The heavy stone door, carved with constellations worn smooth by centuries of time and profound neglect, scraped shut behind them with a jarring, grating finality that echoed not just in the cramped space, but deep within Shiro's hollowed out chest. Each drag of stone on stone vibrated through the soles of his worn boots, a physical counterpoint to the desolation settling within. Ryota's last words "Be reborn… or be broken", seemed etched not just into his mind, but into the very grinding sound itself, a harsh mantra replacing the rhythm of his own faltering heartbeat. The air inside the side crypt slammed into them, immediately oppressive: tomb cold, ancient beyond reckoning, thick with the scent of undisturbed dust that coated the tongue and nostrils, and something sharper, more alarming, a metallic tang like ozone after a lightning strike, charged and unnatural. It pressed in, heavier and more suffocating than the oppressive silence of the barracks ever could, a physical weight amplifying the vast, aching void that had opened up inside Shiro the moment the door began to move.
Elara's obsidian sky mirrors. They dominated the crypt, lining every wall from the uneven, grit strewn floor to the shadowed ceiling, great, seamless panes of volcanic glass polished to an impossible, depthless black. They swallowed the meagre, grey light filtering through a single, narrow slit high above, a mere suggestion of the outside world. Staring into them, Shiro didn't see stars, as the legends whispered. He saw only fragments of a ghost: his own hunched, defeated form, fractured and multiplied into infinity across the dark glass, a shattered mosaic of failure. His ruined hands, cradled uselessly against his chest, looked grotesque in the gloom, like charred roots torn from poisoned earth, their agony a constant, low thrum beneath the shock. Across the narrow space, a distance of maybe twenty paces that yawned like a chasm carved by shame and mutual despair, Kuro flinched violently as the door sealed with a definitive thud. The corrupted arm bound against his side pulsed with a sickly, internal light, a nauseating greenish yellow that seemed to writhe beneath the skin. It cast grotesque, dancing shadows on the obsidian behind him, twisting reflections that mirrored the turmoil within.
Alone. The word resonated in the sudden, absolute silence. Finally, irrevocably alone. The thought didn't bring the bleak relief he might have expected in the barracks, surrounded by judgment. Instead, it triggered a deeper, more terrifying plunge into the icy well of their shared failure. The oppressive stillness amplified every ragged breath, every stifled groan from Kuro. The ghosts weren't just metaphorical here; the crypt felt saturated with absence. Ryota's warriors, Haruto's sharp, analytical gaze that missed nothing, Juro's rigid, unyielding judgment that had weighed every action, Corvin's chillingly precise assessments that stripped away pretence, even Mira's fragile, withdrawn hope that had somehow made the darkness bearable, were gone. Sealed away. Only the crushing weight of their expectations remained, whispering accusations louder in the suffocating isolation than any voice ever could. The obsidian mirrors reflected only broken men and the suffocating press of consequences, the charged air humming with the unspeakable choice Ryota had left them: annihilation or an impossible metamorphosis within this lightless, reflective tomb. The dust settled slowly, marking the passage into an eternity defined by that grinding echo and the impossible command hanging in the frigid, metallic air.
The obsidian crypt swallowed sound, leaving only the hum. Not silence. Never silence. A low, subsonic vibration that bypassed the ears and resonated directly within the marrow, within the shattered architecture of bone and scar tissue. Shiro sank to his knees on the frost rimed stone, the cold biting through the thin fabric of his trousers like the teeth of a thousand tiny ice wyrms. It wasn't just the ambient chill of Elara's tomb; it felt personal, directed, seeping up from the stone to meet the deep frozen core of his own despair. The vibration settled into the ruin of his wrists, syncing perfectly with the phantom grind of pulverized bone, a soundless scream trapped within fused joints, echoing the scrape scrape scrape of void claws that now felt permanently etched onto his soul.
He gasped, a ragged, involuntary sound that tore at his raw throat, and clutched his forearms, fingers digging into muscle already knotted with compensatory agony. Before him, the obsidian mirror lining the crypt wall didn't just reflect the dimness. It rippled. Its fathomless depths shimmered, not with reflected light, but with a faint, internal luminescence. Cold. Mercury like. It bled sluggishly from the edges of the glass, viscous and slow, as if the volcanic stone itself wept tears of liquid starlight poisoned by sorrow. Each languid drip pulsed in perfect, agonizing time with the grinding shriek resonating deep within his forearms. Scar frequency. Ryota's words, delivered with that crushing, weary sadness hours days? eternity? ago, slithered through his mind like a venomous serpent coiling around his spine: "Broken beyond forging?"
Across the crypt's narrow, oppressive space, Kuro slammed his good fist against the unyielding obsidian wall. A futile, desperate gesture born of rage turned inward. The impact jolted up his arm, a physical punctuation to his spiralling thoughts, and triggered a fresh, vicious lance of needle cold fire. It erupted from the corrupted joint of his elbow, a glacial lightning bolt that seared up through his shoulder and detonated behind his eye socket, syncing perfectly with the relentless static drone that was his constant, maddening tormentor. The mirror he struck didn't crack or splinter. Instead, the grey translucence beneath his skin, visible through flesh stretched taut and brittle like ancient, frozen parchment, flared with an angry, sickly light. And the obsidian pane hummed louder in response, vibrating under his knuckles. Its surface, reflecting his own distorted image, one eye wide with animal panic, the corrupted limb a monstrous, throbbing appendage that seemed to belong to someone else, began to weep the same cold, mercury starlight. It welled in the corners of the glass and dripped down like slow, heavy tears of frozen despair. Weakness invites the blade. His father's phantom voice, colder and sharper than the crypt's deepest chill, sliced through the static, echoing the mirror's mournful hum. A verdict. An inevitability.
Shiro couldn't look away from the weeping mirror directly before him. Not at his face, shadowed and hollowed by exhaustion and shame, but at the ruin cradled in his lap. His scarred palm, upturned. The Polaris scar pulsed erratically, a frantic, trapped heartbeat reacting violently to the mirror's resonant hum, to the tangible wave of Kuro's amplified pain radiating across the room, carried on the twin stars bond like a carrier wave of suffering. He didn't just remember the void whip descending; he relived it. The sensory overload crashed over him, drowning the present crypt in the visceral reality of that frozen instant:
The terrifying surge igniting under his scar, a supernova compressed beneath thin layers of ruined flesh and scar tissue, radiating searing heat that promised annihilation, purification, and utter self destruction in equal measure. The phantom sensation of the molten brand searing his palm from the inside, a white hot agony threatening to liquefy bone and detonate his entire hand. The overwhelming, nerve flaying tsunami of the warren backlash, not memory, but cellular recall, stealing his sight, flooding his vision with crimson static, stealing his voice, leaving him a raw, screaming nerve ending trapped in a useless husk. He'd chosen the whip. Chosen the bone jarring impact, the crack of ribs, the suffocating agony of crushed lungs, over the gamble of unleashing the cataclysm he carried. Over the risk of incinerating Kuro where he stood. Over the terror of becoming the bomb that erased Haruto, Juro, Mira… everyone within the radius of his uncontrollable despair.
Who the fuck am I? The question wasn't a whisper, a contemplation. It was a silent scream that tore from the deepest fissures of his shattered spirit, vibrating in his throat, unvoiced but deafening within the echoing cavern of his own skull. A scream directed at the weeping glass, at Ryota's ghostly disappointment, at Akuma's phantom leer, at the frail ghost of Aki haunting his failures.
The mirror before him shivered violently, as if resonating with his internal cry. The mercury light bled faster, transforming from sluggish tears into rivulets that snaked down the dark glass with alarming speed. And within its impossible depth, his reflection… changed. The hunched, broken figure remained, radiating despair, but its hands… they weren't ruined, trembling things. They blazed. Uncontrolled stellar fire erupted from his mirrored palms, a conflagration of pure, destructive potential. And standing before this inferno, caught in its ravening maw, weren't void entities or Frostguard. It was Kuro, his storm grey eyes wide with betrayal an instant before his form dissolved into swirling ash. It was Haruto, analytical gaze finally showing shock as he vanished. It was Juro, grim defiance erased mid snarl. It was Aki, her spectral form in the plague shadowed shack, her fading ember eyes locking onto his for a split second of horrified understanding before she too was consumed, her silent scream the last thing etched onto her vanishing face. The reflection of Shiro, the conduit of this annihilation, stared back with eyes that held not rage, but a terrifying, vacant void.
A burden playing at being a saviour. Ryota's judgment, delivered not in the barracks, but by the weeping obsidian. Is this what I am? The thought crystallized, cold and sharp as an ice shard in his heart. Not a flicker of light, but a walking void beacon? Dragging death behind me like a shroud? Attracting horrors and immolating everyone I touch?
Who the fuck am I? The silent scream echoed again, a desperate, weakening counterpoint to the horrific vision burning in the mirror. The answer, reflected back a thousand times in the weeping glass, seemed horrifyingly clear: Destruction. Incarnate.
Kuro slid down the wall, his back scraping against the cold, weeping obsidian, the rough stone catching on his tunic. He clutched his corrupted arm to his chest, a protective gesture that felt absurd against the enemy within. The mirror's bleeding light cast long, grotesque shadows, stretching and warping his reflection into a funhouse caricature of despair. He saw his father, Ryo. Not the broken, drunken wreck in the Warren shack, but the Butcher in the terrifying zenith of his scorched earth triumph. Ryo's eyes, usually dulled by rotgut, burned in the reflection with a fierce, terrifying ambition, the same ambition that had extinguished Kaya's light, shattered a kingdom, and left only Ash as his legacy. The image flickered, unstable, superimposing itself over Kuro's own face, the sharp line of the jaw, the set of the brow, the potential for ruthless fury. Heir to Ash. The corruption in his arm pulsed, a hungry, eager echo. Son of The Butcher.
Who the fuck am I? The question clawed its way out of his constricted throat, raw and ragged, barely audible over the relentless static drone that felt like icy insects chewing on his brainstem. It wasn't just a question of identity anymore; it was an accusation levelled by history, by biology, by the cold, weeping glass. An indictment of his very existence.
His mirror, attuned to his spiralling dread, responded. The image shifted, dissolving Ryo's ghost. Now he saw himself, not slumped against a crypt wall, but standing frozen on the barracks floor mere hours ago. Void claws descended towards Shiro's exposed back, a forest of crystalline death. He saw himself not paralyzed by fear of physical death, but petrified by the visceral memory, the Blight feasting on the volatile energy of their last desperate surge in the warren. He felt it again, the violation: the corruption digesting their power, mapping his nerves with predatory, alien glee. He saw the volatile energy, the cold fury and desperate defiance he'd instinctively pulled upon, erupting uncontrolled not from his will, but from the corrupted limb itself. He saw it not lashing out at the void claws, but engulfing Shiro. Saw his friend, his Twin Star, not saved, but obliterated mid reach, consumed in a flash of frigid, devouring fire that was Kuro's own inner poison made manifest. A fucking walking liability. The mirror showed Juro, turning away not just physically, but utterly, his face a mask of final, irrevocable contempt. Haruto, his analytical gaze dissecting the aftermath, pronouncing Kuro a fatal statistical anomaly. Mira, shrinking further into the shadows, her terror of him now a permanent stain on her spirit. You prove him right, his father's phantom voice hissed, perfectly synchronized with the static's rise. Weakness betrays everything. You betray Shiro. You betray your mothers memory. You betray the light.
Who the fuck am I? He choked on the question this time, the taste of bile sharp and metallic in his mouth, a physical manifestation of the rot he carried. If I'm not a weapon… if I'm just a broken vessel for this poison… what am I? The mirror's mercury tears flowed faster, reflecting the answer in the hollows of his own eyes: Rot. Corruption. A terminal flaw.
Hours bled into the crypt's timeless gloom. Time lost meaning, measured only by the escalating symphony of suffering: the grinding shriek resonating like tortured metal deep within Shiro's wrists, the maddening static drone chewing at Kuro's sanity, the constant, rhythmic drip… drip… drip of mercury starlight weeping from every obsidian pane. The cold deepened, a physical manifestation of the frost Ryota had warned would paralyze their wills. It seeped past him arms, into his muscles, his bones, a glacial mimicry of the despair freezing his core.
The mirror before him became a relentless diorama of his failures. Akuma lowering the flaying knife onto Aki's neck the image superimposed over the untouched, frost rimed strips of dried meat Shiro had refused days ago. Haruto's clinical assessment echoed: "Sustenance accelerates cellular repair." Meaningless words for damaged material beyond repair. The Polaris scar pulsed frantically, mockingly, each erratic beat syncing with the mirror's bleeding light and the ceaseless grind in his wrists. Useless. The word wasn't hollow self recrimination anymore; it was branded onto his soul by the obsidian glass, a verdict confirmed by every reflection. He saw Corvin's impenetrable hooded gaze fixed on him, the swirling stars within pronouncing him NOT READY, the words vibrating in the air like a physical law. He saw Ryota's face, not furious, but etched with that profound, weary sadness, a look more devastating than any roar, the look of a commander watching his last, flawed hope gutter and die. Is this the victory Volrag savours? Ryota had asked. Paralyzed wills? Shiro felt paralyzed, entombed in ice and failure.
Is it really worth it? The question rose from the frozen depths of his pragmatism, cutting through the layers of self loathing like a shard of clear ice. Starting a war… we can't win. The mirror obligingly showed the Frostguard's relentless advance, their icy grip tightening on the Warrens, turning familiar slums into frozen charnel houses, the air thick with the silence of the dead. It showed Akuma, meticulous and inevitable in his cruelty, dissecting hope piece by precious piece under the cold light of Nyxara's gaze, lowering his tools towards Aki's neck, towards the stars he'd helped her carve. It showed Ryota, a celestial titan straining against an encroaching tide of frost and shadow, a tide they, the supposed Twin Stars, were too broken, too terrified, to help stem. We're not warriors. We're… sparks spat into a blizzard. The image was devastatingly apt. We ignite nothing but our own destruction, and everyone foolish enough to stand near us burns in the fallout. The spectral image of Aki surfaced again, not humming, but fading in the plague shadowed gloom of her hiding place, her eyes holding that fading ember of defiance. I promised. The words were ash on his tongue, bitter and choking. Promised defiance. Promised stars. Promised protection. He'd delivered only failure, amplified terror, and an execution waiting for Akuma's final cut. What good is my rage? It was a furnace locked inside a cage of fear, burning only him. What good is this power? The scar pulsed hot, a trapped supernova threatening to shatter its fragile prison. I'm terrified to touch it. Terrified of what I become. Terrified of what I destroy.
The cold logic of despair crystallized, cold and clear and terrifyingly seductive. Maybe… maybe true defiance now… protecting her stars… means removing the volatile element. Removing the bomb before it detonates and takes everything left with it. The thought wasn't dramatic; it was a simple, chilling equation. Sacrifice the flawed vessel to preserve the fragile light. The seductive relief of it washed over him, a paradoxical warmth spreading through his icy limbs, a stark counterpoint to the grinding agony in his wrists. It wasn't about death; it was about cessation. About stopping the damage.
Who the fuck am I? The final echo was a breath, thin and cold, almost peaceful amidst the inner storm. Someone who causes only harm. Someone who walks away to end it.
The cold fire in Kuro's corrupted arm wasn't just gnawing; it was dissolving. A glacial termite chewing towards the core of him, inch by agonizing inch. The static drone had escalated into a maddening chorus of scraping nails inside his skull, underscored relentlessly by his father's condemnations, by Juro's dismissive click of the dagger sheath, by Mira's stifled whimpers. The mirror relentlessly displayed the cost of his existence, the ledger written in pain and fear: Mira, flinching not just at shadows, but at the amplified darkness his corruption and despair emitted; Haruto's sleeve torn, the thin line of crimson blood stark against his skin, his blood, spilled intercepting a blow meant for Shiro, drawn into their vortex; Juro's bruise, a sickly yellow green brand on his temple, a permanent mark of Kuro's failure, earned saving a "royal fuck up" who couldn't even stand; the Warrens freezing, families huddled in terror, while he sat in a crypt, rotting in his own futility. People's lives, Ryota's voice boomed in his memory. Real blood. Real suffering. He saw the intricate Polaris scar, the Twin Star bond. It no longer felt like a connection; it felt like a chain, binding Shiro to his own inevitable corruption, to the Blight festering within him. Bound… to drag him down into my personal abyss. To drown him in my rot. The image of Shiro, broken and despairing across the crypt, reflected endlessly in the weeping glass, was a knife twisting in his gut. He chose the whip to save me… chose broken ribs over burning me… and look at us. Look at what I am. Broken. Useless. A vector for corruption. Dragging everyone else down into the frozen dark with me.
Is it really worth it? Kuro's mind, stripped raw by pain and shame, latched onto the cold, brutal logic of surrender. Fighting a war we can't win? With this poison festering inside me, screaming to the Blight, "Here! Feast here!"? The mirror showed the Blight entities, drawn unerringly to the corrupt energy radiating from him like a necrotic beacon. A hazard. A fucking liability. A walking calamity. He saw Shiro again, reflected in the weeping mercury, the hollow despair in his eyes, the tremor in his ruined hands. Shiro had chosen physical agony over the risk of harming him. And what have I given him in return? More pain. More failure. The constant threat of being consumed by my own fucking corruption. The seductive thought took root, icy and calming amidst the howling despair: What if… leaving… is the only protection left? The only act of defiance I'm capable of that doesn't end in ash? Not death. Not suicide. Just… removal. Vanishing into the trackless, frozen wastes beyond the Warrens, beyond the Frostguard, beyond hope. Letting the Frostguard solidify their icy grip. Letting Akuma have Aki, have the Warrens, have it all. Letting Ryota find warriors forged of untainted steel, warriors who weren't heirs to ash and broken promises. No more blood on their hands, his hands. No more fresh failures carved onto Juro's skin. No more terror shadowing Mira's eyes. The corruption pulsed, a cold, dark agreement. What light can possibly emerge from this soul eating dark? The mirror showed only deeper frost, endless white silence. None. Only oblivion. Only the end of the contamination.
Who the fuck am I? The question was a sigh now, devoid of anger, devoid of hope, carried away on the static's drone. Someone who should never have been forged. Someone who ends the plague by removing its source.
The crypt hummed. Not just a sound, but a physical pressure, a symphony of their shared, amplified despair played on instruments of scar tuned obsidian and vibrating bone. The mercury starlight bled steadily from every mirror, dozens of weeping eyes lining the walls. It pooled on the frost rimed floor, viscous and cold, reflecting the fractured, broken images of the twins back at themselves a thousand times over, a kaleidoscope of ruin. The air crackled with the unshed power trapped within their scars, a volatile static charge mingling with the chilling, suffocating weight of their converging realization. The cold deepened further, no longer just the crypt's ambient chill, but an active force, a manifestation of Nyxara's breath seeping through the stones, drawn by the vacuum of their extinguished will. It was the absolute zero point. Not of temperature, but of hope.
Shiro lifted his head, a movement requiring immense effort, like breaking through a shell of ice. Not to look at Kuro, a ghostly echo of his own despair across the short, infinite distance. Not towards the untouched food, the monument to his refusal. His gaze, hollow and stripped of everything but a terrible, exhausted clarity, slid past the weeping mirrors, past the multiplied reflections of his own ruination. It fixed on the far end of the crypt. Past the last obsidian pane, past a pile of fallen rubble, yawned a low, crumbling archway. Partially collapsed, choked with frost heaved stones and veiled in deeper shadow. But beyond it… not the barracks. Not Ryota's crushing expectation. Not Haruto's clinical assessment or Juro's contempt. Not even the suffocating weight of their shared failure.
Just… the vast, frozen silence of the Razorwind Peaks.
An escape route. A void colder than the crypt, but infinitely cleaner. A place devoid of people he could fail, could harm, could immolate. A place where the supernova trapped in his palm could finally detonate, unleashing its fury harmlessly against unfeeling rock and endless ice. A place where his very existence would cease to be a flickering threat to everyone he'd ever dared to care for. Protecting her stars… the cold logic whispered, its seductive tendrils wrapping around his frozen heart, …means leaving. Removing the danger. The thought wasn't grand or tragic; it was the final, chilling solution to an impossible equation. The seductive relief of it was a physical warmth spreading through his icy limbs, a stark, paradoxical counterpoint to the grinding agony in his wrists. It promised an end to the fear, the shame, the constant, gnawing terror of his own power. Just… walk. The words formed, simple, final. Walk away from the war you were never equipped to fight. Walk away from the people you only ever hurt. Walk away from the crushing weight of a destiny you were broken for. Let the frost take you. It's already in your bones. It's where you belong.
Who the fuck am I? The final echo was a breath, thin and cold, almost peaceful as it dissolved into the crypt's hum. Someone who finally understands. Someone who walks away to save them.
Kuro followed the direction of Shiro's gaze, his own eye tracking across the weeping mirrors, the pools of mercury light, the rubble. He saw the same archway. The same promise of obliterating silence. The corruption in his arm flared, sending fresh, jagged needles of alien cold deep into his chest cavity, a final, vicious protest. But this time, the pain felt… distant. Abstract. Insignificant against the vast relief offered by the void beyond. The static drone faded, muffled, replaced by the seductive, whispering call of the infinite frozen wastes. Leave. The word wasn't a thought; it was a balm poured directly onto his scorched soul. Leave the burden of a crown of Ash. Leave the legacy of a Butcher father and an extinguished mother. Leave the Twin Star bond that only chains Shiro to your inevitable decay. Leave before the Blight inside you breaks its chains and consumes them all, Shiro first, then Haruto, Juro, Mira… Ryota. He pictured it with terrifying clarity: trudging into the endless white, the cold fire within finally consuming him from the inside out, cell by cell, until there was nothing left but a statue of frost, anonymous and harmless. No more failures etched on Juro's skin. No more terror shadowing Mira's spirit. No more analytical reassessments from Haruto, calculating his viability as damaged goods. They'd be safer. Lighter. Ryota could rally true warriors, unsullied, unbroken, warriors forged of something other than rot and despair. Mira could breathe without flinching at the darkness he carried.
He looked down at his corrupted arm, the grey translucence pulsing with a slow, sickly rhythm, like the heartbeat of a dying leviathan. This poison… he thought, the revulsion replaced by a strange, cold acceptance, …it ends with me. Out there. In the clean silence. He pushed himself up, leaning heavily against the weeping mirror beside him. The cold mercury light smeared across his tunic, wet and strangely inert. He took a single, shuffling step. His boots crunched on frost and grit. Not towards Shiro. Not towards the centre of the crypt, the crucible they'd failed. Towards the archway. Towards the vast, frozen silence that promised the only victory left to him: the end of his contamination.
Who the fuck am I? The question died on his lips, unanswered, unnecessary now. The path was clear. The answer was written in the weeping mercury and the endless white beyond the stones. Someone who finally does the only useful thing left. Someone who removes the infection. Someone who walks into the frost and ends.