The Sovereign-V2: C41 The Threshold of Despair

The Sovereign-V2: C41 The Threshold of Despair

The world didn’t return. It
shattered
.
The blinding white annihilation of the ward stone’s flare didn’t fade; it imploded, leaving behind a vacuum of pure, suffocating darkness deeper than the void between stars. It wasn’t an absence of light; it was a sensory
amputation
. Shiro reeled, phantom suns exploding behind his eyelids, the afterimage of the Skiff’s gore crusted flank seared onto his retinas like a brand. Sound vanished, replaced by a high pitched, metallic ringing that drilled into his skull. The grinding agony in his fused wrists, the bite of the void leather braces, all swallowed by the numb, disorienting void. He gasped, tasting ozone and the iron tang of his own fear, but the air felt thick, dead, refusing to fill his lungs.
Blind. Deaf. Anchorless.
From the nothingness, chaos erupted.
Juro
let out a guttural, wordless roar ripped through the sensory void, raw fury given sound. Shiro felt, more than saw, the massive warrior
move
. Boots crunched on frost rimed ice, the vibration jarring up through Shiro’s own legs. Then the sickening, wet
THUD CRUNCH
of impact. Axe meeting armour, meeting bone. A choked gasp, cut short. The assassin. Juro hadn’t hesitated. The threat was close, tangible, and he silenced it with brutal economy born of a thousand battles fought in the dark.
Ryota
the man mountain
shifted
. Not a flinch, but a tectonic settling. Starbreaker’s low, predatory hum surged from a snarl to a bone deep
roar
, vibrating the black ice beneath their boots. Shiro felt the contained stellar fury radiating from the Commander, a physical pressure pushing back against the disorienting darkness, a beacon of rage in the sensory void. Polaris eyes, when Shiro’s own vision began to bleed back in smears of grey and crimson, burned like captive supernovas, fixed on the dripping maw of the Spire door. No words. Only the promise of annihilation etched in that gaze.
Haruto
his voice cut through the ringing in Shiro’s ears, flat, cold, impossibly precise amidst the chaos. It wasn’t a shout; it was a scalpel slicing through panic.
“Flare was signal! Cordon converges! Hounds inbound west flank! Roof hawks reacquiring!”
Each word was a bullet point of doom. Shiro’s returning vision blurred, then sharpened: Haruto wasn’t looking at the dead assassin or the Spire. His obsidian gaze was locked onto the swirling gloom
behind
them, towards the route they’d come. Calculating vectors of closing death.
“Shiro, Kuro! Twin stars! NOW! Skiff shadow is kill zone! Juro, cover Mira! Ryota, door is focus! Move or die!”
The command ignited them. Shiro’s Polaris scar, a trapped ember against the fading retinal burn,
ERUPTED
. Not a flare, but a focused
beam
of pure white stellar fury. He didn’t aim; he
slammed
his braced palm down onto the black ice at his feet. Agony, white hot and shrieking, lanced through his fused wrists as the power discharged, but he rode the wave of pain, channelling it into the helix. The ice didn’t melt; it
screamed
. A searing wave of heat, visible as rippling air, blasted outwards in a semi circle behind them, aimed towards the encroaching Void Hound stench Haruto had identified. The wave hit the nearest sentry brazier. Its pale blue flame didn’t extinguish; it
detonated
in a shower of superheated ice shards and actinic fury. A guttural chorus of surprised, pained howls erupted from the swirling dark beyond the heat distortion, the leading edge of the hound pack, scalded, blinded, momentarily halted.
Beside him, Kuro didn’t raise his corrupted arm. He
focused
. The grey translucence swirled violently, crawling past his collarbone. The cold fire within blazed, casting the horrific lattice of bone and corrupted veins in his arm into stark, momentary relief. Static didn’t crackle; it
screamed
, a high frequency shriek that vibrated teeth and made Mira whimper. Kuro thrust his good hand forward, palm out, not at the hounds, but
upwards
, towards the high, shadowed arches where the roof hawks lurked. The void sphere at his hip pulsed, a deep, resonant
THOOM
that harmonized unnervingly with the fading echoes of the ward stone flare.
The air above them
warped
. Not heat, but localized, absolute
cold
. A shimmering, disc shaped field of negation bloomed into existence fifteen feet overhead, directly in the predicted firing line of the roof hawk perches. It happened just as bone tipped arrows, glinting with void ice venom, hissed down from the shadows. They struck the disc not with impact, but with a chilling, silent
schlup
. The arrows didn’t shatter; they simply… ceased. Vaporized mid flight by the absolute zero potential Kuro had conjured. A strangled curse echoed from the high arches. The static around Kuro intensified, then cut off abruptly. He staggered, a choked gasp escaping him, the grey translucence pulsing angrily, the cold fire within guttering low. The disc flickered, unstable.
“The helix won’t hold!”
Haruto barked, already moving. He didn’t wait for confirmation. His scavenged Polaris dagger was in his hand, not raised for combat, but held low, tip pointing like a compass needle towards a jagged rent in the Skiff’s blood ice plating near its stern, the access point to the west conduit path.
“Conduit! Move! NOW! Through the Skiff’s shadow! Sixty paces to the door!”
Ryota needed no urging. He was already a moving avalanche, Starbreaker’s humming edge leading the charge towards the indicated rent. His massive form carved a path through the lingering psychic miasma and the physical debris of the exploded brazier. Juro, axes slick with the first assassin’s dark blood, grabbed Mira’s arm. She flinched violently, a thin cry escaping her bloodied lips.
“None of that, Seer!”
Juro snarled, not unkindly, but with brutal urgency.
“Move your scrawny arse or I drag it!”
He half pulled, half shoved her after Ryota, his flint chip eyes scanning the swirling chaos, the scalded, regrouping hounds to the west, the frustrated roof hawks above, the deeper shadows near the Spire where more dark armoured shapes were coalescing, drawn by the flare and the clash.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelFire. If you spot it on Amazon, please it.
Shiro forced his legs to follow, stumbling on the treacherous ice. His vision swam, the afterimage of the white flare still dancing with the searing heat of his own blast. The grinding agony in his wrists was a constant, nauseating counterpoint to the frantic hammering of his heart.
Sixty paces.
It felt like sixty miles across a frozen hellscape under siege. He risked a glance back. Kuro was struggling to keep pace, his corrupted arm held stiffly, the grey translucence seeming to sap his strength, the void sphere’s hum weaker. The helix overhead flickered again, dangerously thin.
“Kuro!”
Shiro rasped, the word tearing his raw throat.
Kuro met his gaze. Storm grey eyes, bloodshot and strained, but holding a core of glacial defiance. He gave a single, sharp nod, jaw clenched. He didn’t speak. He focused inward, and the cold fire within his corruption flared once more, sending a fresh wave of static crackling around him. The faltering barrier overhead solidified fractionally. The cost was visible; the grey crawled higher, past his shoulder, towards his neck.
They plunged into the lee of the Frostforged Skiff. The stench here was overwhelming, frozen blood, decayed metal, ozone, and a psychic residue of terror so thick it coated the tongue. The jagged rent Haruto had identified yawned before them, a wound in the layered gore, revealing dark, frost rimmed iron beneath. It wasn’t an entrance; it was a jagged crawl space leading
under
the massive skiff, towards the conduit access point on the other side. Ryota didn’t hesitate. He dropped to one knee, Starbreaker slung across his back, and began to force his immense frame through the cramped opening, the ancient metal groaning in protest. Haruto slithered in behind him with serpentine grace.
“Shiro, Kuro, through!”
Haruto’s voice echoed metallically from within the cramped space.
“Juro, cover the entry! Five seconds!”
Juro planted himself before the jagged opening, axes held low and ready, his broad back to the crawling team. He faced the plaza chaos – the reforming hound pack snarling at the edge of Shiro’s fading heat wave, the frustrated roof hawks shifting positions, the dark figures near the Spire now advancing with deliberate speed, glaives catching the crimson pulse of the ward stone.
“Five seconds, Architect!”
Juro growled, his voice a gravelly promise of violence.
“Then I start carving me some Frostguard fillet!”
Shiro scrambled into the opening after Haruto. The space was tight, claustrophobic, stinking of ancient rust and the Skiff’s pervasive aura of violation. Jagged edges of torn metal and frozen gore scraped against his void leather braces. Ahead, Ryota’s bulk blocked most of the view, but he could see Haruto already emerging on the other side. Kuro shoved in behind him, breathing ragged, the static around his arm buzzing erratically in the confined space, the void sphere’s thrum vibrating the metal under Shiro’s hands.
“Juro! NOW!”
Haruto’s command cracked from the conduit side.
Juro didn’t look back. He took one final, assessing glare at the converging threats, spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the black ice, then spun and dove headfirst into the jagged opening, kicking off with his boots to propel himself through. A void ice arrow
thunked
into the Skiff’s plating right where his head had been a heartbeat before, spraying shards of frozen blood.
They were through. The relative shelter of the Skiff’s shadow was gone. They stood exposed on the far side, mere paces from the sheer obsidian wall of the Spire’s base. Directly ahead, set into the weeping stone, was the
west conduit overflow grate
. It wasn’t a welcoming door. Thick, rusted iron bars, warped by centuries of frost heave, strained against hinges crusted shut with rime. A dark, frigid draft sighed from the gaps, smelling of deep earth and stagnant water. Above it, the ward stone pulsed its deep, bruised crimson rhythm.
Thump… Thump…
Counting down.
Forty paces to the Spire door.
But the path wasn’t clear. Between them and the dripping maw stood a gauntlet of death. The Frostguard cordon Haruto had predicted had fully formed. Twelve glaives, held low and steady like winter’s fangs, formed an unbroken wall of dark steel and rime covered plate across the narrow approach to the door. Their visored helms offered no expression, only the promise of cold, efficient slaughter. Behind them, ward keepers hunched over pulsating rune stones set into the ice, their chants a low, guttural drone that made the air hum with contained frost energy. And high above, on the Spire’s flanking buttresses, the roof hawks had repositioned. Bone bows were drawn, arrows aimed not generally, but with chilling precision, at Ryota, at Haruto, at the struggling Kuro.
The Void Hounds, momentarily checked by Shiro’s heat wave, were regrouping, their guttural snarls a rising tide from the west. The dark armoured figures from the Spire’s shadow were closer now, moving with predatory silence, their glaives shimmering with the same hungry violet sheen as the first assassin’s. They fanned out, cutting off any retreat towards the Skiff.
They were surrounded. Pinned against the Spire’s weeping wall. The ninety seven heartbeats thundered in Shiro’s skull, a frantic drumbeat against the slow, inevitable pulse of the ward stone and the rising snarls of the hounds. The Frostguard wall didn’t advance. They held their ground, glaives steady, an immovable barrier of ice and steel. Waiting. Patient. Knowing the hunters were now the cornered prey.
Ryota straightened to his full height, Starbreaker sliding from his back into a ready grip with a sound like a mountain clearing its throat. The hum deepened, vibrating the ice at his feet. His Polaris eyes swept the killing field before him, the glaive wall, the ward keepers, the roof hawks, the advancing flankers. His voice, when it came, was the low, resonant rumble of an avalanche poised to fall. It carried no fear, only a terrible, inevitable certainty.
“The door is the lock.”
He raised Starbreaker, the runes along its massive blade flaring with captured starlight, pushing back the crimson gloom.
“We are the fucking key.”
His burning gaze locked onto the centre of the glaive wall.
“Break them.”
Silence, thick and heavy as the mountain itself, settled for a single, suspended heartbeat. The ward stone pulsed.
Thump.
The Void Hounds howled. The roof hawks tensed. The glaives lowered another fraction, points aimed at Ryota’s heart.
Fifty Seven.
Ryota’s command,
"Break them."
hung in the frozen air, a challenge thrown not at the advancing Frostguard, but at the very walls of fate closing in. The glaive wall remained impassive, a line of rime coated steel and shadowed visors, absorbing the threat without flinching. Above, bone bowstrings creaked with lethal patience. The Void Hounds’ snarls rose like a tide from the west, punctuated by the deep, ominous
Thump… Thump…
of the ward stone, counting down Aki’s stolen breaths.
No fanfare. No war cry. The Twin Stars
moved
.

.
!
V2: C41 The Threshold of Despair