The Sovereign-V2: C53: Frostforged Fury

The Sovereign-V2: C53: Frostforged Fury

The world shrunk to the glacial agony radiating from his gut. Ryota knelt on the yielding, warm cold flesh of the Plaza floor, Volrag’s frost forged blade buried deep beneath his ribs. Each ragged gasp tore at frozen tissues, crystallized blood scraping like ground glass in his veins. The void cold wasn’t just stealing warmth; it was leaching
life
, turning his core into a block of permafrost. Above him, Volrag loomed, a monolith of glacial hate etched in scar tissue and rimed armour. His breath, smelling of deep graves and cosmic decay, washed over Ryota’s face. Triumph, savage and absolute, warped Volrag’s features.
Ryota’s gaze, blurred by pain and encroaching cold, locked onto the eyes of the boy he’d pulled from a frozen ditch many winters ago . The eager recruit. The promising star of his squadron. The son he never had, who’d stood shoulder to shoulder against the Razorwind Horde. Now, only the void’s reflection stared back, cold and infinitely hungry. A tremor, born not of weakness but of profound, soul crushing sorrow, shook Ryota. Blood, thick and dark, bubbled on his lips.
“I never wanted it to end like this, you were always like a son to me…” Ryota gasped, the words scraping raw against his frozen throat. His voice was a ruin, but the old name, the one forged in camaraderie, slipped out like a final, desperate plea against the inevitable night. “Frostbite.”
The effect was instantaneous, volcanic. Volrag’s triumphant sneer vanished, replaced by a rictus of pure, unadulterated
fury
. The nickname, a badge of shared hardship, a mark of the bond Ryota had cherished and Volrag had curdled into poison, struck like a brand on raw nerve. Void ichor wept faster from the trench Ryota had carved across his shoulder, freezing instantly into jagged black scabs.
“
SENTIMENT’S A FUCKING GRAVE IM NOT YOUR SON VEYNE!
” Volrag roared, the sound shaking the weeping pillars, vibrating the fleshy floor beneath them. Spittle, freezing before it could fall, sprayed from his lips. He leaned his weight onto the embedded blade, twisting it with deliberate, sadistic slowness.
CRUNCHHHHH
Ice shards ground against bone deep within Ryota. Agony, white and absolute, detonated, stealing Ryota’s breath, threatening to shatter his consciousness. Volrag’s glacial eyes burned inches from his own, filled with bottomless loathing. “Dig yours deep enough for
both
of us? Or just wallow in yours while I finally claim what’s
mine
?”
Ryota’s vision swam, grey at the edges. He saw Kaya’s smile, bright against the snow. He saw the Frostguard banners, proud and defiant. He saw Volrag, young, fierce, loyal… the boy he’d trained, trusted,
loved
like a son. That boy was gone. Erased, not by time or hardship, but by the glacial cancer of envy Volrag had nurtured in the dark places of his soul. The realization wasn’t a whisper; it was a glacier calving in his chest, a collapse of hope that echoed the physical ruin of his body.
“I thought…” Ryota choked, blood freezing on his chin. His right hand, numbed by cold and betrayal, tightened convulsively on the leather bound grip of Starbreaker. The massive double bladed axe, Kaya’s final gift, the cornerstone of his legend, felt impossibly heavy. The Polaris sigils etched along its blackened steel haft flickered, not like dying stars, but like embers buried under snow. “…the son I had the one I trained… was still in there.” He forced his head up, meeting Volrag’s hate filled gaze. “But you froze him out… long ago.”
For a fractured, impossible heartbeat, something flickered in the depths of Volrag’s glacial eyes. Not pain, perhaps, but the ghost of it, a phantom limb of the connection he’d severed. A memory of shared fires, shared victories, shared grief. Then, like frost sealing over a dark pool, it vanished. Hardened. The void’s hungry yellow light pulsed stronger in the Plaza’s runes, reflecting in his pupils. His scarred face contorted into a mask of pure contempt. “He died the moment you took what was
mine
,” he hissed, venom dripping like frozen acid. “ When Kaya chose a fucking
ghost
over ME!”
The words struck deeper than the blade. Kaya’s memory, defiled. His own perceived failure, weaponized. The last vestiges of Ryota’s restraint, the fathers patience, the commander’s burden,
shattered
. The sorrow curdled, igniting in the crucible of agony and righteous fury. It wasn’t just Polaris light; it was the raw, unfiltered fury of a star going supernova at the end of its life. It surged up from the frozen ruin of his gut, through the screaming nerves of his impaled torso, down his numbed arm, and into the haft of Starbreaker.
WHOOOOOOOOMF!
The axe didn’t just flare; it
detonated
with incandescent fury. Pure, blinding Polaris light, white hot and searing, erupted from the twin blades, banishing the Plaza’s jaundiced gloom for ten feet around. It wasn’t controlled; it was the unleashed wrath of a god of war, channelled through a dying vessel. Frost vaporized off Ryota’s armour and beard with an angry hiss. The invasive cold radiating from Volrag’s blade recoiled as if scalded.
Volrag flinched, his glacial eyes widening in genuine shock, momentarily blinded. Ryota moved. Not with grace, but with the brutal, unthinking power of tectonic plates shifting. Ignoring the white hot agony tearing through his impaled side, ignoring the grinding ice shards where Volrag’s blade still resided, he planted his free hand on the yielding floor and
shoved
himself
up
along the embedded steel.
SCHLLLUCKKKKK!
The sound was obscene, wet, tearing. Fresh blood, steaming in the Polaris glare, gushed over the frost coated blade. Volrag, caught off guard by the suicidal move, stumbled back a fraction, his grip loosening.
Ryota roared. A sound ripped from the very bedrock of his being, raw, primal, shaking dust from the vaulted darkness above. It was the death cry of the father he thought he was, the birth scream of the executioner. He brought Starbreaker down not in a swing, but in a
falling mountain
of light and fury. A vertical executioner’s chop aimed not at Volrag, but at the hilt of the frost blade still buried in his own flesh.
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KRACKKKKKK!
The impact was cataclysmic. Polaris light met void forged frost in an explosion of negation and creation. Starbreaker’s ancient, Polaris infused edge, fuelled by Ryota’s sacrificial fury, sheared through the intricate frost runes near the hilt of Volrag’s blade like rotten ice.
SHATTERRRRR!
Volrag’s sword didn’t break; it
disintegrated
. The blade exploded into a thousand screaming shards of absolute cold, vaporizing instantly in the searing Polaris glare. The force of the blow, unimpeded now, slammed into Volrag’s armoured chest plate.
WHUMPH!
Frost spiderwebbed across the dark metal with a sound like glaciers shearing. Volrag was lifted off his feet, hurled backwards like a doll made of ice and spite. He crashed into a weeping pillar five yards away, the impact cracking the black ice, splattering viscous dark fluid that sizzled against his frost rimed armour. He slumped to the fleshy floor, gasping, void ichor leaking from the cracks in his chest plate, shock warring with incandescent rage on his scarred face.
Ryota stood. Blood poured freely from the gaping wound in his side where Volrag’s blade had been, steaming in the cold air, mingling with the dark ichor already staining his furs. The pain was a white hot inferno, the cold numbness a relentless tide creeping inwards. But he stood. Polaris light, fierce and unstable, still wreathed Starbreaker, casting his shadow long and monstrous across the Plaza. He took a step towards Volrag. Then another. Each one a victory carved from agony. The yielding floor seemed to recoil from his tread.
Volrag scrambled back, pushing himself up against the cracked pillar, his glacial eyes wide with disbelief and a fresh wave of hatred. He fumbled for a dagger at his belt, frost crackling around his gauntleted hand.
Ryota was on him. No finesse. No tactics. Only raw, relentless fury. Starbreaker became a whirlwind of searing light and brutal steel. High chop. Low sweep. Brutal horizontal slash. Each blow was faster, harder, more aggressive than the last, fuelled by the desperate energy of a father holding back nothing, embracing the end to forge one final, devastating act. Volrag parried the first blow with his vambrace,
CLANGGGGGGG
The Polaris edge scoring deep grooves in the dark metal, the impact numbing his arm to the shoulder. He ducked the second, the axe head whistling over his helm, shearing off a hairs but the third connected.
THUNKKKKKKK!
Starbreaker’s heavy blade slammed into Volrag’s left shoulder, right where Ryota’s previous strike had landed. The Polaris edge, superheated by fury, sheared through fur, leather, and the weakened void chilled armour beneath. It bit deep into the meat and bone beneath.
CRUNCHHHHHH
Void ichor, blacker than the space between stars and reeking of cosmic decay, jetted out in an arcing spray. Volrag bellowed, a sound of pure agony and outrage that shook the Plaza. He staggered, his left arm hanging useless, the greyish translucence of deep frost spreading rapidly from the horrific wound.
Ryota didn’t pause. He reversed his grip, using the haft like a battering ram.
CRACKKKK!
It slammed into Volrag’s wrist as the traitorous son tried to draw his dagger. Bones snapped like dry kindling. The dagger clattered harmlessly onto the fleshy floor. Volrag stumbled back, defenceless, clutching his ruined arm, hate and pain warring in his eyes. Ryota stepped forward, the point of Starbreaker’s lower blade coming up, resting against the vulnerable hollow of Volrag’s throat, just above the fur lined gorget. The Polaris light guttered against the cold, clammy skin, casting stark, dancing shadows across Volrag’s scarred, bloodied face.
Silence. Thick, heavy, broken only by Volrag’s ragged, pained gasps and Ryota’s own laboured, wet breathing. The Plaza seemed to hold its breath, the diseased runes pulsing slower, the weeping pillars dripping black tears onto the steaming ichor staining the floor. The ghosts watched, silent, hungry. Akuma’s cosmic duel with Haruto seemed momentarily forgotten in the face of this primal, personal reckoning.
Ryota stared down at the son he thought he had the one he had made, the monster he had failed. Blood dripped steadily from his side, pooling hot around his boots before the Plaza’s cold greedily absorbed it. His own light was fading, the supernova burning itself out. But his voice, when it came, was iron wrapped in glacial wind, colder and harder than Volrag’s void touched hate had ever been.
“You wanted to see…” Ryota rasped, each word a shard of ice coughed from his ruined chest. He pressed the point of the axe blade fractionally harder. A bead of dark blood welled beneath it. “…if the old star still burns?”
Volrag’s eyes, filled with impotent rage and the dawning terror of defeat, met his. Ryota’s Polaris gaze, though dimming, held the absolute, unforgiving cold of deep space.
“It fucking does.”
The moment stretched. The killing blow hung in the balance. Volrag braced, hatred warring with the animal fear of extinction in his eyes. He expected the thrust. The final severing.
Ryota stepped back. He lowered Starbreaker. The point left Volrag’s throat. The action wasn’t mercy; it was condemnation. It was the ultimate rejection. The final proof that Volrag, and everything he represented, the envy, the betrayal, the void’s corruption, was beneath the dignity of Ryota Veyne’s execution nut this rejection was only seen in Volrags mind. He turned his back on the broken, bleeding traitor, a gesture of utter, contemptuous dismissal. The effort sent fresh agony lancing through his impaled side, but he locked his knees, refusing to fall.
He took a single, staggering step towards the swirling chaos where Haruto fought his own spectral demon. His voice, thick with blood and finality, cut through the Plaza’s oppressive hum, carrying the weight of mountains and the memory of stolen light.
“For Kaya.”
The silence after Ryota Veyne turned his back was thicker than the Plaza’s cloying stench of grave dirt and ozone. It wasn’t the quiet of respite, but the held breath of a predator denied its kill. Volrag lay crumpled against the weeping pillar, a ruin of frost rimed armour and dark, steaming ichor. His left arm hung useless, shattered bone visible through the ruin of his shoulder joint, the void chilled wound already crusting over with jagged black ice. His right wrist was pulp. Hatred radiated from him like a physical cold, colder than the Plaza’s ambient chill, yet impotent. He was broken, bleeding out onto the hungry stone floor, and Ryota Veyne, the man whose lifeblood still seeped from a gut wound that should have been fatal, had simply… walked away this enraged Volrag to no end to him it was the ultimate shame, it felt as if dignity had degraded and this only fuelled his hatred further.
Ryota didn’t look back. Every step was an act of sheer, agonizing will. The void cold radiating from Volrag’s impaling blade still gnawed deep within his core, a glacier grinding against his spine. His own blood, warm and vital against the pervasive chill, slicked his furs and pooled briefly around his boots before the fleshy floor absorbed it with a faint, obscene
gulp
. Starbreaker, the massive double bladed axe Kaya had gifted him, its Polaris sigils now flickering erratically like dying campfires, felt like an anchor forged from lead. He dragged its haft across the yielding floor, leaving a shallow, steaming furrow. His vision swam, grey encroaching at the edges, threatening to collapse the world into a tunnel of pain. Yet, his back remained straight, his shoulders squared against the weight of betrayal and ruin.

V2: C53: Frostforged Fury