The Sovereign-V2: C2: The Silence Fractures

The Sovereign-V2: C2: The Silence Fractures

The Frostway spiralled downwards, a corkscrew of frozen agony. The ceiling hung low, jagged with dripping fangs of ice that threatened to impale them, glistening with the viscous rime. The floor was treacherously slick, uneven, crunching underfoot with the brittle remains of things best left unimagined. The air remained a physical assault, stealing breath in ragged, crystallized gasps that tasted of tombs, extinguished suns, and the metallic residue of cosmic decay. The silence was profound, suffocating, broken only by the tortured rasp of their own breathing, the crunch of ice underfoot, and the relentless, distant baying echoing within the ice itself, a vibration of pure predatory intent felt in the marrow, a rhythm that seemed to sync with the pulsing of the Frostway's walls. The
cloaked figure
remained a silent, watchful shadow, their featureless obsidian mask reflecting the pulsing scars like dead stars, offering no comfort, only an unsettling sense of being observed by something profoundly uknown.
Mira’s voice rasped, cutting through the dread like a shard of glass: “The crows… they don’t just watch. They… remember. Lord Haruto.” She paused, her projector beam trembling as if buffeted by an unseen psychic wind. “The scrap… the parchment fragment… it wasn't just a message. It was a warning scribed in a dying star’s last breath, carried here by a crow who gave its life to deliver it. Nyxara’s frost… it’s learning. Adapting. The Temple seals… they weren't merely broken. They were consumed. Assimilated. This place…” Her voice dropped to a whisper layered with distant avian terror, “...it's becoming an
organ
. A conduit for the cold between stars. It thinks. It hunts.”
A chill deeper than the physical cold, a chill that touched the soul, gripped them all. Learning? The thought of sentient, adaptive frost, cold given predatory intelligence, was a new layer of
cosmic dread
that tightened every muscle. Juro cursed, a raw sound, gripping his crowbar like a lifeline. The cloaked figure tilted their head slightly, the etched starlight scar on their mask pulsing faintly, as if acknowledging Mira's terrifying revelation.
Shiro stumbled after Haruto, every jarring step sending
blinding shards of white hot agony
up his ruined arms. The exposed nerve endings shrieked, the pulped flesh screamed, the freezing air bit into the raw bone with teeth of ice. It felt like his arms were being slowly fed into a grinder. The Polaris scar in his palm throbbed like a second, trapped heart, resonating against the oppressive silence, a desperate drumbeat against the encroaching void. He glanced back. Ryota moved like a force of nature animated by an unbreakable aura that seemed to emanate from him, each step a visible torment for Kuro that made Shiro's own pain flare in sympathy. The cosmic frost lace in Kuro's veins pulsed brighter, the sickly blue light now visibly past his elbow, tendrils reaching hungrily towards his shoulder, a
living corruption
warping his form, making his movements slightly jerky, unnatural. Ryota’s hand hovered near Kuro’s uninjured arm, a rock of stability to keep him from falling. Juro watched Kuro's advancing corruption with horrified fascination mixed with a doctor’s calculating assessment of risk.
The baying grew louder, closer. Not just sound, but a
pressure
, a subsonic vibration humming through the ice underfoot, scraping against the mind, triggering primal fear centres. It felt insidious, intelligent. The Hounds weren't just chasing; they were running alongside them, separated only by the thin, treacherous veil of frozen reality, pacing them, waiting. The Frostway itself seemed to pulse with their anticipation.
Then, the light
changed.
Ahead, where the tunnel curved sharply downwards into a wider, cavernous section slick with frozen runoff, the weak beams from Mira’s projector and the glow from their scars seemed to
dim and fray
. Patches of absolute darkness clung to the walls like
malignant tumours
, absorbing light and radiating a deeper, more profound cold that made the air crackle. These patches weren't passive; they seemed to throb. The air grew colder still, the stench of decay intensifying to a choking miasma of ancient rot and spoiled celestial matter. The baying ceased abruptly. Silence descended, not empty silence, but a
predator’s stillness
, thick and charged with lethal intent. It was the silence of the void given focus.
Haruto froze instantly, fist snapping up in a sharp, silent command. Ryota reacted with the speed of a glacier calving. He roughly, but effectively, placed Kuro against the nearest ice wall. "
Stay.
" The command was absolute, forged in the crucible of command. Kuro slumped against the weeping ice, gasping, his corrupted arm pulsing against the slick surface, the blue light seeming to seep into the wall for a fraction of a second before recoiling. Ryota stepped forward, planting his massive frame squarely between the group and the yawning darkness ahead,
Starbreaker
raised high. Its blade caught the failing light, humming louder now, resonating with Ryota’s Polaris eyes blazing like furious, miniature suns banishing the gloom immediately around him. Shiro pressed himself flat against the freezing, breathing wall, his heart hammering against his ribs like a caged bird. The Polaris scar flared in his palm, a silent scream against the encroaching anti light. Juro flattened himself beside Mira, breath fogging rapidly. The
cloaked figure
melted into a deeper shadow beside a jagged ice formation, unseen but palpably present, their stillness more profound than the surrounding dark.
From the clinging, light eating tumours of darkness, they emerged. Not quickly, but with a terrible, inevitable flow.
Shadow Hounds.
Voids given semi corporeal form. They flowed like sentient smoke, taller than Ryota at the shoulder, their passage silent as the grave they embodied. Their bodies were shifting obsidian mist, barely containing a core of
absolute cold
that radiated outwards, making the very air crackle and frost bloom instantly on the tunnel walls around them in intricate, fractal patterns that seemed to writhe. They possessed no discernible features, only gaping, swirling maws of pure frost annihilation, vortexes of silent nothingness that seemed to pull at the soul. Where their insubstantial paws touched the ice, it didn't crunch; it sublimated, vanishing into wisps of freezing vapour without a sound, leaving behind patches of unnaturally smooth, blackened ice. Their eyes: not eyes at all, but pinpricks of chilling, distant starlight, Algol's baleful gaze reflected in miniature voids, cold and utterly devoid of anything resembling life or mercy, only endless, hungry void. The silence around them was a
physical force
, a suffocating blanket that pressed down, stealing sound before it could be born, muting even their own passage. It was the silence of the event horizon, amplified, weaponized. Their presence warped the light, making distances seem unreliable, the walls behind them shimmering like a heat haze over frozen desert.
One flowed towards Haruto with terrifying, liquid speed, its maw widening, the vortex of frost reaching out like freezing tendrils yearning for warmth. The disgraced noble lunged, instinct and honed reflexes overriding primal fear, his starlit blade a desperate silver streak aimed at the heart of the mist. It passed through the shifting darkness, meeting no resistance, the cold intensifying violently around the blade, frosting it instantly bone white, the numbing chill racing up Haruto's arm like a venom. The Hound didn't react, didn't snarl. It simply flowed forward; its chilling maw aimed at his face, promising not death, but
unmaking
.
Panic, cold and sharp as the Hound's essence, lanced through Shiro. Instinct screamed. He didn't think; he reacted. He raised his bleeding, scarred palm towards the Hound menacing Haruto and pushed. Not with muscle, but with the
white hot rage
for Aki drowning in her slum shack, for Yuki burning on Ryo's pyre, for Kuro’s body being rewritten by ice, for the suffocating despair of the Warrens, all focused into a single point of defiance channelled through the Polaris scar, aimed not just at the Hound, but at the silence it imposed, the void it represented.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on NovelFire. any occurrences elsewhere.
THRUM VVVVOOOOOMMMMM!
A visible wave of distorted air erupted from his palm, shimmering like heat haze over a forge but crackling with suppressed sonic fury. Within the Hound's silencing aura, it manifested not as sound, but as a violent ripple in reality itself, a tear in the fabric of quietude. It struck the swirling maw dead centre.
The effect was immediate and grotesque. The semi corporeal form rippled violently, like smoke caught in a sudden, localized hurricane. The chilling starlight eyes flickered erratically, their light dimming. The absolute silence around it
fractured
. For one horrifying, crystalline second, Shiro heard the underlying sound of its form, a cacophony of a million tiny, frozen screams, the grinding of celestial bones trapped in eternal ice, the soul sucking emptiness of dead space, the hunger of the void given voice. It recoiled, its misty form momentarily destabilizing, pulling back from Haruto with a silent convulsion of pure negation.
Agony exploded in Shiro's hand and arm.
It wasn't just the physical wound; it was the
Surges
recoil. It felt like the trapped star fragment in his palm had detonated, sending molten shards of pure,
unfiltered stellar fury
burning up every nerve pathway. His vision whited out, replaced by searing supernovae of pain. Bones felt like they were splintering from the inside out, marrow set ablaze. A silent scream locked in his throat, choked by the taste of copper and the smell of his own flesh burning from within, ozone and charred meat. He staggered violently, slamming back against the ice wall, clutching his arm as if to prevent it from flying apart, the pain so profound, so
all consuming
, it felt like his very soul was unravelling at the edges. Tears of pure agony froze instantly on his cheeks. Readers would feel this in their own nerves, a phantom fire racing up their arm.
Kuro saw the opening through a haze of his own agony and the chilling numbness spreading from his corruption. He roared, a sound ripped from a place deeper than pain, a defiance fuelled by terror of what he was becoming. He pressed his free hand against his shattered ribs, ignoring the grinding protest that threatened to steal consciousness. His left hand, bearing the starlight scars, shot out. His fingers, threaded with the invasive cosmic frost, glowed with stolen, malevolent light that felt
wrong
, like using poison as a weapon. He focused the corrupting ice magic, the very power consuming him, pouring his terror and rage into it. Jagged shards of
black void ice
, colder than the absence of heat and sharper than shattered hope, erupted from the weeping wall beside the recoiling Hound. They speared upwards like a macabre, spontaneous portcullis forged from anti starlight, the ice groaning as if in protest at its own perversion, forcing the Hound back further with a silent ripple of displeasure that vibrated the air.
The recoil for Kuro was catastrophic.
Using the corrupting power amplified the Surge’s backlash a hundredfold. It wasn't just pain; it was
cosmic violation
. The icy tendrils in his arm thrived, surging upwards past his shoulder with a sickening crackle snap, the blue light flaring blindingly, casting stark, monstrous shadows. He felt the alien cold seize his muscles, creep towards his heart with glacial inevitability, a terrifying numbness spreading alongside the excruciating fire in his nerves that felt like his DNA was being rewritten into frozen crystal. He collapsed against the wall, retching soundlessly, his vision swimming with impossible,
non Euclidean geometries
, shifting angles that defied comprehension, fractal patterns of infinite cold blossoming behind his eyes. The Frostway seemed to pulse with him, a sympathetic vibration of hungry ice. Readers would feel the invasive cold, the violation, the terrifying dissolution of self.
Ryota didn't hesitate. He saw the opening bought with his princes excruciating sacrifice. With a roar that echoed Kaya’s stolen defiance and his own bottled millennia of fury, he stepped forward,
Starbreaker
descending. It wasn't a swing; it was the
falling of a star fragment
, the vengeance of the true North made manifest. The air wailed around it, a sonic boom suppressed by the Hound's aura but felt as a pressure wave. Time seemed to slow, the ice crystals in the air hanging suspended. The heavy, spiked pommel, infused with the shard of the celestial Polaris,
the anchor point of the heavens before Ryo's chains
, struck not the mist, but the Hound's collar with pinpoint, annihilating force. The weapon itself seemed to blaze with righteous fury.
KRACKKK
The sound was less a crack, more a localized
reality tear
. A shockwave of pure,
Polaris force
, the unyielding will of the fixed star, ripped outwards. The obsidian mist collar didn't just break; it disintegrated, unravelling like rotten thread. The embedded star fragments, tiny, desecrated Cassiopeia thrones and chained Polaris points, vaporized into glittering dark dust that hung in the air like cursed snow. The shockwave hammered into the Hound's core of absolute cold.
The Shadow Hound didn't recoil; it
unravelled
. It imploded inwards with a silent, horrific convulsion that seemed to suck the light from the immediate area, collapsing into a swirling cloud of freezing, lightless ash that rained down onto the black ice, leaving only the acrid tang of ozone, extinguished hope, and the lingering psychic echo of shattered screams. The force of Starbreaker's impact left a spiderweb of glowing cracks radiating across the black ice floor, the fissures pulsing faintly with residual stellar energy before fading. The silence rushed back, heavier than before, but now fractured.
"
GO! NOW!
" Ryota bellowed, the word raw and ragged, ripped from lungs seared by the Frostway's air. He was already turning, grabbing the semi conscious Kuro under the arms, hauling him upright with a grunt that spoke of immense strain. Kuro cried out, a sound lost in the muffled silence, his corrupted arm pulsing violently. "MOVE!" Haruto was already sprinting down the indicated path, a silver ghost in the gloom. Juro grabbed Mira's arm, practically dragging her forward. Shiro forced his legs to work, staggering forward like a drunkard, his arm a
blazing crucible of nerve shredding pain
, the Polaris scar throbbing like an exposed, superheated heart ready to burst. The
cloaked figure
moved last, gloved hands scattering small, wicked frostbite caltrops onto the icy floor behind them with silent, efficient grace. As they turned to follow, the deep hood shifted minutely, and for a fleeting instant, Kuro, through the haze of agony and encroaching numbness, glimpsed within the darkness of the hood. Not a face, but
eyes
. Eyes that were not eyes, but swirling galaxies, nebulae in miniature, forming a distinct, impossible shape: the
Corvus constellation
. The Crow. And on one gloved finger, as the hand withdrew, a flash of metal, a ring, heavy and ornate, set with a dark stone that seemed to absorb the light. Familiar... Kuro's pain fogged mind scrabbled. Where...? The thought was slippery, elusive, drowned instantly by a fresh wave of agony from his arm. Illusion... the pain... he dismissed it, a phantom of his unravelling senses, before darkness threatened to claim him again. The figure melted into the gloom after the others.
The remaining Hounds in the deeper patches of clinging darkness recoiled momentarily from the violent unmaking of their kin and the raw, resonant power unleashed, the power of the true Polaris striking a blow against its desecrated image. The silence they imposed wavered, filled now by the harsh gasps of the fleeing rebels, Kuro's pained whimpers, and the ominous crack of ice settling far above, sounding like the laughter of the mountain.
The rebels plunged deeper into the Frostway's suffocating,
sentient
embrace, leaving the freezing ash of the defeated Hound and the unsettling awareness that Kaya's stolen stars and their own brutal, soul scarring sacrifice had bought them mere seconds. The lower cisterns awaited, a forgotten, drowned labyrinth beneath the Black Vaults, promising only deeper darkness, the relentless pursuit of a king who turned light into chains, and the chilling, adaptive gaze of the Frostway itself, Nyxara's weeping, hungry scar. The cloaked figure’s silent presence, the glimpse of Corvus eyes and the hauntingly familiar ring, was a reminder: allies walked in shadow, but the cost of defiance was etched in blinding pain, cosmic corruption, and the terrifying erosion of self. The hunt was on, and the Frostway watched them descend with frozen,
intelligent
and importantly hunger.

.
!
V2: C2: The Silence Fractures