The Sovereign-V2: C17: Liabilities

The Sovereign-V2: C17: Liabilities

Ryota lowered
Starbreaker
, the light dimming but his gaze intensifying. He took one heavy step towards them, then another, his boots crunching on frozen debris. He stopped, looming over them, a mountain carved from fury and disappointment.
"That," Ryota's voice was low, gravelly, vibrating with suppressed rage. It wasn't a shout; it was the grinding of continental plates. "Was not Volrag." He pointed
Starbreaker's
still glowing tip towards the fading motes of void essence. "That was a
scout
. A fucking
vanguard
sniffing for weakness." His Polaris eyes pinned Shiro, then Kuro. "Weakness it found. In
fucking spades
."
Corvin drifted closer, a silent shadow. His distorted voice, devoid of inflection, cut through the heavy air like a scalpel made of ice. "We told you. You were not ready. The power you carry is a wild beast. Unbroken. Uncontrollable." He tilted his hood fractionally. "Your arrogance was the key it used to unlock this tomb."
Ryota slammed the butt of Starbreaker onto the stone. The impact echoed like a tomb slamming shut. "WAKE THE FUCK UP!" The roar finally erupted, shaking dust from the ceiling. "You think this is a game? A chance to play at being heroes? You are supposed to be the fucking LIGHT TO A NEW AGE!" He gestured violently around the barracks, at the faded tapestries of stars and nebulae, the cold hearth. "Kaya's gamble! Elara's legacy! The hope the Warrens cling to in the fucking dark! And what are you?" He leaned down, his face inches from Shiro's, then Kuro's. "Broken toys! Arrogant children throwing tantrums with power beyond you control! What the FUCK is rattling around in those hollow skulls of yours? Delusion and wishful thinking?"
Each word was a hammer blow. Shiro flinched as if physically struck, the accusations stripping away the last shreds of his defiance, leaving only raw, bleeding shame. Kuro hunched lower, his corrupted arm curling instinctively towards his chest, the grey translucence seeming to pulse in time with Ryota's fury.
Hollow skulls.
The words echoed. It felt true.
Haruto stepped forward, his usual analytical calm replaced by a cold, hard edge. He didn't look at them; he looked at the fading crack in the door where the void had entered. "Volatile power is a liability. Today, it nearly got Mira killed. Nearly got Juro shredded. Dragged us all into your personal crucible of failure." He finally turned his sharp gaze on them. "Luck saved you today. Luck, and our intervention. Volrag doesn't rely on luck. He relies on precision. On
exploiting
fucking weakness like yours."
Juro wiped his scavenged dagger clean on his thigh, his movements efficient, cold. He didn't speak. He just looked at them, his eyes flat, devoid of the grudging respect that had sometimes flickered during their training. The look said everything:
Liabilities. Unreliable. Dangerous.
Mira huddled further back, her crow burying its head under its wing. She didn't offer comfort. Her visible eye, wide and haunted, flickered between them and the shattered entrance. "The frost... it tasted your fear," she whispered, her voice thin and frayed. "It tasted... defeat. It remembers." The words weren't malicious; they were a chilling statement of fact, reinforcing their status as beacons for the enemy.
Ryota straightened, the fury banked but not extinguished, replaced by a terrible, icy resolve. "Get up." The command brooked no argument. "Haruto. Juro. Secure the perimeter. Check the wards. Find where it dug through." His gaze swept over Shiro and Kuro, lingering on Kuro's corrupted arm and Shiro's cradled wrists. "You two. On your fucking feet. NOW!"
Shiro pushed himself up, every movement an agony of grinding bone and screaming muscle, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the desolation inside. Kuro followed, swaying, his face ashen, the static buzz a constant, maddening counterpoint to his ragged breathing. They stood, not like warriors, but like condemned men awaiting sentence.
Ryota turned to Haruto and Juro, his voice dropping, but carrying clearly in the tomblike silence. "Double watches. Triple the perimeter sweeps. And
they
," he jerked his head towards Shiro and Kuro, "don't rest. They train. Dawn till the stars fucking freeze again. Harder than before. They don't eat until they can hold a stance without whimpering. They don't sleep until they can move as one without tripping over their own weakness. You push them. You break them if you have to. But you forge something
useful
out of the wreckage. Or you bury them here and save Volrag the trouble." He turned his Polaris gaze back to the twins, the light cold and unforgiving. "Understood?"
Haruto gave a sharp, precise nod. "Understood, Commander." His gaze, when it briefly met Shiro's, held no pity, only the cold assessment of a problem to be solved.
Juro simply grunted, sheathing his dagger. He looked at Kuro, then Shiro, his expression unreadable stone. "No more holding back," he stated flatly. It wasn't a threat; it was a
promise.
Ryota’s gaze shifted to Corvin. "Corvin. Paths. Find us a way out of this tomb before the main course arrives. And... keep an eye on them." His meaning was clear:
Watch the liabilities.
" anything... unstable."
Corvin’s hood tilted slightly. "The frost digs. Volrag hunts. Paths narrow." His distorted voice was its usual detached self. "I will watch." He didn't offer reassurance or condemnation; his coldness was merely a constant, unchanged.
The verdict was absolute; a sentence passed without appeal. Shiro felt the weight of it settle in his bones, heavier than the fatigue, sharper than the grinding glass in his wrists. It was one thing to feel your own failure; it was another to have it carved into you by the cold, hard faces of the only allies you had left. The air itself felt different now, charged not with the potential of their power, but with the stark reality of their insufficiency. Every laboured breath Kuro took was a wheezing testament to the corruption they couldn't control, a ticking clock counting down to when he would become a weapon for the enemy.
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He watched Haruto and Juro move to obey Ryota’s orders, their movements a synchronized dance of grim purpose from which he and Kuro were utterly excluded. They were a problem to be managed, a flaw in the strategy to be corrected through brutal, unforgiving repetition. The warmth of the blood oath, the shared purpose forged in the warren, felt like a memory from someone else’s life. This cold pragmatism was the true currency of their war, and they were bankrupt.
A fresh, deep throb pulsed from his fused wrists, a pain so ingrained it felt like part of his soul had been seared and welded into this broken state. He looked at Kuro, who stood swaying, his good eye fixed on the floor as if he could no longer bear the sight of the disappointment surrounding them. The static buzz from his arm was a low, constant scream of wrongness that seemed to poison the very air between them. They were not just weak; they were a contaminant. Their very presence degraded the resolve of the strong, forcing Ryota’s light to dim, Haruto’s strategies to become mere damage control, and Juro’s strength to be wasted on defence.
This was their inheritance. Not a legendary power, but a devastating liability. Not a destiny to be embraced, but a curse to be endured until it finally, inevitably, got them all killed.
Mira shrank back further, offering no warmth, only the silent judgment of her fractured lens and the terrified crow.
Shiro and Kuro stood adrift in the centre of the ruin, islands of shattered potential in a sea of consequences. The silence wasn't peaceful; it was the held breath after a scream, thick with unspoken recrimination and the bitter dust of their failure. Around them, the others moved with a chilling, purposeful efficiency that felt like a physical barrier.
Haruto, his sleeve torn where the void claw had grazed him, a thin line of crimson tinged blood stark against his skin, moved towards the shattered entrance. He didn't glance their way. His sharp eyes scanned the fractured stone and lingering frost with forensic intensity, his profile etched with grim resolve. Every deliberate step, every focused sweep of his gaze, screamed:
Your mess. Our problem to contain.
The analytical mind that had once offered strategies now radiated only cold assessment of the damage they had drawn in.
Juro, wiping grime and frozen void residue from his scavenged dagger with a scrap of hide, followed Haruto. The bruise on his temple was already darkening, a testament to the desperate force of his intervention. He didn't look at Kuro, whom he’d bodily saved, nor Shiro. His movements were economical, lethal, radiating a contained fury that was colder than any spoken word. The flat, dismissive look he briefly swept over them wasn't anger; it was the utter withdrawal of respect.
Liabilities. Unreliable.
The message was clear in the set of his shoulders, the finality with which he sheathed the blade.
Don’t expect that again.
Corvin drifted like a silent wraith along the perimeter, his ringed hand tracing the frost furrowed stone. He didn't pause, didn't acknowledge them. His hooded gaze seemed absorbed in the resonance of the ancient wards, the paths within the rock. Yet, his very detachment was a weapon. It underscored his earlier, distorted verdict that now echoed endlessly in the hollow chambers of their minds:
"You are NOT READY."
Each silent pass he made felt like a physical iteration of those words, a reminder that his power, cold and precise, had been needed to salvage the disaster
their
arrogance had invited. He was the embodiment of the ruthless truth they had ignored.
Mira didn't just retreat; she folded into the deepest shadow near the fissure, drawing her tattered cloak tight. Her crow, usually perched defiantly, huddled against her neck, feathers puffed in primal fear. Her fractured lens didn't catch the fading Polaris light; it seemed turned inward, reflecting only the terror of the void's proximity, a terror they had amplified. When her visible eye flickered towards them, it held no comfort, only a haunted vacancy that whispered louder than any accusation:
The frost tasted your fear. It tasted your defeat. It remembers you.
Her withdrawal was the coldest of all, a severing of the fragile, prophetic connection, leaving them utterly alone.
The coldness wasn't malice; it was a fortress wall erected by Ryota’s decree. Survival demanded distance from their volatility. Their near disaster had forged this icy pragmatism, a 'tough love' that felt indistinguishable from abandonment. Shiro looked down at his hands, the physical agony in his wrists grinding bone shards, phantom thorns tearing, a mere counterpoint to the desolation within. The scar on his palm pulsed faintly, the crystal a cold, mocking ember. He remembered the terrifying surge of power during the void whip impact, the molten promise of annihilation he’d choked down. Not out of control, but out of
fear
. Fear of the backlash, fear of crippling Kuro further, fear of becoming the bomb that killed them all. That power, their supposed birthright, had been utterly useless when it mattered. Worse than useless, a tumour they were terrified to excise or employ. The image of Haruto’s bleeding arm, Juro’s bruised temple, Ryota’s celestial might expended
because of them
… it scalded his soul.
What’s the fucking point of this curse if it only breaks me and endangers everyone else?
Kuro clutched his corrupted arm, the grey translucence pulsing like a sickly, alien heart beneath skin stretched too tight. The crimson scar on his left forearm, the mark of their bond, felt like a brand seared into failure. He remembered the power gathering within him as the claws descended, a storm of cold fury and defiance. And then the paralyzing terror: the memory of the Blight feasting on their last surge, the corruption burrowing deeper, the certainty that unleashing it uncontrolled would kill Shiro faster than the void claws. His power hadn't failed; he had
rejected
it. Chosen certain death over the risk of becoming the monster that destroyed his brother.
To be a weapon?
The thought was ashes.
I’m a fucking hazard. A beacon for the void. A prince of rot.
Heir to nothing but failure. The futility was a black hole in his chest, crushing the air from his lungs.
What’s the fucking point of this poison inside me? What light can come from this consuming dark?
"YOU ARE NOT READY."
Corvin’s words weren't just an echo; they were the architecture of their reality now, etched into the frozen stone of Elara’s tomb and the shattered landscape of their confidence. They stood in the centre of the ruin they’d authored, surrounded by the chilling efficiency of those who’d saved them, utterly isolated by the weight of their inadequacy. The barracks, once a sanctuary of defiance, felt like a mausoleum for their shattered hopes. The relentless, throbbing pain in their scars was the only answer to their silent scream of
Why?
a constant agonizing reminder that the light they were meant to carry was a curse, burning only themselves, while the true dawn Ryota demanded receded further into an impossible, frozen horizon. The crushing certainty wasn't of death, but of being fundamentally, irrevocably
wrong
for the destiny thrust upon them. The silence stretched, a suffocating shroud woven from shame, pain, and the deafening, unanswered question hanging frozen in the void they’d almost become.

.
!
V2: C17: Liabilities