The Sovereign-V2: C37: Eclipse…vi…

The Sovereign-V2: C37: Eclipse…vi…

Night passed in the Hearths barracks after, Haruto’s admission,
“Touch it right… and Volrag’s frost will remember the void’s kiss. Permanently. Think you can dance with that, Princeling?” the admission hung in the air long after.
The violet heartbeat of Cassiopeia’s star wasn’t just fading; it was
drowning
. Its light, thick and cloying as congealed blood, seeped through the high, narrow windows of the Sky Hearth Barracks, painting the obsidian walls in sickly, rhythmic pulses. Frost dripped from the rafters with the agonizing slowness of a gut wound, each drop landing with a soft, final
plink
on the stone floor below, like slow, frozen blood hitting a coffin lid. The air wasn’t just cold; it was
solid
, tasting of iron filings, ozone, and the despair of a siege tightening its fist. Every breath scraped Shiro’s throat raw. 4:17 AM. The dying star’s throb echoed the frantic hammering against the cage of his ribs.
Shiro’s Dream;
He was barefoot on black ice. Not smooth, but fractured, jagged as broken teeth, biting into his soles with every step. A wind howled, not with the mountain’s voice, but with the thin, terrified screams of children. Ahead, a figure waited, impossibly tall, cloaked not in shadow, but in tattered, bleeding starlight that dripped viscous darkness onto the ice. When it lifted its face, Shiro’s breath froze solid in his lungs. No features, just void pits where eyes should be. And within each swirling abyss, a single, cracked Polaris star wept molten amber tears. The amber dripped… not down, but towards him. Each drop struck his exposed wrists, sizzle hiss, not just burning, but fusing. Bone welded to phantom iron with a spike of agony so profound it was soundless, a white noise of pure torment. The figure raised one skeletal finger, impossibly long, to where lips should be. Its mouth yawned open, a silent chasm. The word formed, unfinished, a blade drawn across the fabric of the world itself, etching fire into his soul:
Eclipse... vi...
Shiro bolted upright, a choked gasp tearing from his throat like a sob. Reality slammed back, the oppressive violet gloom, the biting cold, the grinding,
ceaseless
agony in his fused wrists. His leather braces, tightened to near breaking during the night, bit into his forearms, the numbing cold now a dull ache against the deeper, bone deep scream. Above the obsidian hearthstone, the violet star pulsed once, violently, its light flaring crimson at the edges for a split second before settling back into its sickly rhythm.
As if it saw. As if it fucking flinched.
Kuro’s Dream;
He walked a corridor of bone white trees, their branches skeletal fingers clawing at a sky the colour of a bruise. Translucent grey slime dripped from the branches, cold as grave soil where it landed on his corrupted arm. The same figure materialized from between two twisted trunks, its starlight cloak shimmering with unnatural decay. Amber bled from its fractured star eyes, thick and slow, drawn like iron filings towards the grey translucence crawling past Kuro’s elbow. The amber touched the corruption, a jolt of recognition, cold fire meeting frozen grief. It crawled up his arm, not burning, but freezing him from the inside out, turning veins to ice, muscle to brittle glass. Then the trees began to sing. Not leaves rustling, but a low, mournful dirge sung in a child’s thin, terrified voice. The figure’s void mouth opened wide, wider than possible, a silent scream that vibrated in Kuro’s marrow. The word formed, echoing the dirge, promising annihilation:
Eclipse... vi...
Kuro’s eyes snapped open. Static crackled across his grey skin, visible blue white sparks dancing over the translucence like malevolent fireflies. The air around him reeked suddenly, not just frost and stone, but of winter graves freshly disturbed, of earth frozen hard over decay. Dawn wasn’t approaching; it was a razor’s edge balanced against their throats.
The barracks wasn’t silent. It was a tomb holding its breath. Shiro pressed his forehead back against the cold obsidian hearthstone he’d slumped against, the stone’s chill a feeble anchor against the phantom pain still echoing in his wrists and the raw terror of the dream. The image of those weeping void eyes, the
sound
of that unfinished word –
Eclipse... vi...
, it clung like frost to his soul. He flexed his scarred hand, the Polaris mark beneath the skin pulsing erratically, a caged beast mirroring his panic.
What the fuck was that?
Not Akuma. Something… older. Hungrier. Something that knew the taste of dying stars.
Across the gloom shrouded space, near the sealed, weeping archway, Kuro pushed himself up from the floor. The static discharge faded, leaving behind the ozone stink and a deeper chill radiating from him. He cradled his corrupted arm, the grey translucence past his elbow seeming darker, more
active
, pulsing with the slow, deep thrum of the obsidian wall he’d leaned against. His storm grey eyes scanned the shadows, sharp, hunted. He met Shiro’s gaze across the distance. No words. Just the shared, gut deep understanding of having been
visited
. Touched by something that shouldn’t fucking exist.
“Fuck me,” Juro’s gravel grind voice shattered the fragile silence. He was hunched over a crate near the central map table, meticulously honing a brutal looking hand axe. He didn’t look up. “Heard you two whimpering like pups caught in a snare. Bad dreams, or just finally realizing what a shitstorm we’re walking into?” He spat a glob of something dark onto the frost rimed floor. It sizzled faintly.
Shiro snarled, pushing himself fully upright. The movement sent fresh shards of pain lancing up his arms. “Shut your hole, Juro. Or I’ll use that axe to give you a second smile.” His voice was rough, sleep and fury tangling in his throat.
“Promises, promises, Firecracker,” Juro chuckled, a dry, humourless sound. He tested the axe’s edge with his thumb, drawing a bead of blood he casually wiped on his furs. “Just making sure you’re awake. Ninety seven fucking heartbeats starts
real
soon. Don’t need you sleepwalking into Volrag’s welcoming committee.”
Mira stirred from her nest of blankets near the dead central hearth. Obsidian, perched on the hearthstone above her, let out a soft, distressed
“kraa…”
that echoed in the stillness. Mira’s visible eye was wide, bloodshot, fixed not on Shiro or Kuro, but on the space
between
them, where the violet light seemed thickest. Her fractured lens pulsed erratically, casting jagged shards of prismatic light on the floor.
“The… the cracks…”
she whispered, her voice thin, frayed.
“They…
dreamed
too. The whispers… louder now. Hungry.”
She shuddered violently, pulling her thin cloak tighter. A fresh trickle of blood, startlingly bright, escaped her nostril, tracing a path down to her lip.
“Echoes… vi…”
The unfinished word hung in the air like poison gas. Haruto, standing immobile beside the vellum map pinned to the obsidian wall, didn’t visibly react. But his knuckles, resting lightly on the pommel of the scavenged Polaris dagger driven deep beside the arterial red ‘X’, whitened fractionally. His obsidian eyes, colder than the Razorwind Peaks, flicked from Mira to Shiro to Kuro, assessing, calculating. The cost was mounting. Mira’s sight bleeding, Shiro vibrating with contained rage and pain, Kuro radiating void chill, Juro’s brutal pragmatism a necessary counterweight. And the dreams… a new variable. An unknown predator circling their already suicidal plan.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Whispers don’t freeze your balls off,” Juro grunted, standing up. He stretched, bones cracking like dry kindling. “Focus on what
does
. Frostguard glaives. Void Hound teeth. Pressure plates under the fucking ice.” He stomped towards a pile of gear near the crypt doorway. “Suit up. Now. While you still got balls to freeze.”
Shiro forced himself to move. Every step sent jolts through his braced wrists. He ignored Juro, focusing on his gear laid out near the hearthstone: the bone handled knife, freshly cleaned but forever stained in his mind; thick, fur lined vambraces to go over the biting leather braces; layers of dark, stiffened hide over padded under layers. He picked up the knife. The weight was still wrong. Heavy with the dream, heavy with failure. He slid it into the sheath at his hip, the leather creaking with the tension in his arms.
Ninety seven fucking heartbeats.
Kuro moved with silent precision towards his own gear. His corrupted arm seemed heavier, the grey translucence swirling sluggishly under his skin like oil on ice. He pulled on layers with his good hand, the movements economical, avoiding direct contact with the corrupted limb whenever possible. He picked up a short, heavy bladed sword, its edge nicked and scarred. His storm grey eyes met Shiro’s again. No dream talk. Not here. Not now. Just a single, fractional nod.
We fall, we drag them with us.
The only pact that mattered.
Haruto finally moved. He pulled the Polaris dagger free from the obsidian with a grating screech that set teeth on edge. He didn’t look at the blade, but at the faint smear of…
something
… dark and iridescent left on the stone where the tip had been embedded. Not frost. Not blood. Something else. He wiped the dagger’s blade meticulously on a scrap of dark cloth before sheathing it. His voice, when it came, was flat, devoid of inflection, colder than the void between stars.
“Dawn approaches. The star’s penultimate pulse just passed.” He turned his obsidian gaze on them all. “Final checks. Weapons. Braces. Focus. The cracks Mira sees are not just paths. They are jaws. The Void Hounds are not just beasts. They are famine given teeth. Volrag…” He paused, the name itself seeming to lower the temperature in the room. “…is not just a commander. He is the embodiment of the Frostguard’s void touched cruelty. He
will
be waiting. He
will
be smiling.” Haruto’s eyes locked onto Shiro, then Kuro. “Your nightmares are irrelevant. Your pain is irrelevant. Your fear is irrelevant. Only the ninety seven heartbeats matter. Only reaching Aki matters. Fail in control,” his gaze pinned Shiro, “and you kill her as surely as Akuma’s knife. Fail in focus,” his gaze shifted to Kuro, “and the void
inside
you will feast before Volrag’s glaives even strike. Understood?”
Shiro met the cold stare, the Polaris scar in his palm flaring hot in response to the challenge, a tiny, defiant sun against the encroaching frost. “Haruto. I know the fucking stakes.” He slammed his good fist against his vambrace. “Just get us to the fucking door.”
Kuro didn’t speak. He just stared back, the cold fire deep within his corruption flaring once, briefly, casting his bones in sharp, horrifying relief beneath the grey skin before subsiding. An answer. A threat. A promise.
Ryota emerged from the deeper shadows near the crypt doorway. He hadn’t slept. His Polaris eyes burned with banked stellar fire, reflecting the dying violet light like captured stars. He carried no visible weapons. He
was
the weapon. His presence was a shockwave of contained power, a bedrock against which the frantic energy of the others crashed and steadied. He looked at each of them, Haruto’s icy command, Shiro’s burning fury, Kuro’s glacial void, Mira’s bleeding fragility, Juro’s grim readiness. His voice, when it rumbled, was the sound of continents grinding, deep and inevitable.
“Ninety seven heartbeats,” he stated. Not a countdown. A fact. A boundary. “Aki’s life measured in breaths stolen from the frost.” His gaze swept over them, lingering on Shiro and Kuro. “The dreams are shadows. The enemy is real. The path is written in blood and ice. Kaya gambled. Elara shattered. This,” he nodded towards the map, towards the void ice sphere resting on its dark altar nearby, “is our defiance. Sharpened. Focused.
Lethal
.” He didn’t offer hope. He forged resolve in the furnace of his presence. “We play the hand we stole. We walk the cracks. We break the fucking siege. Dawn is here.”
As if summoned by his words, the violet star overhead gave a final, shuddering pulse. Its light didn’t just dim; it
guttered
, like a candle drowning in its own wax. For a terrifying second, absolute darkness plunged the barracks into an abyss colder than the void. Then, the first, thin, razor sharp sliver of true dawn light, pale and pitiless, cut through a high window.
The ninety seven heartbeats had begun.
The violet star’s final, shuddering gasp plunged the Sky Hearth Barracks into a darkness deeper than any cellar, colder than the void between stars. It wasn’t just an absence of light; it was a
suffocation
. Breath caught in throats, the oppressive silence broken only by the frantic hammering of hearts against ribs and the brittle
snap
of frost fracturing under sudden, absolute cold. Shiro felt the Polaris scar in his palm flare, a trapped ember against the drowning dark, its heat a mocking counterpoint to the ice flooding his veins.
Then, dawn cut.
Not a gentle lightening, but a razor slash. Thin, pitiless grey light speared through ancient fissures in the obsidian walls, catching the swirling motes of their frozen breath hanging thick in the air. It wasn’t mist; it was
butcher’s smoke
, the exhalation of condemned men walking their last mile. The light revealed the grim tableau: Ryota, a mountain sculpted from shadow and resolve, hefting the massive, rune etched Starbreaker across his broad back. Even in the dimness, frost already feathered its brutal edge, leeched from the barracks’ dying breath. Juro, face like quarried stone, meticulously checked the edges of two heavy hand axes and a long, wicked dirk strapped to his thigh. His lips moved silently, shaping numbers with brutal precision.
One… two… three…
A profane prayer counting down the ninety seven heartbeats ticking like a bomb in their skulls.
Mira, a wraith wrapped in layers of threadbare wool, secured the tiny hood over Obsidian’s head. The crow was unnervingly silent, its usual nervous clicks and shuffles absent. Its beady eyes, reflecting the grey light, held a terrible stillness, as if it were already listening to the Plaza’s distant, future screams, carried on the frigid air currents snaking through the cracks. Haruto stood by the sealed crypt door, a silhouette sharp as the Polaris dagger now sheathed at his hip. His obsidian eyes scanned the fissures where the grey light bled in, calculating angles, depths, the enemy’s possible sightlines. Kuro hovered near the rear, his corrupted arm held slightly away from his body. The grey translucence seemed denser in the dawn light, pulsing with a slow, deep rhythm that resonated with the ancient stone beneath their boots. Static whispered around it, a private conversation with the void.
“Move,” Haruto’s command sliced through the frozen air, colder than the stone. “Single file. Silence is your fucking shield now. Break it, and Volrag’s hounds will tear out your throat before you hear them bark.”
They filed out of the barracks crypt not through the main entrance, choked with frost and likely watched, but through a jagged fissure Haruto had silently indicated, a forgotten wound in the mountain’s flesh, hidden behind a collapsed rack of rusting weaponry. It led not up, but
down
, into the choked, frozen arteries beneath Elara’s fallen estate.

V2: C37: Eclipse…vi…