The silence wasn't an absence. It was an entity. A suffocating, velvet fist rammed down Shiro's throat, into his lungs, crushing the air before it could become sound. The darkness wasn't just black; it was consumptive. It devoured the afterimage of the runes blinding detonation, swallowed the memory of light, erased the very concept of sight. It pressed against his eyeballs, a physical, chilling weight. The THUD of the mountain's final heartbeat still vibrated in his teeth, in the marrow of his bones, a seismic echo fading into this terrible, absolute void.
Shiro's own heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped bird beating itself bloody against the cage. Each pulse was a cruel mockery of the ward stone's countdown, a reminder that ended in nothing. His hand, clenched instinctively around the stone, felt only cold, slick obsidian. Lifeless. The fierce crimson pulse that had been their frantic guide, their doom timer, was utterly extinguished. It was just a dead rock now, leaching the residual warmth from his trembling fingers. He couldn't see the runes etched into the chamber walls, but he knew they were there, mere inert shadows in the devouring dark. Their sickly yellow luminescence, that infected glow, was gone. Snuffed out with the final count.
The cold was no longer atmospheric. It was alive. It didn't just seep; it burrowed. Needle sharp shards of glacial air stabbed through his clothes, seeking joints, finding the fused, ruined architecture of his wrists. The grinding shriek he'd learned to push into the background during the frantic drills in the Sky Hearth crypt roared back with vicious intensity. It wasn't just bone dust vibrating anymore; it felt like shards of glass, heated white hot by friction, were being methodically worked deeper into the marrow by an invisible, sadistic hand. The phantom thorns of the manacles, scars etched deep into his psyche, tore anew, a raw, nerve flaying agony radiating up his arms. He'd choked it back, compartmentalized it for Aki, for survival. Now, in this suffocating aftermath, the dam broke. A choked gasp escaped him, instantly swallowed by the hungry silence. His vision swam with crimson static, a familiar prelude to unconsciousness he fought with gritted teeth. The forge was supposed to temper us, a hysterical thought bubbled. Not freeze us solid in the fucking dark.
The air hung thick and foul. Ozone, sharp enough to burn the sinuses, layered over the cloying, wet earth stench of freshly turned grave dirt. But beneath it, something new, something profoundly wrong: a coppery tang, like old blood, and a dry, fungal rot that seemed to emanate from the stone itself. The scent of the mountain's awakening bowels. Its breath.
Across the impenetrable darkness, Kuro's ragged gasp was a mirror to Shiro's own. The suffocating cold was a physical assault, but for Kuro, it was a catalyst. The corrupted flesh of his left arm, hidden beneath leather and vambrace, wasn't just throbbing; it was convulsing. A deep, sickly blue luminescence pulsed beneath the bindings, visible even in the absolute dark as a nauseating, rhythmic glow. It wasn't the angry pulse of before; it was slower, heavier, syncopated with the fading vibration of the mountain's final heartbeat. It felt… resonant. Like the corruption wasn't just reacting to the environment, but communing with it.
The invasive cold fire wasn't chewing anymore; it was excavating. Glacial termites, vast and relentless, bored past his elbow, tunnelling towards his shoulder joint, leaving trails of absolute zero agony in their wake. The static drone, usually a high pitched shriek scraping his sanity, dropped into a lower, more pervasive register. It wasn't just noise; it was a voice. A guttural, subsonic murmur that vibrated in his skull, whispering promises of surrender, of the sweet, numbing release of the void he'd once offered Shiro. Weakness betrays. See? The mountain knows your rot. It welcomes it. His father's ghost, amplified a thousandfold by the malignant presence saturating the air. Kuro's grip on his sword hilt was the only anchor, the worn leather biting into his good hand, a point of focus against the internal tsunami. He tried to shift his weight, to find a stance, but the dead, icy drag of the corrupted arm was an anchor pulling him off balance. The cold fire flared, sending jagged bolts of agony up his neck. He bit down on a cry, tasting blood, the static surging in triumph. He'd been holding back the scream, the tremors, the sheer wrongness of the corruption's spread since the Star Breaker's touch. Here, in the devouring dark after Zero, the effort was crumbling. The rot wasn't just in his arm; it felt like it was leaching into his soul, fed by the mountain's ancient hunger.
Corvin stood like a statue carved from the darkness itself. Utterly still. Utterly silent. The high pitched, skull splitting whine of his black ring had ceased the moment the runes exploded. Now, it was… listening. Not vibrating, but resonating at a frequency below hearing, a subtle thrum Shiro and Kuro felt more than heard, a counterpoint to the mountain's fading tremor. His eyes, usually reflecting the faintest ambient light like chips of obsidian, saw nothing the others could perceive. They were fixed on the impenetrable blackness, unblinking, absorbing data streams of pure shadow. He wasn't listening for sounds; he was listening to the silence itself, to the agonized screams of the ancient wards as they shattered under the combined force of Akuma's trap and Volrag's arrival. He heard the mountain's stone not as inert rock, but as a vast, groaning membrane stretched taut over a churning, primordial hunger. The whispers weren't just shadows now; they were the mountain's thoughts, ancient, slow, and ravenous. A language of grinding pressure, of tectonic thirst, of cold, patient consumption measured in eons. The scent of ozone and grave dirt wasn't just atmosphere; it was the exhalation of a slumbering leviathan finally stirring.
Shiro forced air into his frozen lungs. It felt like inhaling ground glass. "Kuro?" His voice was a raw scrape, barely audible, instantly absorbed by the devouring dark. "Corvin?" Silence answered him, thicker and heavier than before. The suffocating weight pressed down, a physical force threatening to buckle his knees. He could feel it, the mountain's awareness, vast and ancient and utterly alien, focusing on the three insignificant motes trapped within its stone ribs. It wasn't malevolence like Akuma's cruel intelligence or Volrag's glacial hate. This was the impersonal, crushing hunger of geologic time. The hunger of something that consumed mountains and spat out valleys, that drank oceans and exhaled glaciers. And it was awake.
A sound began. Not loud, but impossibly pervasive in the silence. Slick. Squelch. Like wet flesh parting. It came from the walls. From the floor. From everywhere and nowhere. The sound of the mountain shifting. Not stone grinding on stone, but something organic, visceral. The chamber walls, unseen but felt, seemed to ripple. A deep, wet tremor ran through the floor beneath their boots, not the sharp jolt of an earthquake, but the slow, muscular contraction of a gigantic digestive tract. The foul air stirred, carrying a fresh wave of that coppery, fungal stench, thick enough to taste on the tongue.
Kuro gasped, staggering as the floor undulated beneath him. The movement jostled his corrupted arm violently. The invasive cold fire exploded, chewing deeper, a white hot brand of agony searing into his shoulder socket. The static drone surged into a guttural roar in his skull, drowning thought. The blue luminescence beneath his vambrace flared, casting his own distorted, pain wracked shadow onto the unseen, rippling wall for a fleeting second, a monstrous, twisted silhouette. He saw it. The mountain saw it. The hunger sharpened, focusing on the rot he carried, a tasty morsel in the vast, cold dark. Feed us, the static seemed to whisper, echoing the mountain's ancient, wordless craving. Give us the rot.
Shiro pressed his dead ward stone against his chest, as if its cold weight could shield him. The grinding in his wrists was a continuous scream now, the phantom thorns tearing deeper. He tried to summon a spark, anything, to his Polaris scarred palm. Agony detonated. It wasn't the controlled heat of the crypt or the barracks; it was raw, unfiltered stellar fury tearing back up the conduit of his ruined nerves. Nerve flaying shards of white hot pain lanced from his palm to his spine, blinding him, stealing his breath. He choked back a scream, doubling over, vision swimming with supernovae of agony. He'd been forcing the power down, locking it behind walls of Haruto's geometry, pretending the backlash wasn't a constant, shrieking companion. Here, in the hungry heart of the awakened mountain, the walls shattered. The pain was a living thing, a feral beast tearing at his insides, amplified a hundredfold by the suffocating, resonant dark. One star at a time, he thought desperately, the mantra a frail raft in a sea of agony. Control the fire. Not the scream.
Corvin's head tilted minutely. A precise adjustment. The resonant thrum of his ring shifted frequency, a subtle counter harmony to the wet, squelching sounds of the mountain's movement. His distorted voice, when it finally cut the silence, was devoid of inflection, yet carried the weight of absolute, chilling certainty. It wasn't a whisper. It was a statement etched onto the fabric of the dark itself:
"It breathes."
The words landed like stones in a still pond, sending ripples of primal terror through Shiro and Kuro. The slick squelching intensified. The floor trembled again, a slow, peristaltic wave. The coppery, fungal stench grew overpowering, thick with the promise of decay and consumption. The cold deepened, leaching not just warmth, but vitality, hope.
The silence stretched, taut as a nerve about to snap. But it wasn't silence anymore. It was the held breath of a predator. The mountain's heart was awake. The ancient wards were shattered. Akuma's trap was sprung, Volrag's count complete. They stood in the belly of the beast.
And it was starving.
The silence wasn't just broken; it was violated. The resonant, ancient voice, dripping with the malice of geological epochs, slammed into Shiro's mind like a physical blow, bypassing his ears to vibrate directly in his teeth, his marrow. "Welcome, guttering sparks. The mountain has been waiting." It wasn't a sound. It was pressure. It was the weight of the peak itself descending upon their souls.
"Fuck," Kuro gasped beside him, the word ripped out, instantly swallowed by the hungry dark. Shiro felt the sickening resonance through their bond, not just the voice, but the way the invasive cold fire in Kuro's corrupted arm flared in response, a deeper, slower pulse syncing with the fading tremor of the mountain's final heartbeat. It wasn't just reacting; it was communing.
Then, the darkness began to bleed.
A faint, sickly yellow light oozed from the runes etched into the obsidian walls. It wasn't illumination; it was infection. The light pulsed, weak at first, like a dying phosphorescence, then strengthened with a nauseating intensity. It painted the chamber in hues of jaundice and decay, casting long, grotesque shadows that didn't just stretch but writhed, twisting into shapes that teased the edge of recognition before dissolving into formless dread. The air, already thick with ozone and grave dirt, curdled with a new layer: the coppery tang of old blood and a dry, fungal rot that seemed to seep from the stone itself, the mountain's awakening breath.
Shiro's grip tightened on the dead ward stone, its cold slickness leaching the residual warmth from his trembling fingers. The grinding shriek in his fused wrists, momentarily muted by the shock of the voice, roared back with vicious intensity. It wasn't just bone dust vibrating anymore; it felt like shards of glass, heated white hot by friction, were being methodically worked deeper into the marrow by an invisible, sadistic hand. The phantom thorns of the Temple manacles tore anew, a raw, nerve flaying agony radiating up his arms, a brutal reminder of obsidian throne room, of helplessness, of chains. He fought the crimson static threatening to blind him, the mantra surfacing through the agony: One star at a time. Control the fire. Not the scream.
Kuro staggered, the floor seeming to ripple beneath him like a gigantic, frozen muscle. The movement jostled his corrupted arm violently. The invasive cold fire exploded, chewing deeper, a white hot brand of agony searing into his shoulder socket. The static drone surged into a guttural roar in his skull, drowning thought. Weakness betrays. See? The mountain knows your rot. It welcomes it. His father's voice, amplified a thousandfold by the malignant presence saturating the air. He bit down on a cry, tasting blood, the static surging in triumph. The dead, icy drag of the corruption was an anchor pulling him off balance, the blue luminescence beneath his vambrace flaring, casting his own distorted, pain wracked shadow onto the unseen, rippling wall for a fleeting second, a monstrous, twisted silhouette. He saw it. The mountain saw it. The hunger sharpened, focusing on the rot he carried. Feed us, the static seemed to whisper, echoing the mountain's ancient, wordless craving. Give us the rot.
Corvin stood like a statue carved from the darkness itself. Utterly still. Utterly silent. The resonant thrum of his ring shifted frequency, a subtle counter harmony to the wet, squelching sounds emanating from the walls. His eyes, fixed on the impenetrable blackness, weren't seeing the runes; they were absorbing data streams of pure shadow, listening to the silence itself, to the agonized screams of the ancient wards as they shattered. He heard the mountain's stone not as inert rock, but as a vast, groaning membrane stretched taut over a churning, primordial hunger. The whispers weren't just shadows now; they were the mountain's thoughts, ancient, slow, and ravenous. A language of grinding pressure, of tectonic thirst, of cold, patient consumption measured in eons. The scent of ozone and grave dirt wasn't just atmosphere; it was the exhalation of a slumbering leviathan finally stirring. His ring thrummed, not vibrating, but resonating at a frequency below hearing, a subtle counterpoint to the mountain's fading tremor.
Then, figures coalesced from the writhing shadows, stepping forward as if born from the sickly yellow light itself.
Akuma materialized first, a wraith in obsidian plate outlined in the bilious glow. Frost swirled lazily around his armoured form, a miniature blizzard contained by his will. His star pupiled gaze swept over them, lingering on Shiro's scarred hands and Kuro's pulsing arm with cold, analytical hunger. Beside him stood Volrag, a pillar of glacial hate. His presence wasn't just cold; it was an absence of warmth, a sucking void that leached vitality from the very air. His scarred face was impassive, but his eyes, chips of glacial ice, burned with a focused intensity, fixed solely on Ryota.
Behind them, stepping from deeper shadows like nightmares given form, came the ghosts.
For Corvin, it was a figure shrouded in shifting, fractal darkness. Not a man, but the memory of one, the first void entity he had failed to contain decades ago, a failure that had cost lives and carved a piece of his own humanity away. It had no distinct features, only a swirling vortex of absolute cold and gnawing hunger that mirrored the mountain's own essence. A nameless horror, long buried, now exhumed by the plaza's malice. Its mere presence caused Corvin's ring to emit a low, warning thrum, a resonance of recognition and old, cold fury.
Haruto's breath hitched, a microscopic fracture in his usual implacable calm. Stepping into the yellow light was a woman, her features sharp and familiar beneath a cascade of greying hair tied in a severe knot. Commander Yumi Isamu. His father's most trusted advisor, the architect of the Isamu house's tactical doctrine, the doctrine Haruto had perfected. The woman who had smiled as she signed the order condemning his father for "strategic instability" during the Frostguard's internal purges. She stood there, pristine in her old Isamu uniform, untouched by time or decay, but her eyes were voids filled with the same sickly yellow light as the runes. A ghost that spat on his father's grave and on the very concept of loyalty Haruto had built his life upon. Her lips curved in a silent, mocking echo of his father's final, betrayed look.
Juro froze. The figure before him wasn't a spectre of darkness or betrayal, but a memory clad in the torn, blood stained finery of House Fujiwara. Lord Takeshi Fujiwara. Not the scarred monster Juro remembered cutting down in a duel fuelled by exposed treachery, but the man as he was before, Juro's sworn brother, his confidant, the one whose betrayal had shattered Juro's faith and forged his flint hard isolation. Takeshi's face was unmarred, handsome, his expression one of profound sorrow. But the yellow light bled from his eyes, and the wounds Juro had inflicted, wounds he knew he'd dealt, were visible beneath the fine silk: the punctured lung, the severed artery. A scarred visage that was a lie, a cruel reminder that the brotherhood he'd cherished had been a poisoned well from the start. Just fucking lies.
Ryota Veyne stepped forward, placing himself between the emerging horrors and his shattered team. His Polaris eyes burned with a contained supernova of fury, but it was directed solely at Volrag. "Volrag," Ryota's voice was a low rumble, like grinding tectonic plates. "You crawled from the shadows. Finally." The history between them was a frozen river beneath the words, mentor and protege, commander and lieutenant, until ambition curdled into envy, and envy into glacial hate. Volrag, forever in Ryota's shadow, had chosen to extinguish the light rather than share it.
Mira stood slightly behind Ryota, pressed against a grotesque, weeping statue carved from black ice. Her fractured lens pulsed erratically, casting jagged shards of violet and sickly yellow light across her terrified face. Her visible eye was wide, darting between the ghosts, the runes, the sheer, overwhelming malice saturating the plaza. She saw paths fracturing, futures collapsing into gnawing darkness, the weight of the mountain's hunger pressing down on her fragile psyche. Her crow, was a silent, trembling lump on her shoulder, feathers puffed out in primal fear.
Akuma's cold, mocking laugh cut through the oppressive silence, sharp as a shard of ice. "You've made it this far, guttering sparks. Dragged yourselves from your little tomb, trailing ashes and defiance." His star pupiled gaze swept over them, lingering on Shiro's trembling hands, Kuro's pulsing corruption, Corvin's unnerving stillness. "Admirable, in a pathetic, insectile way. But the mountain's heart is awake. It has slumbered for millennia, dreaming of stars and the sweet decay of hope. And now… it hungers." He took a step forward, the frost around him crackling. "And I? I have been waiting. Patiently. For the main course."
Volrag's voice was a low, guttural grind, like stone shearing against stone. His glacial eyes never left Ryota. "We don't want to get blood on the inside of the plaza, Veyne." He gestured with a gauntleted hand towards the vast, shadowed space beyond the archway they stood within, the true expanse of the Plaza of Screams, barely visible in the pulsing rune light. "Too much money spent on renovation." A flicker of that old, bitter resentment twisted his scarred lips. "Plus… you're not worth the fucking effort of scrubbing stones." He raised his chin, a challenge carved in ice. "Step outside. Face your fate. Especially you, Ryota Veyne. Time to see if the old star still burns… or just crumbles to fucking ash."
Shiro's grip on the dead ward stone was white knuckled. The grinding agony in his wrists was a continuous scream, the phantom thorns tearing deeper with every ragged breath. He tried to summon a spark, anything, to his Polaris scarred palm. Agony detonated. It wasn't the controlled heat of the Sky Hearth; it was raw, unfiltered stellar fury tearing back up the conduit of his ruined nerves. Nerve flaying shards of white hot pain lanced from his palm to his spine, blinding him, stealing his breath. He choked back a scream, doubling over, vision swimming with supernovae of agony. Control the fire! Haruto's voice, cold and precise, sliced through the white noise of pain. Focus on the angle, not the scream! He forced himself upright, breathing through the fire, the dead stone pressed against his chest like a shield that offered no protection. The cost of his power was etched in every nerve ending, a brutal counterpoint to Volrag's dismissive words.
Kuro felt Shiro's agony like a blow to his own core. The static roared, the cold fire flared, chewing deeper towards his heart. He saw his monstrous shadow again, reflected in the hungry gaze of the mountain. Feed us. The voice of his father and the void intertwined. But beneath the horror, beneath the consuming pain, a cold ember of defiance sparked , the ember rekindled in the crypt's forge. Precision is the antidote. He wouldn't feed the mountain. He would make it choke. He forced his corrupted arm to his side, not hiding it, but acknowledging it. A weapon. Flawed. Dangerous. But his. He met Volrag's glacial stare with his own storm grey eyes, burning with a resolve forged in absolute zero. "Let's go," he rasped, the static crackling around the words. "This tomb stinks."
Corvin's hood tilted minutely, his unseen gaze analysing the runes, the ghosts, the shifting architecture. His ring thrummed, a constant, resonant counterpoint to the plaza's growing malice. He saw the runes not as mere markings, but as conduits, capillaries pumping the mountain's ancient hunger into the very stone. The Plaza wasn't a place; it was an organ. A digestive tract. He gave a single, precise nod. The path forward was annihilation. But annihilation required positioning. He moved, a silent shadow flowing towards the archway.
One by one, they moved, Shiro fighting the white hot agony with every step, Kuro compensating for the dead drag of corruption, Corvin a study in lethal stillness, Ryota a bastion of contained fury. Mira flinched as they passed, the crow letting out a soft, terrified croak. Haruto's gaze was locked on the ghost of Yumi Isamu, his face a mask of analytical ice, but the knuckles of his clenched fists were white. Juro's eyes, flint hard, never left the sorrowful, bleeding visage of Takeshi Fujiwara, the lie that had shaped his solitude.
As they passed under the massive, rune encrusted archway, the Plaza of Screams opened before them, and the true horror dawned.
It wasn't just vast; it was alive. The floor wasn't stone; it felt like frozen flesh beneath their boots, yielding slightly, unnervingly resilient. Towering pillars, carved to resemble twisted, agonized figures frozen mid scream, wept viscous black ichor that pooled on the "ground," steaming faintly before being absorbed. The source of the sickly yellow light was revealed: colossal, pulsing runes embedded in the very substance of the plaza, throbbing like diseased hearts set deep within walls that seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with a slow, peristaltic rhythm. High above, the vaulted ceiling was lost in swirling, inky darkness, but occasionally, vast, stalactite like formations of black ice would gleam with internal, malevolent light, dripping freezing condensate that hissed where it struck the living floor.
The air was thicker here, heavier, saturated with the coppery fungal stench of the mountain's breath. It pressed down, a physical weight that made breathing laborious. The silence of the chamber was gone, replaced by a low, omnipresent hum, the sound of the mountain digesting anticipation. And beneath it, woven into the very fabric of the place, were the echoes. Not just of ancient screams, but of their fears, their failures, amplified and twisted by the sentient stone: the wet rattle of Aki's dying breath, the crunch of Kuro's ribs under Akuma's boot, the sizzle of Shiro's nerves overloading, the cold, final pronouncement of Corvin's assumption, the shattering of glass that marked Mira's breaking point, the wet tear of flesh as Juro struck down his brother, the dry crackle of Haruto's father's pyre.
Akuma, Volrag, and their ghostly entourage fanned out, blocking the only other visible exit, a towering gate of black ice sealed with chains thicker than a man's torso. Akuma spread his arms, embracing the suffocating atmosphere. "Behold! The antechamber of oblivion! The mountain's welcoming embrace!" His voice echoed strangely, absorbed and amplified by the living stone. "Make yourselves comfortable, sparks. Your light… will be extinguished today."
Volrag took another step forward, his focus solely on Ryota, his hand resting on the hilt of the massive frost forged great sword strapped to his back. The air between them crackled with decades of betrayal and glacial hate. "No more shadows, Veyne," Volrag growled, the sound like grinding glaciers. "Just you. Me. And the cold truth." He drew the blade with a sound like a mountain splitting. Frost exploded outwards, crawling across the fleshy floor towards Ryota. "Your time fucking ends here ONCE AND FOR ALL."
Shiro braced himself, the dead ward stone cold against his palm, the agony in his wrists a brutal metronome counting down the moments until he'd have to unleash the fire again. Kuro shifted his weight, compensating for the drag, the static a rising tide in his mind, the cold fire in his arm pulsing in sync with the diseased runes. Precision. Control. Corvin's ring thrummed louder, a scalpel being honed in the face of the abyss. The ghosts watched, silent, hungry. The Plaza of Screams held its breath, a predator savouring the fear of its prey before the feast began. The mountain was awake. The ancient wards were shattered. Akuma's trap was sprung, Volrag's count complete. They stood in the belly of the beast.
And it was ready to fucking feast.