The Sovereign-V1: C19:Fallen Stars and Shattered Loyalty

The Sovereign-V1: C19:Fallen Stars and Shattered Loyalty

The silence after Ryota Veyne tore the Polaris insignia from his chest wasn’t silence. It was the vacuum between collapsing stars, a pressure so absolute it threatened to implode the very stones of the war room. The faint blue light of the discarded sigil guttered on the obsidian floor near the sundered map of Vostra, a dying star at the feet of the butcher king. The air tasted of ozone and burnt velvet, thick with the iron scent of Ryo’s still bleeding thumb and the psychic residue of shattered loyalty. Outside, the blizzard howled like the chorus of a million frozen souls, rattling the leaded windows where fractal frost feathered the glass in patterns mimicking distant, malevolent nebulae.
Ryo Oji stared at the fallen insignia, then at Ryota. His face didn’t flush with rage; it bleached. The colour drained, leaving his features like weathered moon rock beneath a corona of pure, incandescent fury. His knuckles, clenched around the armrest of his obsidian throne, were bone white, the tendons standing out like gravity distorted star strings. The cosmic chill leaching from the stones seemed to deepen, focusing on him, drawing the warmth from the room until breath misted visibly before every face.
"Serve the frost?" Ryo’s voice was a low, grinding rasp, the sound of tectonic plates shearing under impossible pressure. It wasn’t a shout; it was the prelude to a supernova. He rose, a shadow detaching itself from the event horizon of his throne. Kaya’s meteorite blade, still clutched in his hand, seemed to drink the dim light, its etched constellations blurred by frost and dried blood. "You dare… Polaris… to spit upon the light you were sworn to uphold? The light I bestowed?"
Haruto Isamu stepped forward, placing himself subtly between the advancing King and Ryota. His face was pale as lunar regolith, but his imperial blue eyes burned with Kaya’s own defiant fire. "He speaks the only truth left in this frozen tomb you call a throne room!" Haruto’s voice, though tight with fear, cut through the suffocating atmosphere. "You speak of light, Ryo? You speak of sacrifice? What of Kaya’s light? What of her sacrifice? You burned her hopes along with those villages! You choked the stars!"
Ryo’s attention snapped to Haruto. The fury didn’t dissipate; it refocused, condensing into a beam of pure, annihilating malice. "Her light?" he roared, the sound finally breaking the vacuum, a sonic boom of madness that made Lord Kenji Sato whimper and Lady Chiyo flinch. He took a step towards Haruto, his movements unnervingly fluid, predatory. "Her light was a cancer! A blinding weakness! A chaotic nebula obscuring the cold, hard necessities of power!" He gestured wildly with Kaya’s dagger towards her mutilated portrait. "She begged! Like a mewling comet tail, she begged for that village! For every star addled fool who dared look up instead of bowing down!"
He closed the distance, his face inches from Haruto’s, his breath hot and sour, smelling of mulled wine and something decayed beneath, like a star core gone necrotic. "She looked at the sky, Haruto! Always the damned, treacherous sky! Never the crown! Never the blood it drinks to sustain its radiance!" His voice dropped to a guttural, intimate snarl, meant to flay Haruto’s soul but carrying to every petrified lord like a transmission from a dying star. "So I carved it out of her. That treasonous, distracting light. I carved her star drunk eyes out myself. Left her in the dark where she belonged!"
The confession detonated. Not as a shockwave, but as a silent, gravitational collapse. Priest Gin retched violently, his star pendant swinging wildly, its sickly green light strobing across his ashen face. Lady Chiyo Malkor’s cane clattered to the floor, her hand pressed to her mouth, eyes wide with a horror deeper than the void. Lord Kenji Sato simply folded, collapsing silently onto the cold stone like a puppet with severed strings. Lord Masato Takeda’s flinty eyes widened, absorbing the monstrous admission like a black hole absorbing light, a rare flicker of genuine, calculating shock. Lord Ren Nakamura’s stone face finally registered emotion: profound, tectonic revulsion. Lord Takeshi Yamamoto watched, lips parted, not in horror but in avaricious fascination, already recalculating the political galaxy. Lord Juro Fujiwara, the youngest lord, stumbled back into his chair, the colour draining from his face entirely. He stared at Ryo, then at the unconscious Sato, then at Ryota’s rigid back. His eyes, wide with the shattered innocence of his twenty years, held pure, unadulterated terror, the terror of realizing the axis of your world is a monster. General Hikaru Tanaka closed his eyes, a muscle jumping violently in his jaw, the face of a soldier witnessing the desecration of everything he swore to protect.
Haruto’s hand, resting near the pommel of his ceremonial dagger, shook violently. Tears, hot and furious, welled in his Kaya like eyes, but his voice, when it tore from his throat, was the screech of a star being torn apart: "You monster! You poisoned the very stellar heart of this realm! You murdered its guiding light!" The raw agony in his voice was a physical thing, a keening note that resonated with the blizzard’s howl.
Ryo’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a rictus grin, a death’s head smile in the flickering brazier light. "And I’d carve them out again! The crown
demands
it! Your father understood the cost… in the end." The deliberate invocation of Lord Isamu Senior, found frozen at the palace gates after begging Ryo for aid, his lyre shattered, was the supernova trigger.
Haruto moved. Not with noble grace, but with the desperate, feral lunge of a cornered star beast. A raw cry ripped from him, echoing the dying screams of Vostra, as he drew his dagger, not the ceremonial one, but the hidden stiletto from his lyre pendant. It flashed, a shard of captured starlight, aimed straight for Ryo’s exposed throat.
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Akuma moved like the shadow of a collapsing star. His obsidian blade was a blur of absolute darkness, intercepting Haruto’s thrust with a shriek of tortured metal that set teeth on edge. In the same impossible, fluid motion, Akuma pivoted, his free hand a black comet streaking towards Haruto’s temple. The impact was a sickening crack that echoed like ice splitting a continent. Haruto’s eyes rolled back, defiance extinguished, and he crumpled to the obsidian floor, a fallen constellation.
Ryota’s plain steel sword cleared its sheath with a sound like a solar flare tearing through silence. Its point, honed by grief and the grit of a thousand battlefields, levelled unwaveringly at Akuma’s chest. "Touch him again," Ryota’s voice was the absolute zero of the interstellar void, colder than Nyxara’s breath, "and I will scatter your shadow across the void, piece by piece."
Akuma didn’t flinch. His void dark eyes fixed on Ryota, obsidian blade held low and ready, a silent event horizon promising annihilation. The King watched, panting slightly, a sheen of sweat glistening on his brow despite the deepening cold, the sweat of exertion and a madness burning hotter than any star. Triumph warred with the lingering terror sparked by the frost sigil. The other lords were frozen sculptures in a gallery of dread.
Ryo’s gaze swept the room, taking in the shock, the fear, the revulsion. He saw the vulnerability, the cracks in his dominion opened by his confession and Ryota’s defiance. Fury curdled into something colder, more calculated: the ruthless pragmatism of a tyrant shoring up his collapsing event horizon. He drew himself up to his full height, the mantle of kingship settling around him like armour forged from dark matter.
"Sir Ryota Veyne," Ryo’s voice rang out, cold and formal, cutting through the tension like a blade of ice. It was the voice of the crown, not the madman. "By your own traitorous words and actions, renouncing your sacred insignia, drawing steel in the Royal War Council, aligning yourself with sedition, you have forfeited the title bestowed upon you. The light of Polaris is extinguished in you." He paused, letting the weight of the pronouncement crush down. "You are stripped of your rank, your titles, and the privileges of the Knight of One. You are Ryota Veyne. Nothing more." The words fell like dying stars, extinguishing a legend. Gasps echoed, Lady Chiyo Malkor hand flew to her heart, Lord Nakamura’s stone face tightened almost imperceptibly, Lord Yamamoto’s eyes gleamed with opportunity.
Ryo’s gaze, pitiless as a black hole, then fixed on the unconscious form of Haruto Isamu. "House Isamu," he continued, his voice dripping with contempt, "led by this… poet… has shown itself unfit for the mantle of the Great Houses. By harbouring treasonous sentiments, challenging royal decree, and assaulting the Crown’s person, House Isamu is hereby removed from the celestial concord of the Five." He pronounced the names like a death knell: "Houses Oji, Veyne, Fujiwara, and Malkor remain. House Isamu is diminished. Their voice in the Stellar Conclave is silenced. Their holdings… will be reassessed." The demotion wasn't just political; it was cosmic exile. Lord Masato Takeda’s eyes narrowed, recalculating the balance of power instantly. Lord Juro Fujiwara stared at Ryo, then at Haruto, his youthful face a mask of dawning horror and disbelief. The Five Houses, Oji, Veyne, Fujiwara, Isamu, Malkor, were the bedrock of Astralon. Erasing one was like deleting a constellation from the sky.
Reactions Rippled in the war room
Priest Gin: Looked faintly relieved House Isamu's "star whoring" influence was diminished, but shaken by the violence and Ryo's confession.
Lady Chiyo Mori: Stiffened further, her expression one of profound, aristocratic disapproval. Demoting a Great House was an affront to tradition as deep as murdering a queen.
Lord Ren Nakamura: The stoic general’s jaw clenched. Removing a martial house weakened Astralon’s defences on the eve of cosmic war. Foolishness bordering on suicide.
Lord Kenji Sato: Remained unconscious, mercifully spared the political earthquake.
Lord Takeshi Yamamoto: Barely concealed a smirk. House Isamu's fertile river valleys would be prime for redistribution. A merchant’s dream amidst the nightmare.
Lord Masato Takeda: His flinty eyes became unreadable obsidian mirrors. Opportunity and danger swirled in equal measure. House Isamu's fall created space… but Ryo’s instability was a wild variable.
General Hikaru Tanaka: Looked physically ill. The King was gutting Astralon’s strength from within while Nyxara approached. His eyes met Ryota’s for a fleeting second, a look of shared, helpless dread.
Lord Juro Fujiwara: Stared at Ryo as if seeing a stranger, a monster wearing a crown. His gaze then snapped to Ryota Veyne, the fallen Polaris, the man whose battles were legend, the knight who had just sacrificed everything for honour. Idolization warred with terror, then hardened into something else. House Fujiwara and House Isamu had ancient ties, bonds of trade and marriage. This was an obscenity.
Ryota didn’t react to the stripping of his title. His eyes remained locked on Akuma, his sword steady. The Polaris sigil on his vambrace was dark, cold iron. But as Ryo pronounced the erasure of House Isamu, Ryota’s glacial gaze flickered downwards to Haruto’s prone form. A decision, cold and hard as neutronium, formed.
Ignoring Akuma’s blade, ignoring the King’s towering fury, Ryota took a single, deliberate step towards Haruto. He knelt, a knight paying respects to fallen nobility, his free hand checking the young lord’s pulse. It was there, faint but steady. He slid his sword back into its plain sheath with a soft, final click. Then, with surprising gentleness for a man of his size and history, he hooked his hands under Haruto’s shoulders and lifted him. Haruto’s head lolled against Ryota’s star metal armoured chest.
As Ryota straightened, holding the unconscious Lord Isamu, his eyes swept the room. They passed over the horrified, calculating, or cowed faces of the lords and landed on Juro Fujiwara. The young lord was trembling, his knuckles white on the table, his eyes wide with a storm of emotion, fear, outrage, and a desperate need for something to anchor to in the collapsing universe.
Ryota held Juro’s gaze. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The silent challenge, the unspoken question hung in the frozen air: Where do you stand? In the court of the butcher king, or in the void with the fallen?

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V1: C19:Fallen Stars and Shattered Loyalty