The world didn't return. It shattered.
The blinding white annihilation of the ward stone's flare didn't fade; it imploded, leaving behind a vacuum of pure, suffocating darkness deeper than the void between stars. It wasn't an absence of light; it was a sensory amputation. Shiro reeled, phantom suns exploding behind his eyelids, the afterimage of the Skiff's gore crusted flank seared onto his retinas like a brand. Sound vanished, replaced by a high pitched, metallic ringing that drilled into his skull. The grinding agony in his fused wrists, the bite of the void leather braces, all swallowed by the numb, disorienting void. He gasped, tasting ozone and the iron tang of his own fear, but the air felt thick, dead, refusing to fill his lungs. Blind. Deaf. Anchorless.
From the nothingness, chaos erupted.
Juro let out a guttural, wordless roar ripped through the sensory void, raw fury given sound. Shiro felt, more than saw, the massive warrior move. Boots crunched on frost rimed ice, the vibration jarring up through Shiro's own legs. Then the sickening, wet THUD CRUNCH of impact. Axe meeting armour, meeting bone. A choked gasp, cut short. The assassin. Juro hadn't hesitated. The threat was close, tangible, and he silenced it with brutal economy born of a thousand battles fought in the dark.
Ryota the man mountain shifted. Not a flinch, but a tectonic settling. Starbreaker's low, predatory hum surged from a snarl to a bone deep roar, vibrating the black ice beneath their boots. Shiro felt the contained stellar fury radiating from the Commander, a physical pressure pushing back against the disorienting darkness, a beacon of rage in the sensory void. Polaris eyes, when Shiro's own vision began to bleed back in smears of grey and crimson, burned like captive supernovas, fixed on the dripping maw of the Spire door. No words. Only the promise of annihilation etched in that gaze.
Haruto his voice cut through the ringing in Shiro's ears, flat, cold, impossibly precise amidst the chaos. It wasn't a shout; it was a scalpel slicing through panic. "Flare was signal! Cordon converges! Hounds inbound west flank! Roof hawks reacquiring!" Each word was a bullet point of doom. Shiro's returning vision blurred, then sharpened: Haruto wasn't looking at the dead assassin or the Spire. His obsidian gaze was locked onto the swirling gloom behind them, towards the route they'd come. Calculating vectors of closing death. "Shiro, Kuro! Twin stars! NOW! Skiff shadow is kill zone! Juro, cover Mira! Ryota, door is focus! Move or die!"
The command ignited them. Shiro's Polaris scar, a trapped ember against the fading retinal burn, ERUPTED. Not a flare, but a focused beam of pure white stellar fury. He didn't aim; he slammed his braced palm down onto the black ice at his feet. Agony, white hot and shrieking, lanced through his fused wrists as the power discharged, but he rode the wave of pain, channelling it into the helix. The ice didn't melt; it screamed. A searing wave of heat, visible as rippling air, blasted outwards in a semi circle behind them, aimed towards the encroaching Void Hound stench Haruto had identified. The wave hit the nearest sentry brazier. Its pale blue flame didn't extinguish; it detonated in a shower of superheated ice shards and actinic fury. A guttural chorus of surprised, pained howls erupted from the swirling dark beyond the heat distortion, the leading edge of the hound pack, scalded, blinded, momentarily halted.
Beside him, Kuro didn't raise his corrupted arm. He focused. The grey translucence swirled violently, crawling past his collarbone. The cold fire within blazed, casting the horrific lattice of bone and corrupted veins in his arm into stark, momentary relief. Static didn't crackle; it screamed, a high frequency shriek that vibrated teeth and made Mira whimper. Kuro thrust his good hand forward, palm out, not at the hounds, but upwards, towards the high, shadowed arches where the roof hawks lurked. The void sphere at his hip pulsed, a deep, resonant THOOM that harmonized unnervingly with the fading echoes of the ward stone flare.
The air above them warped. Not heat, but localized, absolute cold. A shimmering, disc shaped field of negation bloomed into existence fifteen feet overhead, directly in the predicted firing line of the roof hawk perches. It happened just as bone tipped arrows, glinting with void ice venom, hissed down from the shadows. They struck the disc not with impact, but with a chilling, silent schlup. The arrows didn't shatter; they simply… ceased. Vaporized mid flight by the absolute zero potential Kuro had conjured. A strangled curse echoed from the high arches. The static around Kuro intensified, then cut off abruptly. He staggered, a choked gasp escaping him, the grey translucence pulsing angrily, the cold fire within guttering low. The disc flickered, unstable.
"The helix won't hold!" Haruto barked, already moving. He didn't wait for confirmation. His scavenged Polaris dagger was in his hand, not raised for combat, but held low, tip pointing like a compass needle towards a jagged rent in the Skiff's blood ice plating near its stern, the access point to the west conduit path. "Conduit! Move! NOW! Through the Skiff's shadow! Sixty paces to the door!"
Ryota needed no urging. He was already a moving avalanche, Starbreaker's humming edge leading the charge towards the indicated rent. His massive form carved a path through the lingering psychic miasma and the physical debris of the exploded brazier. Juro, axes slick with the first assassin's dark blood, grabbed Mira's arm. She flinched violently, a thin cry escaping her bloodied lips. "None of that, Seer!" Juro snarled, not unkindly, but with brutal urgency. "Move your scrawny arse or I drag it!" He half pulled, half shoved her after Ryota, his flint chip eyes scanning the swirling chaos, the scalded, regrouping hounds to the west, the frustrated roof hawks above, the deeper shadows near the Spire where more dark armoured shapes were coalescing, drawn by the flare and the clash.
Shiro forced his legs to follow, stumbling on the treacherous ice. His vision swam, the afterimage of the white flare still dancing with the searing heat of his own blast. The grinding agony in his wrists was a constant, nauseating counterpoint to the frantic hammering of his heart. Sixty paces. It felt like sixty miles across a frozen hellscape under siege. He risked a glance back. Kuro was struggling to keep pace, his corrupted arm held stiffly, the grey translucence seeming to sap his strength, the void sphere's hum weaker. The helix overhead flickered again, dangerously thin.
"Kuro!" Shiro rasped, the word tearing his raw throat.
Kuro met his gaze. Storm grey eyes, bloodshot and strained, but holding a core of glacial defiance. He gave a single, sharp nod, jaw clenched. He didn't speak. He focused inward, and the cold fire within his corruption flared once more, sending a fresh wave of static crackling around him. The faltering barrier overhead solidified fractionally. The cost was visible; the grey crawled higher, past his shoulder, towards his neck.
They plunged into the lee of the Frostforged Skiff. The stench here was overwhelming, frozen blood, decayed metal, ozone, and a psychic residue of terror so thick it coated the tongue. The jagged rent Haruto had identified yawned before them, a wound in the layered gore, revealing dark, frost rimmed iron beneath. It wasn't an entrance; it was a jagged crawl space leading under the massive skiff, towards the conduit access point on the other side. Ryota didn't hesitate. He dropped to one knee, Starbreaker slung across his back, and began to force his immense frame through the cramped opening, the ancient metal groaning in protest. Haruto slithered in behind him with serpentine grace.
"Shiro, Kuro, through!" Haruto's voice echoed metallically from within the cramped space. "Juro, cover the entry! Five seconds!"
Juro planted himself before the jagged opening, axes held low and ready, his broad back to the crawling team. He faced the plaza chaos – the reforming hound pack snarling at the edge of Shiro's fading heat wave, the frustrated roof hawks shifting positions, the dark figures near the Spire now advancing with deliberate speed, glaives catching the crimson pulse of the ward stone. "Five seconds, Architect!" Juro growled, his voice a gravelly promise of violence. "Then I start carving me some Frostguard fillet!"
Shiro scrambled into the opening after Haruto. The space was tight, claustrophobic, stinking of ancient rust and the Skiff's pervasive aura of violation. Jagged edges of torn metal and frozen gore scraped against his void leather braces. Ahead, Ryota's bulk blocked most of the view, but he could see Haruto already emerging on the other side. Kuro shoved in behind him, breathing ragged, the static around his arm buzzing erratically in the confined space, the void sphere's thrum vibrating the metal under Shiro's hands.
"Juro! NOW!" Haruto's command cracked from the conduit side.
Juro didn't look back. He took one final, assessing glare at the converging threats, spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the black ice, then spun and dove headfirst into the jagged opening, kicking off with his boots to propel himself through. A void ice arrow thunked into the Skiff's plating right where his head had been a heartbeat before, spraying shards of frozen blood.
They were through. The relative shelter of the Skiff's shadow was gone. They stood exposed on the far side, mere paces from the sheer obsidian wall of the Spire's base. Directly ahead, set into the weeping stone, was the west conduit overflow grate. It wasn't a welcoming door. Thick, rusted iron bars, warped by centuries of frost heave, strained against hinges crusted shut with rime. A dark, frigid draft sighed from the gaps, smelling of deep earth and stagnant water. Above it, the ward stone pulsed its deep, bruised crimson rhythm. Thump… Thump… Counting down.
Forty paces to the Spire door.
But the path wasn't clear. Between them and the dripping maw stood a gauntlet of death. The Frostguard cordon Haruto had predicted had fully formed. Twelve glaives, held low and steady like winter's fangs, formed an unbroken wall of dark steel and rime covered plate across the narrow approach to the door. Their visored helms offered no expression, only the promise of cold, efficient slaughter. Behind them, ward keepers hunched over pulsating rune stones set into the ice, their chants a low, guttural drone that made the air hum with contained frost energy. And high above, on the Spire's flanking buttresses, the roof hawks had repositioned. Bone bows were drawn, arrows aimed not generally, but with chilling precision, at Ryota, at Haruto, at the struggling Kuro.
The Void Hounds, momentarily checked by Shiro's heat wave, were regrouping, their guttural snarls a rising tide from the west. The dark armoured figures from the Spire's shadow were closer now, moving with predatory silence, their glaives shimmering with the same hungry violet sheen as the first assassin's. They fanned out, cutting off any retreat towards the Skiff.
They were surrounded. Pinned against the Spire's weeping wall. The ninety seven heartbeats thundered in Shiro's skull, a frantic drumbeat against the slow, inevitable pulse of the ward stone and the rising snarls of the hounds. The Frostguard wall didn't advance. They held their ground, glaives steady, an immovable barrier of ice and steel. Waiting. Patient. Knowing the hunters were now the cornered prey.
Ryota straightened to his full height, Starbreaker sliding from his back into a ready grip with a sound like a mountain clearing its throat. The hum deepened, vibrating the ice at his feet. His Polaris eyes swept the killing field before him, the glaive wall, the ward keepers, the roof hawks, the advancing flankers. His voice, when it came, was the low, resonant rumble of an avalanche poised to fall. It carried no fear, only a terrible, inevitable certainty.
"The door is the lock." He raised Starbreaker, the runes along its massive blade flaring with captured starlight, pushing back the crimson gloom. "We are the fucking key." His burning gaze locked onto the centre of the glaive wall. "Break them."
Silence, thick and heavy as the mountain itself, settled for a single, suspended heartbeat. The ward stone pulsed. Thump. The Void Hounds howled. The roof hawks tensed. The glaives lowered another fraction, points aimed at Ryota's heart.
Fifty Seven.
Ryota's command, "Break them." hung in the frozen air, a challenge thrown not at the advancing Frostguard, but at the very walls of fate closing in. The glaive wall remained impassive, a line of rime coated steel and shadowed visors, absorbing the threat without flinching. Above, bone bowstrings creaked with lethal patience. The Void Hounds' snarls rose like a tide from the west, punctuated by the deep, ominous Thump… Thump… of the ward stone, counting down Aki's stolen breaths.
No fanfare. No war cry. The Twin Stars moved.
Ryota surged forward, Starbreaker's humming edge leading the charge like a battering ram forged from captured starlight. Haruto flowed beside him, a lethal shadow matching the mountain's stride, his obsidian eyes dissecting the narrowing path ahead. Shiro and Kuro flanked them, a dissonant engine of cosmic fury. Shiro's Polaris scar blazed, casting stark, leaping heat waves that made the air ripple and the nearest Frostguard shift uneasily, their frost laden cloaks steaming. Beside him, Kuro's corrupted arm pulsed, grey translucence swirling like storm clouds under his skin. Cold static crackled around him, a low, menacing counterpoint to Shiro's contained solar fury, creating a visible distortion field that warped the pale light from the sentry braziers. Their power signatures clashed and resonated, a terrifying harmony of annihilation held on the thinnest of leashes.
Juro brought up the rear, a growl rumbling in his chest. His axes, dark with ichor, were held low and ready. His flint chip eyes raked the high arches, the rooftops, the deeper shadows pooling near the Skiff, hunting for the flicker of a bowstring, the gleam of an arrowhead. "Keep moving, maggots!" he barked, the command cutting through the wind's howl. "Don't give those sky rats a clean shot!"
Mira stumbled in their wake, a fragile ghost tethered to the storm. Obsidian huddled silent and shivering beneath her hood. Her visible eye was wide, bloodshot, fixed downward, while her fractured lens pulsed erratically, casting frantic, jagged shards of prismatic light that skittered across the black ice like panicked insects. Blood, thick and frozen, crusted her nostrils and chin. She wasn't walking the ice; she was navigating a psychic minefield only she could perceive, her consciousness bleeding onto the frozen killing floor. "Whispers… left… colder… deeper…" she gasped, her voice a raw thread. "The cracks… they breathe the frost…"
They advanced in a tight, grim knot towards the dark maw of the West Conduit Grate, set into the weeping obsidian base of the Spire. Forty paces felt like forty leagues. The Frostguard cordon mirrored their movement, glaives lowering another fraction, a wall of implacable winter advancing to meet them. The ward keepers behind them chanted, their guttural drone making the ice vibrate, amplifying the Spire door's obscene Plink… Hsssss… Crackle behind the glaive line.
As they neared the grate, a section of the black ice directly ahead, seemingly identical to the rest, betrayed itself. Not with a visible seam, but with a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer. Like heat haze over desert stone, but radiating an unnatural cold. It swirled in a lazy, malevolent spiral directly in Ryota's path.
Mira's fractured lens ERUPTED. A violent burst of kaleidoscopic light, deep violet and bruise black, exploded from the glass, painting the ice, the nearby obsidian, and their tense faces in jagged, shifting colours. "STOP!" she shrieked, the sound raw and tearing, her trembling finger stabbing towards the shimmering patch. "The crack! It breathes! Trap! Void teeth under the ice! STEP LEFT! NOW!" Obsidian let out a terrified "KRAKK!" beneath its hood, flapping weakly.
Haruto's hand snapped up in a sharp, silencing gesture. His obsidian eyes locked onto the shimmering patch, calculating depth, trigger radius, lethal yield. "Pressure plate," he confirmed, voice flatter than the ice itself, colder than the void. "Psychic trigger. Mira's sight holds." He didn't look at Ryota. He didn't need to. The path was recalculated in an instant. "Follow my steps. Precisely. Deviate by an inch…" He left the consequence hanging, heavier than Starbreaker. "…and the frost feasts."
Ryota, already mid stride towards the shimmer, halted with impossible, mountain born control. His massive boot hovered mere inches above the deadly patch. He didn't look down. His Polaris eyes burned straight ahead, fixed on the conduit grate, on the path to Aki. With glacial slowness, born of absolute discipline, he shifted his weight. His hovering foot lowered, not onto the shimmering death, but half a pace to the left, onto ice Mira's fading vision confirmed was merely cold, not hungry. The black ice groaned under his weight, but no telltale hiss followed. No geyser of freezing annihilation erupted.
He didn't pause. His next step was already placed, following the invisible, razor thin path Haruto's calculations and Mira's bleeding sight had charted through the minefield. The silent command vibrated in the frozen air: Control. Precision. No error.
Shiro followed, tracing Ryota's steps with agonizing care, the grinding shriek in his wrists a brutal counterpoint to his focus. His Polaris scar flared, pushing back the encroaching dread. Kuro mirrored the movement, his corrupted arm held rigid, the cold fire within flaring as he concentrated on containing the volatile energy, stepping precisely where Ryota's boot had crushed the frost. Juro herded Mira, his eyes never leaving the high perches, his body a shield between her and any descending arrow. Mira stumbled after them, gasping, her lens pulsing chaotic darkness, the cost of maintaining the vision etching deeper lines of agony onto her face.
One by one, they navigated the deadly patch, a grotesque ballet performed on a stage of frozen hell. The Frostguard cordon tightened, glaives now at waist height, points aimed. The roof hawks shifted, bone bows tracking their progress. The Void Hounds' howls were deafening now, a physical pressure from the west, mixed with the guttural shouts of the dark armoured flankers closing in from the Skiff's shadow. The ward stone pulsed. Thump…
They reached the West Conduit Grate. It wasn't a door; it was a grimacing maw set into the Spire's weeping obsidian base. Thick, rusted iron bars, warped by centuries of frost heave and neglect, strained against hinges thick with frozen grime. The gaps between the bars exhaled a frigid draft smelling of deep earth, stagnant water, and something older, more profound, the cold breath of the mountain's buried veins. Above it, the ward stone pulsed its deep, bruised crimson light, staining the frost around the grate like spilled blood.
They were pinned. The Frostguard cordon stood twenty paces away, an unbroken wall of winter's teeth. The roof hawks held their aim. The hounds and flankers closed the noose from behind. The Spire door wept its corrupted tears, Plink… Hsssss… Crackle, each drop a hammer blow on the anvil of their dwindling time. The icy wind screamed through the grate's bars, a mournful counterpoint to the rising snarls and the ward stone's relentless beat.
Haruto was already at the grate, his Polaris dagger in hand, its tip probing the rust jammed mechanism where the massive locking bar met the stone frame. His obsidian gaze swept the iron, the hinges, the surrounding frost patterns. "Rusted shut. Hinges frozen solid. Standard Frostguard neglect… or deliberate sealing." He looked back, his gaze sweeping the converging threats, the immovable glaive wall, the patient death above. "This needs force. Precise force. At the weakest point." His eyes locked onto Shiro and Kuro. "The Defiance Variable. Ignite it. Now."
The command hung. Ninety seven heartbeats bled away. The killing floor held its breath. The spark needed to burn through the lock.
Haruto's command, "The Defiance Variable. Ignite it. Now." hung in the frozen air, sharper than the Void Hounds' snarls. It wasn't a request. It was the detonation code for their last, desperate gambit. The rusted iron grate, exhaling its grave cold breath, stood between them and Aki's dwindling heartbeats. The Frostguard cordon, twenty paces away, lowered their glaives in unison, points gleaming like winter's fangs in the ward stone's crimson pulse. Above, bone bowstrings creaked to full draw. The flankers from the Skiff's shadow closed in, dark armour blending with the deeper gloom. The noose tightened.
Shiro and Kuro didn't hesitate. They stepped forward as one, flanking Haruto before the groaning grate. The air between them crackled, thick with ozone and the dissonant hum of opposing cosmic forces held in check. Shiro raised his scarred palm. The Polaris scar ignited, not a beam this time, but a concentrated forge of stellar heat focused onto the massive iron locking bar where it met the ancient stone frame, the weak point Haruto's dagger tip had indicated. The metal didn't just glow; it screamed. Rust turned instantly to incandescent flakes, swirling like dying embers in the wind. The fused bone in Shiro's wrists shrieked in protest, the void leather braces biting deep, but he channelled the agony into the fire, teeth bared in a silent snarl. Burn. Burn through.
Beside him, Kuro didn't summon a storm. He focused the void cold. His corrupted arm pulsed, the grey translucence swirling like oil disturbed by a deep current. The cold fire within flared, casting horrifying, fleeting X rays of the skeletal structure beneath his skin. Static hissed, not chaotic, but channelled, directed. He placed his good hand flat against the ice rimmed stone beside the superheated lock. Not touching the metal. Touching the foundation. The void sphere at his hip pulsed, a deep, resonant THOOM that vibrated the ground. The biting cold radiating from him intensified, a localized blizzard focused on the stone surrounding the lock mechanism. Frost exploded outwards in fractal patterns, crawling up the obsidian wall with terrifying speed. The stone itself groaned, ancient mortar cracking under the sudden, intense thermal shock.
"HOLD THE FUCKING LINE!" Ryota's roar shook the ice beneath their boots. He planted himself between the Twin Stars and the advancing Frostguard cordon, Starbreaker held horizontally before him like a titanic shield. The runes along its blade blazed with captured starlight, pushing back the ward stone's crimson gloom. The first wave struck. Glaives hammered against Starbreaker's edge with the sound of mountains colliding. Sparks, white hot and furious, showered the black ice. Ryota didn't budge. He was the bedrock, absorbing the impacts, his Polaris eyes burning with the fury of a star core. "Juro! Skies!"
Juro was already a whirlwind of dark steel. He met the flankers charging from the Skiff's shadow, axes blurring. "Come on, you frostbitten fuckers!" he bellowed, his voice raw with battle lust. An axe crunched into dark plate, shearing through mail, drawing a spray of dark, freezing ichor. He spun, parrying a glaive thrust aimed at Kuro's exposed back with his second axe, the CLANG echoing like a death knell. "Firecracker! Little Princeling! Fucking move faster! Or we're all fucking ornaments for Volrag's mantelpiece!"
High above, the roof hawks loosed. Bone tipped arrows, glinting with void ice venom, hissed down like frozen rain. Haruto moved. Not to attack, but to deflect. His Polaris dagger became a silver blur, intercepting arrows with impossible precision. Shink! Shink! Thud! One arrow shattered against the dagger's edge. A second was deflected into the chest of a charging flanker, who crumpled with a gurgle. A third buried itself in the ice at Mira's feet. She flinched violently, a thin cry escaping her bloodied lips.
The iron locking bar under Shiro's focused stellar fury reached critical. It glowed cherry red, then white hot. Metal flowed like molten wax. But it held, warped and straining, fused in places by centuries of frost and rust. "Kuro! NOW!" Shiro gritted out, sweat freezing instantly on his brow.
Kuro's storm grey eyes narrowed. The static around his corrupted arm intensified to a shriek. He shoved the focused void cold deeper into the stone surrounding the white hot lock. The effect was catastrophic. Superheated metal met absolute zero stone.
CRACKKKKK KABOOOOOOOM!
The sound wasn't metallic; it was the mountain itself screaming. The stone frame around the lock didn't just fracture; it exploded inwards. Chunks of obsidian, some the size of a man's head, blasted into the dark conduit beyond. The white hot locking bar, subjected to instantaneous, brutal thermal shock, shattered like glass. Shrapnel of molten and frozen metal screamed through the air. Shiro threw up his good arm instinctively, deflecting a smoking chunk with a sizzle against his vambrace. Kuro staggered back from the concussive blast, the grey translucence surging past his collarbone, the cold fire within guttering violently.
The grate shrieked in protest. One massive, rusted hinge tore free from the shattered stone with a sound of shearing iron. The iron bars sagged inwards, twisted and broken, revealing a yawning, pitch black maw exhaling a gust of frigid, stale air and the scent of deep, wet earth. The way was open.
"GO!" Haruto roared, already turning, dagger raised to deflect another arrow. "Conduit! NOW!"
Ryota shoved back against the pressing glaive wall with a surge of raw power, creating a sliver of space. Juro finished a flanker with a brutal axe chop to the neck and spun, ready to cover the retreat into the dark opening. Shiro grabbed Kuro's good arm, hauling him towards the shattered entrance. "Move!"
Mira screamed.
It wasn't a cry of pain or fear. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated psychic horror, raw and tearing, that cut through the clash of steel and the howling wind. Her fractured lens ERUPTED not with light, but with a torrent of absolute, consuming DARKNESS. Deep violet and void black shards bled from the glass, swirling like malevolent smoke. She pointed, not at the Frostguard, not at the roof hawks, but into the newly opened, pitch black maw of the conduit. Her visible eye was wide, pupil blown, reflecting nothing but abject terror.
"NOT A PATH!" she shrieked, blood spraying from her lips with the force of her cry. "A THROAT! IT'S A THROAT! THEY'RE WAITING! VOID TEETH IN THE DARK! AKUMA'S TRAP! HE KNEW! HE KNEW WE'D COME THIS WAY!"
Her words landed like a physical blow. Shiro, half pulling Kuro towards the opening, skidded to a halt at the threshold, staring into the impenetrable blackness. The frigid draft from the conduit now felt like the exhalation of some colossal, buried predator. The scent of earth was suddenly undercut by something else, ozone, greasy fur, and the sweet, cloying stench of decay. Juro, poised to enter, froze, axes lowering a fraction, his flint chip eyes darting from Mira to the black hole. Ryota's defence wavered for a split second, a glaive point scraping against his breastplate. Haruto's obsidian gaze snapped from the roof hawks to the conduit entrance, his mind whirring, recalculating probabilities with terrifying speed.
From within the absolute darkness of the conduit came a sound. Not the drip of water. Not the sigh of wind.
A low, guttural, multi throated GROWL. It vibrated up through the stone floor, a sound of pure, ravenous hunger. Then, the unmistakable scrape of claws on stone. Many claws. Moving closer.
Forty Seven.
The Frostguard cordon, sensing the sudden hesitation, surged forward with a collective roar, glaives thrusting towards Ryota's exposed flank. The roof hawks, seeing the group frozen at the conduit's maw, drew anew. The Void Hounds' howls reached a crescendo, mere seconds from breaking through the rear. And from the darkness of the conduit, unseen but felt, Void Hounds, or something worse, stirred, drawn by the light, the heat, the scent of fear, waiting to tear them apart in the confined dark.
They stood on the threshold of Akuma's trap, the jaws of the mountain snapping shut behind them, and the throat of the void opening hungrily before them. Ninety seven heartbeats bled away, and oblivion yawned on both sides.