The Sovereign-V2: C58: Ashes of the Architect

The Sovereign-V2: C58: Ashes of the Architect

Akuma’s voice yanked him back to the Plaza, the mortuary’s horror superimposed on the Void Knight’s looming form.
"It took hours,"
Akuma continued, his tone conversational, almost bored, yet dripping with venomous detail.
"He screamed, of course. A wet, bubbling sound once we reached the lungs. The frost helps, you see? Keeps them conscious longer. Nerves alight with exquisite clarity."
He mimed a delicate cutting motion with one gauntleted finger.
"First, the skin. Peeling it back from the muscle, starting at the collarbone. Like removing a glove. It comes away in sheets, especially when you warm the blade
just
enough to sear the capillaries… prevents too much bleeding, preserves the subject. Ryo appreciated the aesthetics. The contrast of red muscle on white bone, steaming in the cold air."
Haruto’s entire body began to tremble. A fine, uncontrollable vibration. His breathing, usually measured and silent, came in short, sharp gasps that plumed violently in the cold air. The Polaris dagger in his hand flared erratically, spitting sparks, its light strobing between blinding white and sickly yellow. The Plaza’s runes nearby frosted over completely.
"He tried to bargain,"
Akuma mused, taking another step. The void lances hummed louder.
"Offered secrets. Troop movements. The Frostguard’s weaknesses. Pathetic. Ryo already knew. We just wanted to hear him
break
. And break he did. When we started on the fingers. Snapping them one by one. Then the tendons in the wrists. The precision… it was almost artistic. He begged then. Not for himself. For
you
."
Akuma’s star pupils flared with malicious delight.
"'Spare my son! He knows nothing!' Over and over. A broken record choked on his own blood."
Haruto stood before the pyre, the ceremonial igniter heavy as a mountain in his hand. The Frostguard Priest intoned the rites, words about honour and the eternal ice. Haruto heard nothing. He saw only the backwards carved sigil on the ravaged chest beneath the shroud. Heard only the phantom echo of his father’s screams, his pleas. The weight of House Isamu, disgraced, its legacy ending in butchery, settled on his eighteen year old shoulders. He touched the igniter to the oil soaked wood. The flames roared up, hungry, consuming the shroud, the horror beneath, the last of his childhood. The heat did nothing to thaw the absolute zero within him. It forged it into something harder. Colder.
"I silenced him eventually,"
Akuma stated flatly.
"Tore out his tongue. Crushed his larynx. Ryo’s orders. Said the whimpering was ruining the ambiance."
He tilted his head.
"His eyes… they were the last to go. Still held that stubborn Isamu fire, even as the frost took them. I didn’t pluck them out oh no I carved them just like Ryo did with Kaya’s years ago. The sight was beautiful seeing the light diminish."
The final detail was the detonator.
Haruto Isamu’s aristocratic composure didn’t crack; it
shattered
. A raw, animalistic scream ripped from his throat, a sound of such profound agony and rage that it dwarfed Kuro’s earlier cries, silenced the static in his mind, and even made Ryota flinch. It wasn’t human. It was the sound of a glacier shearing, a soul tearing itself apart.
"YOU FUCKING VOID SPAWNED FUCKING
ANIMAL
!"
Haruto roared, spittle flying, his voice raw and broken, stripped of all control, all precision, all icy calculation. The tremor became a violent convulsion. The Polaris dagger
ERUPTED
with unstable, incandescent fury, not a focused beam, but a supernova of raw stellar rage erupting around him. The light wasn't white; it was a chaotic, searing violet white, lashing out in jagged tendrils that scorched the fleshy floor and cracked the nearby weeping pillar.
He didn't attack with geometry. He
launched
himself at Akuma, a wounded beast driven mad by pain. All finesse vanished. He stabbed wildly, hacked, slashed, movements fuelled by pure, unadulterated hatred and the image of his father’s mutilated corpse. The dagger flared and guttered violently with each strike, reflecting the storm within. He screamed profanities, a torrent of vitriol directed solely at Akuma, names and curses that would have shocked the austere halls of House Isamu.
"I'LL CARVE YOU APART! PIECE BY FUCKING PIECE! I'LL FEED YOUR EYES TO THE VOID BETWEEN STARS! I SWORE IT! I SWORE IT ON HIS ASHES!"
Akuma met the onslaught, not with concern, but with cold efficiency. He deflected the wild blows, void gauntlet meeting the erratic Polaris light in showers of sparks and negation.
CLANGGGGG!
He gave ground, not because he was overpowered, but because the sheer, unpredictable ferocity of Haruto’s assault forced him to. A cruel smile played beneath the obsidian helm. The plan was working. Perfectly.
The chemistry of the team shattered like glass. Ryota stared, momentarily paralyzed by the raw horror of Haruto’s breakdown and the revelation of Takeru’s fate. His own grip on Starbreaker faltered. Shiro froze, the ice shard forgotten in his hand, his own agony momentarily eclipsed by the visceral tsunami of Haruto’s grief and rage. Kuro, struggling against the corruption, gasped as Haruto’s wild, flailing energy discharge sent a wave of disruptive Polaris static crashing into his own overloaded senses, making the invasive cold fire surge painfully.
Haruto was a vortex of uncontrolled fury. He drove Akuma back step by furious step, but it was blind rage, not tactics. He left his flanks exposed. He ignored openings for the twins or Ryota. He was a one man hurricane of pain, focused solely on tearing Akuma apart, heedless of the cost, heedless of the team, heedless of his own survival. The cold, analytical anchor was gone, replaced by a supernova burning itself out in a single, catastrophic burst. Akuma’s star pupils gleamed. The grinding wheel wasn’t just broken; it had become shrapnel flying back at its makers. The path to extinguishing the remaining sparks was clearing.
The Plaza of Screams became a crucible for Haruto Isamu’s unravelling. His scream wasn’t sound; it was the detonation of a glacial core, shattering his icy precision into a supernova of raw, untethered agony. Polaris light, once a scalpel, erupted from his dagger in chaotic violet white tendrils, lashing the fleshy floor, scarring weeping pillars, reflecting the fractured hellscape within him. He moved like a wounded beast, hacking, slashing, stabbing with berserk fury, each wild strike fuelled by the visceral horror of his father’s mutilated corpse replaying behind his eyes, the flayed skin, the shattered teeth, the backwards carved Isamu sigil, the
pop
of frozen eyes. Profanities, vitriol reserved for the abyss itself, tore from his ravaged throat.
Then, the shadows
shifted
.
Not a dramatic entrance. Not a flare of power. It was a subtle deepening of the gloom near a colossal, weeping pillar, a sudden, profound
stillness
that seemed to suck the chaotic noise towards it. The Plaza’s ambient groan, the hiss crackle of frost, the wet rasp of Kuro’s breath, all seemed muted, dampened. A figure stood where only darkness had been moments before.
Corvin.
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He was a natural extension of the void between the pulsing, diseased runes. His hood was drawn deep, his face an enigma within its depths. No weapon was drawn. He simply stood, unnervingly still. Yet, his presence was a physical pressure, a sudden, localized intensification of the Plaza’s hunger. The void stone ring on his finger pulsed once, a deep, resonant
thoooom
that vibrated in the marrow, not loud, but felt more than heard. It was the sound of a tomb sealing, of cosmic scales tipping.
Akuma’s star pupils flickered minutely. A microsecond’s hesitation in his fluid parry of Haruto’s next wild lunge. The seamless flow of his void energy stuttered, just for a heartbeat. He’d sensed it, the silent observer stepping onto the stage, radiating not overt threat, but a chilling ambiguity that scraped against his cosmic certainty.
Corvin didn’t engage Akuma. His unseen gaze fixed solely on the vortex of self destructive fury that was Haruto. His distorted voice, flat and devoid of inflection, cut through Haruto’s raging scream like a blade of frozen air:
“Haruto. Your geometry is compromised.”
Haruto didn’t hear him. Lost in the red black haze of his father’s torture chamber superimposed on the Plaza, he launched another desperate, off balance thrust. Akuma deflected it contemptuously, the void gauntlet sending a jarring shock up Haruto’s numbed arm.
Corvin took a single, silent step forward, the yielding floor seeming to solidify beneath his tread. His ring pulsed again, a counterpoint to Akuma’s swirling void aura.
“Focus,”
Corvin commanded, the distortion layering the word with hidden urgency.
“The enemy exploits your fracture. THINK!.”
Haruto snarled, a feral sound devoid of reason, and swung wildly at Akuma’s head. Akuma swayed back, the blow whistling harmlessly past. He didn’t press the opening Haruto left; his star pupils were fixed on Corvin now, a flicker of wary calculation replacing the predatory amusement.
“HARUTO!”
Corvin’s voice was sharper now, a whip crack in the psychic noise.
“Your father’s killer stands before you. Does he deserve your rage? Or your
precision
?”
The word ‘precision’ struck a dissonant chord in the cacophony of Haruto’s mind. It echoed Haruto’s own relentless mantra, the foundation of his being the foundation of House Isamu, before it was shattered. He faltered, his next slash faltering mid arc, the chaotic violet light sputtering. For a split second, the image of his father’s ravaged face flickered, overlaid by the cold, analytical eyes Takeru Isamu had possessed, eyes Haruto had inherited.
Akuma seized the micro hesitation. A lance of void energy, sharp and fast, shot towards Haruto’s exposed side. Ryota, jolted from his stupor by Corvin’s intervention, bellowed a warning and threw himself, not to block, but to shove Starbreaker’s haft into the blast’s path.
KRACKKKK!
The impact flung Ryota back, blood spraying, but it deflected the worst. The glancing force still slammed Haruto sideways, knocking the breath from him, the chaotic Polaris light guttering out completely.
Haruto hit the fleshy floor, gasping, the dagger slipping from his numb fingers. The red haze receded slightly, replaced by the searing pain in his ribs and the crushing weight of failure. Akuma loomed, void energy coalescing anew, his focus now divided between the fallen Architect and the silent, unsettling presence of Corvin.
Corvin was at Haruto’s side in two silent strides. He didn’t offer a hand. He simply stood over him, a shadow against the Plaza’s jaundiced gloom, his ring pulsing steadily.
“Breathe,”
Corvin stated, his distorted voice devoid of sympathy, only cold pragmatism.
“The void feasts on broken tools. Are you a tool, Haruto? Or the hand that wields them?”
Haruto coughed, tasting blood and ozone. His father’s mutilated face swam before him again. The
carving
. The begging. The
silence
. The rage surged, hot and desperate, threatening to drown him once more. He scrabbled for the dagger.
“LOOK HARUTO AROUND YOU,”
Corvin commanded, his voice cutting through the rising tide of panic. Not a suggestion. An order from the darkness itself. His hand, pale and long fingered, didn’t point, but his hooded gaze shifted meaningfully away from Akuma, towards the periphery of the light.
Haruto’s frantic gaze followed, driven by instinct more than thought.
He saw
Shiro
. Disarmed, wrists bound in void leather braces that visibly ground bone dust against fused joints, his face a mask of agony and despair. But beneath the pain, Haruto saw the echo of a deeper wound, the revelation in the throne room, delivered by Ryo’s venomous tongue:
Your mother, Yuki Aratani, burned alive on a Temple pyre. Contaminated. Her defect flowing in your veins.
He saw
Kuro
. On his knees, corrupted arm pulsing with sickly blue light, tendrils inching towards his heart, static visibly crackling around his head. Blood crusted his jaw from Akuma’s earlier strike, his ribs shattered. But his storm grey eye, even clouded with pain and the invasive cold, burned with a hatred forged in an equally horrific revelation:
Your mother, Kaya, torn apart by Ryo’s hounds, her eyes carved out while she screamed, all because you, a child, stole a crown.
The images slammed into Haruto’s fractured psyche, Shiro’s mother burned, Kuro’s mother defiled and devoured, his
own
father flayed and broken. Not just individual tragedies, but a pattern. Ryo’s pattern. The systematic annihilation of light, of legacy, of
mothers
. The crushing weight of his personal loss didn’t lessen, but it was suddenly… contextualized. Shared. He wasn’t alone in the abyss of Ryo’s cruelty. Shiro and Kuro weren't just burdens or tools; they were fellow survivors of the same monstrous design, bearing scars just as deep, just as horrific.
A tremor, different from the rage shakes, ran through Haruto. It was the tremor of ice reforming, not over emotion, but
around
it. The raw, screaming agony was still there, a white hot core, but it was no longer molten chaos. It was being contained, shaped, forced into a familiar, brutal geometry by the sheer, cold force of shared suffering and Corvin’s relentless, pragmatic presence. He dragged in a shuddering breath, the Plaza’s foul air scraping his lungs.
Akuma watched the shift. He saw the wild fury in Haruto’s eyes bank, replaced by a chilling, familiar focus, the focus of the Architect assessing a battlefield, calculating vectors of pain and retribution. The Void Knight’s star pupils narrowed. This unexpected variable, this shadow, had disrupted the beautiful unravelling. Annoyance flared into sharp unease. He raised his gauntlet, void energy swirling into a concentrated orb aimed at Haruto’s head. Time to end this distraction.
Before the energy could lash out, a sound tore through the Plaza, silencing the groan of the mountain, the hiss of frost, the ragged breaths of the combatants.
It was a scream. Raw. Primal. Agonized beyond measure. It ripped from the shadowed upper reaches near the vaulted ceiling, echoing off the weeping pillars and diseased runes with soul shattering force. It wasn’t a scream of physical pain, but of profound, universe breaking betrayal…
“I THOUGHT WE WERE FUCKING BROTHERS, TAKESHI!”
The name,
Takeshi
, hung in the sudden, absolute silence that followed, charged with cosmic anguish. Akuma froze, the void orb sputtering in his grasp, his star pupils snapping upwards towards the source of the cry. Ryota, dragging himself up from the floor, blood streaming from his side, stared upwards, a dawning horror replacing the pain on his face. Shiro flinched as if struck. Kuro’s head jerked up, his storm grey eyes wide, the static momentarily silenced by the sheer, human devastation in that scream. Even Corvin’s unnerving stillness seemed to deepen, his hooded head tilting fractionally.
The Plaza of Screams held its breath, the echoes of Juro’s shattered faith ringing louder than any void blast, heavier than the mountain itself. The battle below was forgotten. The true fracture, deep and personal, had just been exposed high above, promising a storm far more devastating than any clash of light and void.

.
!
V2: C58: Ashes of the Architect