shiro's, held no pity, only the cold assessment of a problem to be solved.
Juro simply grunted, sheathing his dagger. He looked at Kuro, then Shiro, his expression unreadable stone. "No more holding back," he stated flatly. It wasn't a threat; it was a promise.
Ryota's gaze shifted to Corvin. "Corvin. Paths. Find us a way out of this tomb before the main course arrives. And... keep an eye on them." His meaning was clear: Watch the liabilities. "Report anything... unstable."
Corvin's hood tilted slightly. "The frost digs. Volrag hunts. Paths narrow." His distorted voice was its usual detached self. "I will watch." He didn't offer reassurance or condemnation; his coldness was merely a constant, unchanged.
Mira shrank back further, offering no warmth, only the silent judgment of her fractured lens and the terrified crow.
Shiro and Kuro stood adrift in the centre of the ruin, islands of shattered potential in a sea of consequences. The silence wasn't peaceful; it was the held breath after a scream, thick with unspoken recrimination and the bitter dust of their failure. Around them, the others moved with a chilling, purposeful efficiency that felt like a physical barrier.
Haruto, his sleeve torn where the void claw had grazed him, a thin line of crimson tinged blood stark against his skin, moved towards the shattered entrance. He didn't glance their way. His sharp eyes scanned the fractured stone and lingering frost with forensic intensity, his profile etched with grim resolve. Every deliberate step, every focused sweep of his gaze, screamed: Your mess. Our problem to contain. The analytical mind that had once offered strategies now radiated only cold assessment of the damage they had drawn in.
Juro, wiping grime and frozen void residue from his scavenged dagger with a scrap of hide, followed Haruto. The bruise on his temple was already darkening, a testament to the desperate force of his intervention. He didn't look at Kuro, whom he'd bodily saved, nor Shiro. His movements were economical, lethal, radiating a contained fury that was colder than any spoken word. The flat, dismissive look he briefly swept over them wasn't anger; it was the utter withdrawal of respect. Liabilities. Unreliable. The message was clear in the set of his shoulders, the finality with which he sheathed the blade. Don't expect that again.
Corvin drifted like a silent wraith along the perimeter, his ringed hand tracing the frost furrowed stone. He didn't pause, didn't acknowledge them. His hooded gaze seemed absorbed in the resonance of the ancient wards, the paths within the rock. Yet, his very detachment was a weapon. It underscored his earlier, distorted verdict that now echoed endlessly in the hollow chambers of their minds: "You are NOT READY." Each silent pass he made felt like a physical iteration of those words, a reminder that his power, cold and precise, had been needed to salvage the disaster their arrogance had invited. He was the embodiment of the ruthless truth they had ignored.
Mira didn't just retreat; she folded into the deepest shadow near the fissure, drawing her tattered cloak tight. Her crow, usually perched defiantly, huddled against her neck, feathers puffed in primal fear. Her fractured lens didn't catch the fading Polaris light; it seemed turned inward, reflecting only the terror of the void's proximity, a terror they had amplified. When her visible eye flickered towards them, it held no comfort, only a haunted vacancy that whispered louder than any accusation: The frost tasted your fear. It tasted your defeat. It remembers you. Her withdrawal was the coldest of all, a severing of the fragile, prophetic connection, leaving them utterly alone.
The coldness wasn't malice; it was a fortress wall erected by Ryota's decree. Survival demanded distance from their volatility. Their near disaster had forged this icy pragmatism, a 'tough love' that felt indistinguishable from abandonment. Shiro looked down at his hands, the physical agony in his wrists grinding bone shards, phantom thorns tearing, a mere counterpoint to the desolation within. The scar on his palm pulsed faintly, the crystal a cold, mocking ember. He remembered the terrifying surge of power during the void whip impact, the molten promise of annihilation he'd choked down. Not out of control, but out of fear. Fear of the backlash, fear of crippling Kuro further, fear of becoming the bomb that killed them all. That power, their supposed birthright, had been utterly useless when it mattered. Worse than useless, a tumour they were terrified to excise or employ. The image of Haruto's bleeding arm, Juro's bruised temple, Ryota's celestial might expended because of them… it scalded his soul. What's the fucking point of this curse if it only breaks me and endangers everyone else?
Kuro clutched his corrupted arm, the grey translucence pulsing like a sickly, alien heart beneath skin stretched too tight. The crimson scar on his left forearm, the mark of their bond, felt like a brand seared into failure. He remembered the power gathering within him as the claws descended, a storm of cold fury and defiance. And then the paralyzing terror: the memory of the Blight feasting on their last surge, the corruption burrowing deeper, the certainty that unleashing it uncontrolled would kill Shiro faster than the void claws. His power hadn't failed; he had rejected it. Chosen certain death over the risk of becoming the monster that destroyed his brother. To be a weapon? The thought was ashes. I'm a fucking hazard. A beacon for the void. A prince of rot. Heir to nothing but failure. The futility was a black hole in his chest, crushing the air from his lungs. What's the fucking point of this poison inside me? What light can come from this consuming dark?
"YOU ARE NOT READY." Corvin's words weren't just an echo; they were the architecture of their reality now, etched into the frozen stone of Elara's tomb and the shattered landscape of their confidence. They stood in the centre of the ruin they'd authored, surrounded by the chilling efficiency of those who'd saved them, utterly isolated by the weight of their inadequacy. The barracks, once a sanctuary of defiance, felt like a mausoleum for their shattered hopes. The relentless, throbbing pain in their scars was the only answer to their silent scream of Why? a constant agonizing reminder that the light they were meant to carry was a curse, burning only themselves, while the true dawn Ryota demanded receded further into an impossible, frozen horizon. The crushing certainty wasn't of death, but of being fundamentally, irrevocably wrong for the destiny thrust upon them. The silence stretched, a suffocating shroud woven from shame, pain, and the deafening, unanswered question hanging frozen in the void they'd almost become.