The Sovereign-V2: C62: Failure Wears His Face

The Sovereign-V2: C62: Failure Wears His Face

Standing just behind Ryota, coalescing from the shadows thrown by the exploding rune, was
King Ryo Oji
. Not a memory this time. A hallucination, vivid and horrifying. Ryo stood, clad in his blood coloured velvet robes, his face shadowed deep within his cowl, save for his eyes, cold, infinite voids filled with crushing disappointment and the promise of excruciating retribution. His lips didn’t move, but the words vibrated directly in Akuma’s skull, layered with the wet screams of the failed Inquisitor from his memory:
"Weakness. Disgrace. Did you think failure would be tolerated? Did you think your pain would be quick?"
Akuma gasped, a ragged, distorted sound. His defensive posture faltered. The void shield protecting his core, already strained by Juro’s blow and Ryota’s disruption, flickered visibly, becoming translucent, unstable.
Haruto
saw it. The Architect’s mind, cold and precise despite the buried horror of his father’s fate, calculated the vectors, the pressure points, the exact moment of maximum vulnerability. He didn’t need to speak. He simply
moved
. A blur of obsidian and focused starlight, he flowed past Juro, who was already drawing back for another crushing blow, and past Kuro, whose corrupted arm pulsed with agonizing effort. Haruto’s Polaris dagger, blazing with white hot intensity, wasn’t aimed at armour. It was aimed at the flickering, weakened epicentre of Akuma’s void shield, directly over the spot where his own earlier strike had drawn ichor.
Simultaneously, sensing Haruto’s lethal intent,
Shiro
pushed himself up from the floor, ignoring the grinding shriek threatening to shatter his arm entirely. With a guttural cry, he channelled every ounce of his defiance, his love for Aki, his bond with Kuro, into his Polaris scar. A weak, sputtering helix of amber light erupted from his palm, not an attack, but a desperate, agonizing
distraction
, aimed directly at Akuma’s face, forcing the Void Knight’s star pupils and his hallucinating mind to snap towards the sudden light, away from Haruto’s approach.
Akuma reacted instinctively, swatting at the amber helix with his gauntlet. The distraction worked. For a critical microsecond, his focus shifted from the crumbling shield protecting his core.
Kuro
, sweat freezing on his brow, static distorting his vision, saw Haruto’s trajectory and the shield's flicker. He didn’t have finesse left. He had raw, corrupt power. With a roar that was half pain, half defiance, he
shoved
the invasive cold fire raging in his arm outward. Not a wave, but a concentrated blast of
disruptive entropy
, aimed like a battering ram at the same unstable point in the shield Haruto targeted. It wasn't elegant. It was brute force chaos meeting Haruto’s surgical precision.
Haruto struck.
His dagger, a needle of contained stellar annihilation, met the weakened nexus of Akuma’s void shield at the exact moment Kuro’s disruptive entropy slammed into it from the other side.
KRACKKKK BOOOOOOM!
The sound was cataclysmic. Not just energy detonating, but the sound of an
absolute defence shattering
. Akuma’s void shield didn’t flicker out; it exploded inwards. Jagged shards of solidified darkness, sharp as obsidian razors, flew in all directions, vaporizing inches from the rebels but lacerating Akuma’s own armour. The concussive force wasn't outward, but inward, a violent implosion of negation.
Akuma was hurled backwards. Not with grace, but like a puppet with its strings cut. He crashed into the obsidian wall beneath the shattered rune Ryota had destroyed, the impact spider webbing the dark stone. His obsidian armour, pristine for so long, was now visibly
cracked
. Fissures ran across his chest plate and pauldrons. Void ichor, darker than night, wept from the cracks and from the wound on his gauntlet. His horned helm was askew, revealing a glimpse of pale, sweat slicked skin beneath, contorted in a rictus of agony and absolute,
palpable terror
.
He didn’t rise immediately. He slumped against the wall, one gauntleted hand pressed to his cracked chest plate, his breath coming in ragged, distorted gasps that echoed unnaturally in the sudden, stunned silence. The fear wasn't just in his mind anymore; it radiated from him like the Plaza’s cold, a suffocating aura of dread visible in his trembling limbs, his wide, horrified star pupils fixed on nothing, seeing only the hallucinated King and the promise of unimaginable punishment. The mask of the implacable Void Knight wasn't just cracked; it was
shattered
, revealing the terrified servant beneath.
Corvin
watched from the deeper shadows near a weeping pillar, his void stone ring pulsing with a slow, resonant
thoom
. He hadn't intervened directly, but his presence was a silent pressure, his earlier words to Haruto a catalyst now bearing bloody fruit. His unseen gaze swept the scene: the shattered shield, the cracked Void Knight, the bleeding but unbowed rebels, Shiro clutching his ruined arm, Kuro swaying from corruption’s toll, Ryota leaning heavily on Starbreaker, blood pooling beneath him, Juro poised for the next blow, Haruto standing over his strike, dagger still glowing. This wasn't just survival. This was defiance incarnate.
Proof,
Corvin thought, the concept cold and sharp in his analytical mind.
Irrefutable evidence. The beast bleeds. The throne can be shaken.
He filed the observation away, a crucial piece for the hidden game. The fruits of rebellion were bitter, stained with pain, but they were real. Nyxara would need to see this.
The Plaza of Screams held its breath. Akuma’s vulnerability hung heavy in the air, thick with ozone, blood, void ichor, and the crushing weight of a tyrant’s imagined wrath. The fight wasn't over, but the balance of power had irrevocably shifted. The Void Knight was wounded, terrified, and cornered. The next move would decide everything.
The silence after Akuma’s shield imploded was deafening, thicker than the Plaza’s ichor laden air. He slumped against the cracked obsidian wall, a broken monolith. Void ichor wept from fissures in his once impervious armour, steaming where it met the hungry floor. His breath rasped, a distorted, mechanical wheeze echoing the Plaza's dying groan. But it was his eyes that held the true horror. His star pupils weren't focused on the battered rebels closing in; they were fixed on a point just beyond Haruto’s shoulder, wide with a terror so profound it radiated outwards like a physical chill, making the very air prickle.
He saw him again...
King Ryo Oji stood there, not as a memory, but as a living, breathing nightmare woven from Akuma’s unravelling psyche. The Butcher King’s blood coloured robes seemed to drink the jaundiced light of the pulsing runes. His face remained shadowed, but the eyes, infinite voids of absolute, disappointed malice, bored into Akuma’s soul. A cruel, silent smile played on lips Akuma couldn’t fully see but
felt
, promising an eternity of meticulously crafted agony. Ryo didn’t gesture; his mere presence was the indictment, the sentence, the executioner’s axe poised.
This tale has been pilfered from NovelFire. If found on Amazon, kindly file a .
“Failure,”
the hallucination breathed, the word slithering directly into Akuma’s fractured mind, layered with the phantom screams of all those he’d seen Ryo flay for lesser transgressions.
“My finest blade… blunted by gutter sparks. Did you think your borrowed power made you indispensable? Did you think your suffering would be
quick
?”
Akuma flinched as if physically struck. A guttural, animalistic sound tore from his throat, pure, distilled fear. His void energy, flickering erratically around his cracked gauntlets, suddenly flared with violent, uncontrolled fury. It wasn’t an attack; it was a spasm of terror.
“NO!”
Akuma shrieked, his voice cracking, losing its cosmic resonance, becoming raw and human in its desperation. He lashed out wildly, not at the rebels, but
towards
the hallucination of Ryo. A torrent of unstable void energy erupted from his right gauntlet, vaporizing a section of the fleshy floor where the phantom king stood.
“I WILL NOT FAIL! I WILL CLEANSE THEM!”
His terror had mutated into a berserk, defensive frenzy. He whirled, star pupils darting wildly, seeing Ryo’s mocking visage flickering behind Juro, then beside Ryota, then superimposed over Haruto’s cold, advancing face. His attacks became a terrifying blend of fleeting, lethal precision, remnants of his Void Knight training, and wild, panicked swings fuelled by the desperate need to appease the tormentor only he could see. He fought the ghosts in his mind as much as the rebels before him.
The team pressed the advantage, but the cohesion born of Akuma’s initial vulnerability frayed under his unpredictable, terror fuelled onslaught. He was a wounded, cornered beast, lashing out with claws of pure negation. Juro’s axes met void energy that was now thick, viscous, and lashing like angry tendrils. Ryota, barely standing, used Starbreaker as a crutch more than a weapon, deflecting blasts that came from impossible angles. Kuro’s disruptive cold waves seemed less effective against the raw, chaotic output of Akuma’s fear.
Then, Akuma saw Ryo’s face
within
his own swirling void aura, a brief, horrific superimposition of the Butcher King’s shadowed visage over the raging dark energy. It taunted him, sneering.
“TOO FUCKING SLOW!”
the phantom Ryo hissed.
Akuma snarled, a sound of pure, unhinged rage. In that moment of redirected terror, he saw an opening, not a tactical one, but a gap born of Ryota’s agonizing stumble. Pure, desperate ferocity took over. Ignoring Haruto’s calculated advance, ignoring Juro’s incoming blow, Akuma focused every shred of his fear charged power into his left gauntlet. Void energy condensed into a single, brutal hammer fist of pure negation, aimed at Ryota’s exposed, blood soaked flank.
The impact was sickening. Void energy met ravaged flesh and bone. Ryota didn’t cry out; the breath was blasted from him in a silent, bloody spray that froze instantly in the air. He was lifted off his feet, thrown backwards like discarded armour. Starbreaker flew from his grip, its guttering light winking out as it clattered across the fleshy floor, coming to rest near a weeping pillar. Ryota hit the ground with a final, heavy thud, unmoving, a dark stain spreading rapidly beneath him. The Old Star had fallen.
The sight momentarily froze the others. Their advantage, hard won through blood and pain, evaporated like smoke. Akuma, panting, void ichor streaming down his cracked armour, stood amidst the swirling darkness radiating from him. The terror was still there, a visible tremble in his limbs, but it was now fused with a terrifying, unhinged triumph. He had struck back. He had appeased the phantom King, if only for a second. His star pupils, wide and bloodshot, fixed on the nearest target:
Shiro
.
Shiro stood frozen, not just by Ryota’s fall, but by a wave of fresh agony lancing from his Polaris scar, a sympathetic echo of the Old Star’s final blow. He was vulnerable, exposed.
Akuma moved. Not with grace, but with the lurching speed of pure, fear driven instinct. His right gauntlet shot out, wreathed in sputtering, unstable void energy, aimed not to kill, but to silence, to crush, to
erase
the nearest spark of defiance. It closed the distance to Shiro’s throat in a heartbeat.
Simultaneously:
Haruto
, cold fury overriding the shock of Ryota’s fall, was already in motion. His Polaris dagger, blazing like a captured fragment of a dying sun, was raised high, aimed with lethal precision at the crack in Akuma’s back plate. He was a fraction of a second from releasing the killing thrust.
Juro
, roaring in defiance, was mid swing, both axes, carving twin arcs of fury towards Akuma’s head and side. His axes were a heartbeat from connecting.
Kuro
, the static around his head a visible storm, his corrupted arm pulsing with agonizing blue light, was gathering the invasive cold fire for a final, desperate blast, knowing it might unmask him completely.
Corvin
, in the shadows, his void stone ring pulsed not with anticipation, but with a sharp, warning
thrum
. The game was reaching its precipice.
Akuma’s gauntlet was inches from Shiro’s throat. The unstable void energy hissed, promising annihilation. Shiro’s amber eyes widened, reflecting the oncoming darkness. Haruto’s muscles tensed to strike. Juro’s axes descended. Kuro’s corrupted energy reached its peak.
Then, it hit them.
Not a physical blow. Not a void blast.
Pure, incandescent agony.
It erupted
inside
Shiro and Kuro’s minds simultaneously, a psychic detonation of such intensity it felt like molten lead being poured directly onto the raw nerves of their consciousness. It wasn't pain from their wounds, or the corruption, or the grinding braces. It was
alien
, searing, and utterly consuming. A silent scream tore through their shared mental space, a vision of such profound, terrifying
wrongness
that it bypassed sight and sound, etching itself directly onto their souls with white hot agony.
Shiro gasped, his hand flying to his head, the movement towards his throat forgotten. His Polaris scar flared violently, amber light sputtering erratically. He staggered, vision swimming not with tears, but with the searing afterimage of the unseen horror. Kuro cried out, a raw, choked sound. The static around his head flared white hot, the blue luminescence in his corrupted arm surging chaotically as the invasive cold fire recoiled from the psychic intrusion. He doubled over, clutching his temples, his storm grey eyes squeezed shut against the internal inferno.
No one else saw it. No one else felt it. To Juro, Haruto, Corvin, and the hallucinating Akuma, Shiro and Kuro simply… faltered. Froze mid action, expressions contorted in silent, inexplicable torment at the worst possible moment.
Akuma’s void gauntlet closed the final inch.
It didn’t connect with flesh. The unstable energy surrounding it
touched
Shiro’s throat.
Silence.
Not the absence of sound, but a sudden, crushing pressure that swallowed the hiss of void energy, the rasp of breath, the drip of ichor. The Plaza’s runes blazed a violent, bloody crimson, casting the entire scene in a hellish light. Haruto’s killing thrust hung, arrested by the sudden, agonized paralysis of his targets and the shocking proximity of Akuma’s strike. Juro’s axes halted mid arc. Kuro’s gathered energy flickered and died as he fought the internal cataclysm. Akuma himself seemed momentarily stunned by the contact, his star pupils reflecting the crimson rune light and the frozen terror on Shiro’s face.
In that frozen tableau of horror, pain, and interrupted vengeance, the searing agony in Shiro and Kuro’s minds coalesced into a single, silent, devastating phrase, branded onto their consciousness amidst the molten lead pain:
ECLIPSE VISION ALGOL

V2: C62: Failure Wears His Face