The Sovereign-V1: C20: Three Sparks in the Storm

The Sovereign-V1: C20: Three Sparks in the Storm

Juro Fujiwara swallowed hard. He looked at Ryo, monstrous in his triumph. He looked at the discarded Polaris insignia, a dead star on the floor. He looked at Haruto Isamu, a friend since childhood He considered Haruto his brother, now broken and exiled. He looked at Ryota Veyne, the embodiment of shattered honour still standing tall. The idealism of House Fujiwara, the lessons of justice and celestial balance, crashed against the reality of Ryo’s tyranny. With a convulsive movement, Juro pushed himself away from the table. He didn’t look at the King. He didn’t look at the other lords. His eyes fixed on Ryota. He took a step, then another, his boots echoing unnervingly loud in the silence. He moved to stand beside Ryota, facing the throne, his posture stiff but resolute. He said nothing, but his presence was a declaration. House Fujiwara, in this moment, stood with the fallen Knight of One and the erased House.
Ryo watched, his fury momentarily choked by disbelief, replaced by a cold, incredulous scorn. "Fujiwara?" he rasped, the name a jagged shard of ice scraping stone. "You dare align yourself with this?" His gesture encompassed Ryota and the unconscious Haruto with utter contempt. "With a stripped dog and a diminished, treasonous spark? Your House stands on the precipice! Step back!"
Juro Fujiwara felt the weight of the King's glare, colder than the blizzard battering the windows. He felt the shocked stares of the remaining lords, Lady Chiyo's appalled rigidity, Lord Takeda's unnerving scrutiny, Lord Yamamoto's predatory interest. The gilded cage of the Five Great Houses now four, the celestial concord his ancestors had helped forge, seemed to constrict around him. To defy the King was madness. To defy him now, after the confession that reeked of cosmic blasphemy, was akin to spitting into a black hole. His father’s cautious diplomacy, his tutors’ lessons on measured power, screamed for retreat.
But then his gaze snagged on Ryota Veyne. Not the disgraced knight, but the man. The man who had stood unflinching before Ryo’s madness, whose legend wasn’t just of battlefield prowess but of unwavering loyalty, loyalty Ryo had just shattered and pissed upon. Juro remembered being a boy of ten, hiding behind a marble column in the Grand Stellarium, watching Sir Ryota "Polaris" Veyne receive the Starfire Medallion. The knight hadn’t boasted. He’d simply stood, a pillar of star metal resolve, his acceptance a quiet promise to uphold the light. That image, that ideal of incorruptible celestial honour, burned brighter in Juro’s mind than Ryo’s crown. It warred violently with the visceral terror induced by the King’s confession, the casual brutality of carving out Kaya’s eyes, the monstrous calculus applied to thousands of freezing souls. The memory of the tiny hand clutching the toy lyre, described by Ryota earlier, superimposed itself over Ryo’s sneering face.
He found his voice, thin but clear as a newly formed ice crystal, cutting through the King’s scorn and the room’s heavy silence. "I align myself, Your Majesty," Juro stated, forcing his chin up, meeting Ryo’s furious gaze, "not with traitors, but with the light that once guided this realm. The light you extinguished." He didn't name Kaya. He didn't need to. The spectral queen hung between them, her absence a crushing void. "House Fujiwara remembers the stars." He took another deliberate step closer to Ryota, placing himself firmly beside the fallen knight and the unconscious Lord Isamu. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped comet, but his stance, though trembling slightly, was resolute. The polished silver Fujiwara crest, twin koi swimming amidst stylized nebulae, felt suddenly heavier, a target and a beacon.
Ryo’s face contorted, a mask of thwarted fury. He looked from Juro to the other lords, seeking reinforcement, finding only shock, calculation, or averted eyes. Even General Hikaru, a bulwark of loyalty, looked profoundly troubled, his gaze fixed on the discarded Polaris insignia as if it were the shattered core of his own beliefs. Lord Takeda’s flinty eyes darted between Juro and Ryo, reassessing the young lord’s unexpected spine and its implications. Yamamoto’s mind was clearly racing, recalculating the value of Fujiwara lands now potentially tainted by association, yet still desirable. Lady Chiyo finally found her voice, a dry rasp like dead leaves skittering over stone: "Lord Fujiwara... consider the gravity. The Concord..."
"The Concord," Juro interrupted, surprising himself with his own steadiness, "was forged under stars that shone on justice, not... butchery." He couldn't bring himself to elaborate. The image of Kaya’s eyes was too vivid, too horrifying.
Ryota, throughout this exchange, had remained an implacable statue cradling Haruto. His face, beneath the battle hardened lines and the frost clinging to his beard, was impassive as a frozen moon. But his glacial eyes, as Juro stepped beside him, flickered with a miniscule spark, not warmth, but recognition. A silent acknowledgment of the immense, foolhardy courage it took. He adjusted his grip on Haruto, ensuring the young lord’s head was supported. Then, without a single word directed at the King or the paralyzed court, Ryota turned towards the towering, rune carved doors of the war room.
The movement was deliberate, heavy with finality. The scrape of his star metal greaves on the obsidian floor was the only sound besides the wind’s mournful howl. He walked not as a supplicant, nor a defeated man, but as a force of nature changing course. He walked towards the storm.
Juro hesitated for only a heartbeat. The weight of centuries of Fujiwara tradition, the terrifying uncertainty of the path ahead, pressed down on him. He saw his father’s disapproving face in his mind’s eye. He saw the potential ruin of his House. But he also saw Ryo’s bloodless knuckles on the throne, heard the echo of the confession that had stained the very air with cosmic wrongness. He saw Ryota’s broad back, a shield against the madness, carrying the broken heir of a murdered House. Taking a deep, shuddering breath that misted instantly in the deepening cold, Juro Fujiwara, twenty fourth head of House Fujiwara, youngest is Fujiwara history, turned his back on the King of Astralon.
He fell into step beside Ryota, a half pace behind and to the right, mirroring the position a squire might take beside his knight. His boots, softer soled than Ryota’s war gear, made little sound, but his presence was a thunderclap in the silent room. He kept his eyes forward, fixed on the doors, refusing to look back at the court he was abandoning. The back of Ryota’s midnight blue armour, scarred and tarnished, became his focal point, a lodestar in the sudden, terrifying void.
This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Priest Gin:
Made a frantic, warding gesture, his star pendant clutched tight. "Blasphemy upon blasphemy! The celestial order unravels!" His whisper was a hiss of pure terror, directed as much at Juro’s defiance as Ryo’s sacrilege.
Lady Chiyo Mori:
Her lips moved soundlessly, her knuckles bone white on her fallen cane. To turn one's back on the King... it was unthinkable. Worse than the murder, worse than the demotion. It was the shattering of the firmament itself. A single tear, cold as space, traced a path down her powdered cheek.
Lord Ren Nakamura:
The stoic general finally moved. He took a single, heavy step forward, his hand instinctively dropping towards his absent sword hilt. His eyes, fixed on Ryota’s retreating back, held not anger, but a profound, soldierly grief, the grief of seeing his former commander, the Polaris, walk into exile with the King’s shadow at his back. He understood duty, but this... this felt like the duty of a dead star.
Lord Kenji Sato:
Stirred groggily, blinking up at the ceiling vaults painted with faded celestial murals, utterly oblivious to the political supernova that had just detonated above him.
Lord Takeshi Yamamoto:
Couldn’t suppress a sharp intake of breath, his merchant’s mind discarding Fujiwara's prime agricultural valleys from his mental ledger with a flicker of regret, instantly replaced by recalculations involving Isamu's potentially confiscated star iron mines and Malkor's rumoured vaults. Opportunity still glittered, albeit in the debris field.
Lord Masato Takeda:
His flinty eyes narrowed to slits. The balance had not just shifted; it had been hurled into a gravity well. Fujiwara’s defiance was unexpected leverage. The young lord’s idealistic spine was a variable he could potentially bend. His gaze slid towards Ryo, assessing the King’s volatility. Was the crown itself now unstable?
General Hikaru Tanaka:
Watched Ryota and Juro walk away, carrying Haruto. He saw not just exile, but the fragile seed of rebellion, a seed watered by Ryo’s own monstrous hand. His soldier’s heart ached for the realm. His loyalty, once as fixed as Polaris, now felt adrift in an uncaring void. He met Ryota’s eyes for one last, fleeting instant as the knight paused at the doors. No words passed, but the shared understanding was a crushing weight: Astralon was being torn apart from within while an ancient ice god approached. Hikaru gave the smallest, almost imperceptible nod, not of agreement, but of grim acknowledgment.
Survive.
Ryo remained frozen on his obsidian dais. The fury had congealed into something colder, more dangerous, a seething nebula of humiliation and thwarted power. His lips moved, but no sound emerged. To order Akuma to strike them down now would be petulant, beneath the crown, and risk turning Juro’s defiance into martyrdom. To let them walk out was an unbearable insult. His eyes, burning with contained supernovas, darted to Akuma. The obsidian executioner stood poised, a statue awaiting the command that didn't come, his void dark gaze fixed on Ryota’s unprotected back, a silent promise of future reckoning.
Ryota reached the colossal doors. They were designed to be opened by guards from the outside antechamber. He stood before them, Haruto a dead weight in his arms, Juro a silent, trembling presence at his shoulder. He didn't look back. He simply waited. The tension stretched, thinner than cosmic filaments, vibrating with the unsaid violence in the room and the storm’s roar outside.
After an eternity of seconds that scraped like ice on bone, the heavy doors groaned inwards, pushed by unseen guards in the blizzard blasted antechamber beyond. A howling gust of wind, laden with stinging ice crystals, exploded into the war room, extinguishing several of the struggling braziers and plunging parts of the chamber into deeper gloom. The cold intensified instantly, biting deep, carrying the scent of frozen pine and something else, a faint, metallic tang like distant nebulae, or perhaps ozone from dying stars.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, the three figures were silhouetted against the blinding white chaos: Ryota Veyne, the disgraced Knight of one, holding the broken heir of the erased House Isamu; Lord Juro Fujiwara, the idealistic young lord who had turned his back on the crown, standing resolute beside them. They formed a stark, unexpected constellation against the maelstrom, the Fallen Star, the Broken Lyre, and the Defiant Koi. A fragile alignment born of horror and honour.
Then Ryota stepped forward, crossing the threshold from the tomb like chill of the war room into the roaring, elemental fury of the blizzard. Juro followed, a half step behind, his cloak whipping violently around him, his last glimpse of the war room a snapshot of the King’s livid face, Akuma’s obsidian stillness, and the stunned, fractured court, all framed by the shrinking rectangle of the doorway.
The doors boomed shut behind them with the finality of a crypt seal.
The sound echoed through the war room, a physical blow. The sudden silencing of the wind’s roar was almost as shocking as its entrance. The remaining light seemed dimmer, the cold deeper, the air thicker with the psychic residue of shattered loyalty, confessed atrocity, and now, open defiance.
Ryo remained standing, rigid, staring at the closed doors as if he could burn through them with his gaze. His knuckles were still white on the throne's armrests. Akuma remained a statue of shadow. The lords were paralyzed, adrift in the aftermath.
Lord Masato Takeda was the first to move. He stepped forward smoothly, his gaunt frame cutting through the gloom. He bent, not towards the King, but towards the discarded Polaris insignia lying near the sundered map. He picked it up, the metal cold and dead in his hand. He examined it, the intricate star pattern now meaningless, then looked pointedly at Ryo. "A fallen star, Your Majesty," he stated, his voice devoid of inflection. "Its light extinguished. Yet..." he paused, letting the implication hang, "...darkness often follows extinguished light. And darkness is where... other things gather." His gaze flickered almost imperceptibly towards the window, where the frost, disturbed by the opened door, was already reforming, tendrils creeping back across the leaded glass.
As if summoned by his words, the frost didn't just reform. It
pulsed
. A subtle, icy luminescence, faint but undeniable, emanated from the patterns on the glass. The intricate fractals shifted, swirling and coalescing not randomly, but into a single, ephemeral shape that glowed for just a few seconds before melting away: a perfect, crystalline, eight pointed star.
It hung in the air of their perception, a silent, cosmic seal upon the events that had just transpired. Nyxara’s sigil. Watching. Approving. Or perhaps, simply claiming the chaos.
Ryo finally tore his gaze from the doors. He saw the fading afterimage of the star on the window, then looked down at Takeda holding the dead insignia. The King’s face, already pale, drained further. The cold wasn't just in the stones anymore; it was in his marrow, in the hollow space where certainty had resided. He had silenced dissent, punished betrayal, asserted his absolute power. But as the ghostly star faded and the dead metal of Polaris glinted dully in Takeda’s hand, Ryo Oji, Butcher King, felt the first, icy finger of the true abyss touch his soul. The storm wasn't just outside. It had found its way in, and three sparks had just carried a fragment of it away into the white chaos. The war for Astralon had irrevocably begun, and its first battlefield was the shattered heart of the King’s own court. The silence that followed was the silence of a universe holding its breath before the cataclysm.

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V1: C20: Three Sparks in the Storm