The Sovereign-V2: C16: Starbreakers
Shiro and Kuro lay broken on the freezing stone of Elara Veyne’s tomb sanctuary, the void entity’s crystalline claws a descending forest of death inches from their flesh. The scrape scrape scrape was the drumbeat of their extinction. Shiro saw only Aki’s frail body; Kuro tasted only the ash of his own futility.
Is this it?
The thought was a frozen stone in both their guts.
Pathetic.
Then, light.
Time didn’t slow; it
shattered
. For Shiro and Kuro, prone on the soul stone, the universe contracted to the descending lattice of crystalline claws and the suffocating certainty of extinction. The scrape scrape scrape wasn't just sound; it was the rasp of a coffin lid sealing, vibrating in their marrow. Then, defiance erupted in light and fury.
Haruto Isamu didn't merely move; he
translocated
. One fractured instant, he was a tense silhouette guarding the fissure, his starlit dagger a low, silver hum against the gloom. The next, he was a meteor forged from cold resolve, streaking through the vortex of swirling dust and ice crystals dislodged by Corvin’s detonation. The air itself
cracked
in his supersonic wake, a whip snap of displaced vacuum. His path wasn't tactical; it was geometric inevitability. He placed himself not
near
Shiro, but
precisely
within the lethal convergence point of the void claws, his back momentarily eclipsing the fallen twin. His dagger,
Luminae gifted to him by his late mother
, wasn't raised for a parry; it was braced horizontally in both hands, low and angled, a slender, gleaming barricade against tidal force. The Polaris light reflected in his wide, analytical eyes wasn't fear; it was the terrifying clarity of a terminal equation solved:
Intercept vector optimal. Mass displacement insufficient for full deflection. Probability of fatal compromise: 92.7%. Probability of primary target survival with intervention: 38.4%. Necessary loss.
He hit the ground in a controlled skid, boots shrieking against frost rimed stone, directly absorbing the killing vector meant for Shiro.
Luminae
flared with desperate, incandescent brilliance, not as a weapon, but as a focal point for his own life force, channelled into the blade’s core. He anchored, muscles coiling like steel springs beneath his tunic, bracing for the impact that would shatter bone and star metal alike. "DOWN!" The command wasn't a shout; it was the crack of glacial calving, sharp, absolute, and utterly devoid of doubt. It demanded submission to survival, even as he became the living shield, etched in desperate silver against the devouring dark. The void claws, mere inches from his chest, pulsed with sickly light, casting long, jagged shadows across his determined face.
Simultaneous, yet from a diametrically opposed axis of desperation, Juro
detonated
. He wasn't shadow; he was unleashed kinetic fury. Propelled by coiled power in his legs and a roar ripped from a place deeper than strategy, he launched from behind the skeletal ribs of a shattered fungal column. His target wasn't the entity’s core, but the lethal focus pinning Kuro. Leather clad shoulder met coalescing shadow ice not with technique, but with the brutal, concussive finality of a siege engine. The impact was a sickening
CRUNCHHHHH
, a sound felt in the teeth, spraying frozen shrapnel like diamond hail. Juro grunted, a harsh expulsion of breath fogging instantly in the void chill, the impact jolting through his shoulder with white hot agony. Bone protested, cartilage screamed, but his forward momentum was a force of nature. Even as pain threatened to buckle him, his right hand was a piston. The scavenged dagger, its edge honed by relentless pragmatism, didn't seek elegance or a killing blow. It sought
carnage
. It plunged deep, not into yielding flesh, but into the shifting, viscous
wrongness
of the joint shadow where the cluster of limbs merged with the entity's torso. The sensation was horribly alien, grating resistance, then a sudden, yielding
SHLUCKKKK
as it buried itself to the cross guard in the freezing, semi solid void flesh. "MOVE, YOU ROYAL FUCK UP!" Juro roared, the sound raw, guttural, stripped of its customary icy disdain, vibrating with pure, protective fury that surprised even him. He didn't pause. Planting his lead boot, ignoring the searing, invasive cold radiating up the dagger’s hilt and numbing his fingers, he
wrenched
the blade sideways and
down
with every ounce of strength and leverage his compact frame could muster. Tendons stood out on his neck like frozen ropes, veins bulging at his temples. The limb he’d violated spasmed violently, a shriek of fractured ice tearing from its structure. The claws meant to eviscerate Kuro scraped sparks against the stone floor inches from his leg as the limb was forcibly torqued aside, its deadly trajectory shattered by sheer, savage disruption. He wasn't fighting the entity; he was tearing its intent limb from limb with his bare hands and a piece of scavenged steel.
And Corvin… Corvin didn’t flinch, didn’t roar. Amidst the chaos, Haruto’s silver shield flare, Juro’s grunt of exertion, Ryota’s world shaking bellow, he was stillness incarnate. His ringed hand, the one bearing the dark stone that seemed to drink the frantic Polaris light, completed its subtle, impossible twist. It wasn’t a grand gesture; it was a surgeon’s adjustment, a locksmith’s final turn. The air above the void entity’s densest, most vital core shimmered, not with heat, but with a sudden, localized field of absolute zero potential. It wasn’t an attack on the entity itself, but on the very fabric binding the massive, millennia old stalactite hanging directly above it.
The ice encrusted stone didn't just fall; it DETONATED INWARDS. No fire, no concussion wave in the conventional sense. Instead, the colossal formation imploded with a sickening, subsonic CRUNCHHH that vibrated teeth and made bones ache. It was as if its molecular bonds were severed by the ring’s command. Thousands of tons of ancient rock and hoarfrost weren't blasted outwards; they were compressed, fractured, and accelerated downwards with impossible, focused violence. The stalactite transformed instantaneously from a solid pillar into a focused meteor shower of frozen shrapnel, dagger like ice spears, fist sized chunks of granite pulverized to dust mote sharpness, and heavier, skull crushing boulders, all magnetically drawn towards the entity’s core by the unnatural force Corvin wielded. The blast hammered downwards like the fist of an angry glacier god, a concentrated avalanche of frozen hate. It struck the already destabilized void mass, reeling from Haruto's interception and Juro's brutal maiming, not with random impact, but with targeted, crushing force. The entity buckled, its form compressing violently, voids flaring frantic blue white as it was physically hammered downwards, deeper into the barracks floor, perfectly positioned, perfectly vulnerable, directly into the ascending, annihilating path of Ryota’s incandescent Starbreaker fury. Corvin’s intervention was silent, precise, and utterly, chillingly devastating, the anvil to Ryota’s hammer, orchestrated with detached, terrifying efficiency.
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The shattered doorway didn't frame a man; it vomited forth retribution made manifest. Ryota Veyne crossed the threshold, and the fabric of the barracks warped.
"YOU. TOUCH. THEM. YOU. CEASE!"
The bellow wasn't sound; it was a physical detonation, a sonic tsunami preceding the light. It hammered the air, vibrating stone, rattling teeth in skulls, momentarily stunning the shifting entity into a fractional pause, its voids flickering erratically. Then came the apotheosis:
Starbreaker
.
It wasn't wielded; it was unleashed. Polaris light, concentrated through the ancient axe head with a focus Ryota had not summoned since Kaya vanished, erupted. It wasn't a beam; it was the birth scream of a captive star channelled through scarred hands and scarred soul. The void darkness didn't retreat; it was annihilated within a fifteen yard radius, scoured from existence by pure celestial fury. The light struck the entity's destabilized lower mass, reeling from Corvin’s overhead demolition and grotesquely contorted by Juro’s embedded dagger and brutal leverage, not with impact, but with the absolute, purifying finality of cosmic judgment.
There was no clash, no resistance. There was
erasure
.
Where the incandescent fury touched, absolute zero ice didn't melt or sublimate; it unravelled, its molecular bonds screaming as they were dissolved into harmless photons, vanishing with a high pitched, crystalline shriek that cut off abruptly. Solidified shadow didn't dissipate; it screamed as it was unmade at the quantum level, unravelling into ephemeral, shrieking tendrils of dark vapor that were consumed by the relentless radiance before they could dissipate. Limbs, claws, grasping tendrils of frozen malice simply ceased, dissolved into plumes of ectoplasmic frost haze that boiled away in the star fire. The entity’s vast, terrifying form imploded inward. Its central voids pulsed with frantic, panicked blue white light, not malice now, but raw, alien terror as its very essence was expunged from reality. The subsonic death wail it emitted reached an impossible, skull fracturing zenith, the sound of primordial hunger meeting absolute negation, before being utterly silenced, swallowed by the all consuming roar of the Polaris light. Ryota stood immovable at the epicentre, a scarred titan channelling the wrath of dead constellations, Starbreaker held aloft like the sceptre of an avenging god, the conduit of pure, focused oblivion. In that single, cataclysmic strike, he didn't just slay the void entity; he scoured its blasphemous echo from the sacred stones of Elara Veyne's tomb. Dust, glittering frost motes, and the fading, bitter scent of void space swirled in the sudden, deafening silence, illuminated solely by the slowly dimming, righteous fury held in the Starbreaker's hands. The rescue was absolute, terrifying, and imbued with the crushing weight of power the twins could only dream of wielding without destroying themselves.
Silence crashed down, heavier than the falling dust. Only the ragged gasps of the rescuers and the frantic pulse of the Twin Star scars broke it. Ryota stood amidst the settling debris,
Starbreaker
held high, dripping not blood, but shimmering motes of dissipating void essence. His Polaris gaze, cold and terrible, swept past the settling dust to the two figures huddled on the floor.
Shiro hadn't moved. He lay where he’d fallen, the impact of the void whip a dull, all consuming throb in his chest, eclipsed only by the white hot, grinding scream in his fused wrists. But the physical agony was a distant echo. Inside, a vast, icy cavern had opened. He saw Haruto, panting, a shallow gash bleeding crimson blood on his forearm from a glancing claw. He saw Juro, pulling his dagger free from the dissolving residue of the limb he’d maimed, his face grim, a bruise darkening his temple. He saw Mira, huddled by the fissure, her crow trembling violently, her fractured lens reflecting the fading Polaris light and his own broken form. He saw Corvin, already turning away, his ringed hand vanishing into his cloak, utterly unscathed, utterly detached. He saw Ryota, a colossus of scarred fury and celestial light, standing amidst the unmade horror he had slain.
They did it. Without us. Because of us.
The thought wasn't a whisper; it was a glacier calving in his soul. The arrogance that had propelled him, We’ve got this! We’re ready!, lay shattered, revealing the rotten core beneath:
delusion
. The desperate belief that enduring pain equated to strength. That the volatile power in his palm was a weapon, not a
tumour
. That they were anything but
burdens
. The humiliation wasn't just cold; it was absolute zero, freezing the breath in his lungs. He was a cracked vessel, leaking only weakness and drawing death towards those he loved. The image of Akuma flaying Aki’s wrists, legs, hands wasn't a motivator anymore; it was a prophecy he was too weak to prevent.
Pathetic.
Beside him, Kuro trembled. Not just from the glacial fire chewing towards his heart or the static shriek still echoing in his shattered mind, but from the sheer, suffocating weight of failure. He saw Ryota’s effortless annihilation. He saw Juro’s lethal precision, Haruto’s sacrificial calculation, even Corvin’s chilling efficiency. They were warriors. Protectors. He was… what? Prince Kuro the Unforged? Heir to Ash? A corrupted liability whose very presence was a beacon for the void. The grey translucence past his elbow pulsed, a grotesque mockery of the Polaris light that had just saved them. He felt it, the Blight inside, momentarily shocked, but
waiting
. Hungry.
Feeding
on his shame.
Fuel. That’s all I am. Fuel for the dark, and a chain around their necks.
The absurdity of his earlier taunts,
Royal decree,
curdled into bile in his throat. He retched, dry heaving onto the frost rimed stone, the sound weak and broken.
V2: C16: Starbreakers
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