The Sovereign-V2: C50: Control the Fire, Not the Scream

The Sovereign-V2: C50: Control the Fire, Not the Scream

For a heartbeat, they stood panting in the sudden, ringing silence. Shiro slumped against a pillar, cradling his screaming shoulder, his right hand trembling violently, the amber blade hanging loose. Blood dripped from his nose, mingling with sweat on the frozen floor. Kuro gasped, leaning against another weeping pillar, his corrupted arm held tight against his body. The grey translucence had visibly inched past his elbow, pulsing angrily. Blood froze black on his cheek and knuckles. The Plaza floor beneath them was scarred and steaming, impact craters from their boots, frozen patches from near misses, splatters of dark ichor. Their swords felt heavy, extensions of their own battered, screaming bodies.
Akuma lowered his hand from the cracked helm. The star pupils didn’t just blaze; they
devoured
the jaundiced light, becoming singularities of infinite malice within the obsidian void. The frozen void ichor ceased its flow, sealing instantly into a jagged, obsidian scab. The fissure in his faceplate deepened, a bottomless pit swallowing the Plaza’s sickly luminescence. The air pressure spiked, a physical weight pressing down on Shiro and Kuro’s shoulders, forcing their battered bodies lower, making each breath a laborious gasp through lungs already seared by cold.
"Is that fucking all the twin stars have to offer?" The voice was a whisper now, colder than the absolute zero between galaxies. It didn’t resonate; it
lanced
, bypassing ears to vibrate directly in their marrow, in the grinding shards of Shiro’s wrists, in the invasive ice chewing Kuro’s bones. "Swords and fists? Borrowed trinkets and borrowed rage?" He took a single step forward. The fleshy floor didn’t yield; it
shrank
from his tread, pulling back like living tissue recoiling from a cautery iron. Frost bloomed instantly beneath his boots, thick and crystalline, radiating outwards with alarming speed. "You sting like
gnats
. Annoyances buzzing against the inevitable night." He straightened, unfolding to his full, terrifying height. The oppressive weight
doubled
. Kuro’s knee buckled, hitting the yielding floor with a wet
thud
. Shiro braced harder against the weeping pillar, the rough, icy surface scraping his cheek, the phantom thorns in his wrists tearing deeper as his muscles strained just to stand. "I have
indulged
your tantrum," Akuma continued, the whisper gaining volume, becoming the grinding of continental plates. "Savoured the desperation flickering in your borrowed eyes. But even an executioner must not play with his prey too long..." He flexed his gauntleted hands. Obsidian plates ground together, not with a shriek, but with a subsonic
groan
that vibrated the Plaza’s very foundations. Shiro felt his teeth threaten to crack; Kuro tasted copper as his own teeth clenched against the vibration. "...before it spoils the artistry."
He didn’t gesture. He didn’t need to. He simply
inhaled
.
The Plaza
screamed once more
.
WHOOMF KKKKRRRRRIIIICCCKKKK!
It wasn’t a wave. It was the
void
made manifest. A wall of absolute, concentrated negation erupted from Akuma, filling the space between them instantly. The very air crystallized with a sound like a billion panes of diamond glass shattering simultaneously under impossible pressure. Shiro’s next attempt to raise his blade died before it began. His arm locked, frozen mid motion. The heat was ripped from his body with such violence it felt like his skin was being flayed. The cold hit not like a wall, but like being submerged in liquid helium. Agony exploded anew, deeper,
different
.
The grinding shriek in his wrists? It
froze
. The sensation wasn't gone; it was transformed. The bone dust vibrating against nerves became jagged ice shards grinding in frozen sockets. Phantom thorns became actual icicles spearing through scar tissue. But worse, far worse, was the
internal
tearing. The conduits of his stellar power, the pathways Haruto’s geometry had forced open,
flash froze
. He felt capillaries burst in his sinuses, his eyes, a hot trickle of blood instantly freezing into crimson icicles on his face. Frost rimed his lashes, sealing his vision into a blurry, jaundiced haze. He gasped, a soundless rictus, the breath freezing solid in his throat, threatening to choke him. His lungs felt like blocks of ice.
Focus! Angle of the hip!
Haruto’s voice was a ghost, drowned by the howling, soul deep cold. His legs trembled violently, threatening to give way entirely. The pillar behind him was the only thing holding him up, its cold embrace the only anchor in a world dissolving into frozen agony.
Kuro fared worse. The wave hit his corrupted arm like a supernova catalyst. The invasive cold fire didn’t just
erupt
; it
detonated
. It felt like glacial termites injected with liquid entropy, burrowing with frenzied, ecstatic speed past his shoulder, tunnelling towards his collarbone, his spine, his
heart
. The static became a physical drill bit inside his skull, grinding against bone, shredding thought. He
screamed
, a raw, animal sound ripped from the core of his being, devoid of words, pure agony given voice. He doubled over, convulsing, his corrupted arm spasming violently, uncontrollably. The grey translucence flared with agonizing blue white light, illuminating the veins in his neck standing out like frozen ropes. He saw his monstrous shadow again, not just laughing, but
swelling
on the floor, its form deepening, becoming more real, more
hungry
in the void cold.
FEED US! GIVE US THE ROT!
the static screamed, merging with Akuma’s presence. Kuro clawed at his vambrace with his good hand, nails tearing leather, desperate to rip the corruption out, but it was too deep, too entwined. The dead, icy drag was now a crushing glacier encasing his entire left side, creeping towards his core.
Akuma moved.
Not with blinding speed, but with terrible, inevitable
purpose
. One moment he was ten paces away; the next, he was
there
, his presence filling Shiro’s frozen, blurry world. He didn’t walk; reality
bent
around him. His massive form seemed to absorb the jaundiced light, deepening the shadows clinging to him. The weeping pillar behind Shiro groaned as if in sympathy.
The void knight didn’t swing his sword. He simply
backhanded
Shiro with contemptuous, glacial ease. The obsidian gauntlet, wreathed in swirling void darkness that seemed to devour light, connected with Shiro’s chest.
CRACKKKK WHUNNCHHHHH!
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, the violation.
The sound wasn’t just sickening; it was
multifaceted
. The initial crack of ribs giving way. The wet, meaty thud of impact driving the air from Shiro’s lungs in a frozen spray of blood and ice crystals. The deeper, grinding whunch as his sternum buckled inwards. Agony, white and absolute, consumed him. He felt his feet leave the yielding floor. Weightlessness, horrifying and brief. Then impact.
CRUNCHHHH SPLATTERRR!
Shiro crashed into a weeping pillar five yards away. Stone cracked under the force. Wet, yielding flesh beneath the ice gave way with a nauseating splatter. He slid down the pillar, leaving a wide, steaming smear of crimson on the black ice, the warmth of his blood instantly freezing at the edges. He landed in a heap, gasping for air that wouldn’t come, his vision swimming in a kaleidoscope of pain and jaundiced light. The phantom thorns were now real knives buried in his wrists and chest. He tried to raise his hand, to summon the Polaris fire, to
do
anything. Nothing. His right arm hung limp, numb, the nerves flash frozen. A terrifying cold numbness spread from his shattered chest, battling the blazing agony. The Polaris scar on his palm was a dull, frozen ache, a distant star buried under an ice age. He tasted blood, thick and metallic, mixed with the grave dirt stench of the Plaza. His amber blade lay several feet away, its light guttering weakly.
"Pathetic," the void voice whispered, devoid of triumph, only infinite, chilling purpose. Akuma loomed over him, blotting out the jaundiced light, his star pupils twin event horizons pulling Shiro’s consciousness towards oblivion. "All that fire. All that defiance. Reduced to a broken doll, just like your Aki." He raised his gauntleted foot, the void darkness swirling thickly around it. Frost crackled and thickened into jagged spikes on the sole. "Let me show you true artistry. Let me show you the final brushstroke on Ryo’s masterpiece. Let me show you...
Eventide Fracture
."
The gauntlet began to
change
. Not glow. It devoured light. Space itself warped visibly around it, a localized gravitational collapse. The jaundiced light of the Plaza bent and stretched, pulled into the impossible darkness gathering in his fist like water down a drain. The air pressure plummeted further, a vacuum forming, pulling at Shiro’s clothes, his hair, threatening to suck the breath from his ruined lungs. The temperature dropped to levels that defied the laws of this world the cold that didn’t just freeze flesh, but threatened to unravel the very molecular bonds holding matter together. Shiro’s vision greyed at the edges. The grinding agony in his wrists faded, replaced by a terrifying, absolute
stillness
creeping up his arms. He could feel his blood slowing, thickening towards ice in his veins.
The ghostly figures solidified, feeding on the unleashed power. Yumi Isamu’s smirk widened into a rictus grin, sharp and predatory. Takeshi Fujiwara’s sorrowful expression contorted further, his bleeding wounds weeping streams of black tears that froze instantly into grotesque icicles hanging from his spectral form. The swirling Void Entity vortex behind Akuma spun faster, its form coalescing, becoming denser, hungrier, a whirlpool of pure, ravenous negation resonating with the power gathering in Akuma’s fist. The fleshy floor directly beneath the descending gauntlet recoiled violently, pulling back to reveal wet, glistening muscle beneath, steaming as the impossible cold touched it.
Shiro stared up, helpless, drowning in pain, encroaching cold, and the crushing weight of despair. He saw Kuro, ten paces away, struggling to rise from his knees.
The sight of Kuro’s struggle was a mirror held up to his own ruin. Shiro’s mind, fogged by pain and the creeping Eventide, fractured. For a horrifying second, he wasn’t in the Plaza. He was back in the barracks crypt, the scent of frost and old stone thick in his nose. Haruto’s voice, flat and final, cut through the memory like a shard of ice:
“Your pain is irrelevant. Your fear is irrelevant. Only the ninety seven heartbeats matter.”
The words were a lie. The pain was
everything
. It was a universe of grinding ice and shattered bone, and the ninety seven heartbeats were a frantic, dying sputter against the infinite, frozen silence Akuma represented.
He tried to summon Aki’s face, the memory of her warmth, the hum of her presence that had been his compass through the dark. But the Eventide’s gravitational pull was distorting even that. Her smile fractured, her voice stretched into a thin, receding whine, swallowed by the void’s gathering whisper. The Polaris scar on his palm was a dead, frozen brand. There was no answer. No defiant heat. Just the terrible, absolute cold leaching the memory of warmth from his very soul. This was the true artistry Akuma boasted of: not just the breaking of bodies, but the systematic annihilation of hope, the un making of a soul, layer by frozen layer.
His gaze, blurred by frost and blood, locked with Kuro’s across the short, impossible distance. In Kuro’s single, storm grey eye, he didn’t see the feral defiance of the warrior, or the cold fire of the void touched. He saw the same, raw, animal terror that was clawing its way up his own throat. The shared understanding was a final, brutal anchor in the dissolving reality. They had fallen. They had not dragged Akuma with them. They were just… broken. Two sparks about to be snuffed by a darkness so absolute it would be as if they had never burned at all. The embers weren't just guttering; they were being
systematically extinguished
.
Blood poured from Kuro’s face, frozen into a black mask around his mouth and jaw. His corrupted arm was a dead, frozen log, the grey translucence now encasing his entire shoulder, creeping onto his chest, pulsing with a sickly light that seemed dimmer, weaker against Akuma’s gathering void. Kuro’s good hand scrabbled at the slick floor, trying to find purchase, his storm grey eyes wide with horror fixed on the descending gauntlet over Shiro. The drills in the crypt, the defiance forged in darkness, the brief, agonizing triumph of drawing blood… it all crumbled like ash before the unveiled, apocalyptic power of the Scourge. The embers guttered, drowning in Eventide’s frost.
Kuro roared. A sound ripped from the very depths of his being, raw, primal, a denial screamed against the inevitable. It was pure, desperate defiance fuelled by shared agony and the horrifying vision of Shiro about to be unmade. He threw himself forward, ignoring the shrieking protest in his shattered hip, ignoring the glacier encasing his left side, ignoring the static drill shredding his sanity. He propelled himself with his one good leg and arm, a broken, desperate lunge across the frozen, yielding floor. His good hand, the crimson scar flaring with a final, weak pulse of desperate light against the suffocating void darkness gathering in Akuma's fist, stretched out towards Shiro. Not to attack Akuma. To reach Shiro. To shield him. To
do
something.
Too slow. Too broken. Too late.
Akuma didn't even glance at Kuro's futile charge. His focus, absolute and terrifying, remained on Shiro. The void gauntlet, now a nexus of light devouring cold, a singularity of
Eventide Fracture
, descended with deliberate, unstoppable finality towards Shiro’s exposed, shattered chest. The hungry stone of the Plaza seemed to hold its breath. The ghostly audience leaned forward, anticipation etched in spectral malice. The final fracture began. Time itself seemed to slow, stretching the moment of impact into an eternity of frozen horror. Shiro saw only the lightless void filling his vision, felt only the impossible cold promising oblivion. Kuro’s outstretched hand seemed miles away, a crimson speck swallowed by the encroaching dark. The embers died.

.
!
V2: C50: Control the Fire, Not the Scream