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 NEVER WAS 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. "The 'son' died the moment you took what was mine," he hissed, venom dripping like frozen acid. "Died 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.

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.

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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.

He stopped, a dozen paces from Volrag's crumpled form, near the edge of the sickly light cast by a nearby pulsing rune. He didn't turn. His voice, when it came, was a low rumble scraped raw by frozen air and internal bleeding, yet it carried the weight of tectonic certainty across the Plaza.

"Killing you," Ryota rasped, the words punctuated by a wet, rattling breath, "won't bring back the Warrens. Won't thaw the Frostguard's frozen pyres." He paused, a tremor running through him that wasn't entirely pain. The image of Kaya's smile, bright as Polaris dawn, seared his mind – not a memory of loss, but a beacon against the void's encroachment. "Won't bring back Kaya." Her name was a prayer and a curse on his lips. "It won't unfreeze the son I thought I pulled from that ditch. That boy's gone. Buried under the endless winters of your own poisoned frost."

He finally half turned, a slow, grinding pivot that cost him dearly in agony. His Polaris eyes, though dimmed, held no mercy, only a profound, glacial understanding that cut deeper than any blade. They fixed on Volrag, not with triumph, but with the bleak assessment of a commander surveying a battlefield lost to corruption. "All it would do… is add another corpse to the mountain's feast. Feed the very hunger that twisted you." He gestured faintly with Starbreaker's head towards the swirling void entities, the watching ghosts, the pulsing, diseased runes in the walls. "Your hate… it's just fuel for them. Another log on Ryo's fire. I won't stoke it."

Volrag choked, a wet, gurgling sound. Void ichor and blood frothed on his lips, freezing instantly into a grotesque black rime. Disbelief warred with the undiminished furnace of his loathing. To be spared? By him? After everything? It wasn't mercy; it was annihilation of his very purpose. It was proof to him that Ryota still saw him as beneath contempt, unworthy even of a clean death. The humiliation burned hotter than the agony of his wounds.

"You…" Volrag spat, the word a shard of ice. He tried to push himself up against the pillar, his shattered limbs refusing, collapsing him back into a heap. His glacial eyes, bloodshot and desperate, locked onto Ryota's retreating silhouette. "You fucking bastard!" The insult tore from him, weak but venomous. "Think this is… over?" He coughed, spraying dark ichor. "You walk away… bleeding out… playing the noble fucking corpse?" A ragged, humourless laugh escaped him, more a death rattle than mirth. "The void… doesn't need my hate… to consume you." He struggled to draw breath, the effort making the black ice sealing his shoulder wound crackle. "It's already in you… Veyne. In the wound I gave you… in the cold leaching your light…" His voice dropped to a guttural, prophetic rasp, echoing the whispers of the mountain itself. "It's in the stones… the air… the dreaming dark beneath your fucking feet. It's patient. It's hungry. And it will swallow your flickering star… your precious memories… your fucking legacy… down into the endless, frozen night. You… and everything you failed… rot together."

The words hung in the air, a curse woven from cosmic indifference and personal spite. Ryota didn't flinch. He absorbed the venom, the threat, the chilling truth that the void's touch was indeed a creeping frost within his own veins, spreading from Volrag's impalement. It only solidified his resolve. Turning his back once more, a final, definitive dismissal, he took another staggering step towards the distant, chaotic light of Shiro and Kuro's fight with Akuma. The path was littered with steaming ichor and the Plaza's unsettling, organic undulations.

He didn't engage Volrag's prophecy. There was no need. His actions were his answer. Every laboured breath, every grinding step forward despite the ruin of his body, was a silent rebuke. He wasn't fighting for legacy now. He was fighting for the now. For Haruto locked in psychic torment. For Shiro and Kuro facing Akuma's unveiled horror. For the faint, impossible hope that Aki's spark hadn't been entirely extinguished. For Kaya's memory, which demanded defiance, not despair.

His Polaris light, guttering weakly around Starbreaker's blades and deep within his own eyes, didn't blaze. It flickered. Like a candle flame battling a hurricane, it dipped, threatened to vanish entirely under the oppressive weight of the Plaza's malice and the void cold consuming him from within. Yet, it didn't go out. With each agonizing step, it flared anew, however faintly, a stubborn, enduring ember refusing the hungry dark. It illuminated the grim set of his jaw, the blood caking his beard, the terrible wound in his side that wept life onto the greedy floor.

He became a silhouette against the vast, grotesque backdrop of the Plaza of Screams. Ahead, the colossal, weeping pillars framed the chaotic duel, Haruto's precise, desperate movements against the spectral void blade of Yumi Isamu, the clash sending showers of frozen sparks into the jaundiced gloom. Above, the pulsing runes throbbed like diseased hearts, casting long, monstrous shadows that danced on the walls. Below, the fleshy floor seemed to pulse in time, a vast, hungry membrane. And behind Ryota, forgotten but not gone, Volrag bled and raged into the void's uncaring embrace.

Ryota Veyne, the Old Star, Commander of the True North, bearer of Kaya's final gift, moved forward. Broken. Bleeding. Bearing the glacial kiss of the void within his gut. But unbowed. His light flickered, a fragile defiance against the all consuming darkness, a testament etched in pain and unwavering will: the fight wasn't over while he still burned.

The oppressive hum of the Plaza of Screams deepened, a hungry vibration resonating through the yielding floor and up into Corvin's bones. He stood motionless, a deeper shadow cast by a colossal pillar weeping viscous black tears that steamed faintly before vanishing into the hungry stone. Ryota Veyne's staggering form, a beacon of flickering Polaris defiance receding towards the central maelstrom where Shiro and Kuro battled Akuma's unveiled horror, was a diminishing silhouette against the diseased yellow pulse of the runes. The air reeked of void ichor, frozen blood, and the coppery fungal stench of the mountain's breath. Corvin's void stone ring thrummed, not with the painful whine of strained reality, but with a low, resonant pulse, a beacon in the dark.

He didn't turn. His hood remained drawn, his face invisible within its depths. Yet, his stillness shifted, becoming less that of a statue and more that of a predator aware of another in its territory. From the dense, swirling shadows coalescing within the pillar's weeping effigy, a figure emerged. Not materializing, but unfolding from the darkness itself, as if the shadows had simply decided to take a different shape. Hvitra.

She was a wraith sculpted from polished obsidian and twilight. Nyarion battle leathers, matte black and devoid of insignia, clung to a whipcord frame. Her face was a pale oval beneath a deep hood mirroring Corvin's, dominated by eyes that held the chilling intelligence and unsettling depth of the Corvus constellation dark, bottomless irises shaped like the constellation that seemed to absorb the Plaza's sickly light rather than reflect it. She moved with utter silence, stopping precisely three paces from Corvin, her posture mirroring his unnerving stillness. No weapons were visible, yet the air between them crackled with latent threat, a dance performed on the edge of a blade.

Corvin's distorted voice, devoid of inflection, cut through the Plaza's ambient groan, low enough to be swallowed by the weeping stone: "The fault line deepens. Pressure builds where dead stars sleep."

Hvitra's response was immediate, a dry rustle like ancient parchment disturbed in a tomb: "The throne's foundations shift. Breath grows shallow on the glass." Her Corvus eyes remained fixed on the space where Corvin's face would be, unblinking.

A beat of silence, heavy with unspoken meaning. The cries of battle, Shiro's ragged shout, the shriek of clashing energies, Akuma's chilling laugh, seemed distant, filtered through layers of shadow.

"Rootwork tangles the old paths," Corvin intoned, the ring on his finger pulsing slightly brighter. "Stone remembers the bite, thirsts for the fall."

"Harvest approaches the blighted field," Hvitra countered, her voice flat. "Scythes gleam under a borrowed moon. The frost claims more than the weak."

Corvin's head tilted a fraction, a minute adjustment. "The watcher in the high nest sees the storm gather. But the wind carries conflicting songs. One speaks of endless winter, the other… of thaw."

Hvitra's stillness intensified. "The song of thaw is sung by ghosts, Watcher. Its melody is brittle. The ice holds deep."

"Yet the river flows beneath," Corvin pressed, the distortion in his voice layering the words with hidden significance. "Seeking the sunless sea. Does the high nest chart its course? Or merely observe the ice cracking?"

This time, the pause stretched. The static charge between them thickened. Hvitra's Corvus eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "Observation is survival. Navigation requires… trust. A rare currency in this frozen market. The elders stockpile fear."

Corvin didn't move, but his presence seemed to sharpen. "Fear feeds the old beasts. It fattens them on conflict they stoke from shadows. Algol's collapse wasn't a warning flare… it was a deadline etched in falling stone." The cryptic veneer thinned, just for an instant, revealing the cold, hard core beneath. "War serves only the elders hunger. A feast where Nyxarion is the main course, consumed bite by bite until only bones remain for the void."

Hvitra's breath hissed out, a soft sound lost in the Plaza's groan. The revelation hung in the air, a shared understanding laid bare. "And the Queen?" Her voice was a razor's edge.

"Nyxara walks a razor's edge," Corvin stated, the distortion momentarily lessening, revealing a voice as cold and sharp as glacial shards. "Bound by the elders chains of precedent and paranoia. She sees the abyss the warpath leads to. But proof is demanded. Proof that the alternative isn't suicide. Proof that the rebellion isn't merely another pack of wolves howling for the same rotten meat as King Ryo Oji."

He moved, finally. Not a large gesture, but a subtle shift of his cloaked arm beneath the heavy fabric. From the deep shadows within his sleeve, his hand emerged, pale and long fingered. Clutched between thumb and forefinger was a small, crystalline vial. Within it swirled a minuscule amount of viscous, crimson black fluid that pulsed with a faint, dying light, ward stone essence, wrested from the shattered heart of the Spire's defences. It emitted a low thrum that resonated discordantly with his ring.

"Proof," Corvin rasped, the distortion returning, masking the word. " That defiance isn't futile. That there are those fighting not for a different throne, but to shatter the cycle." He extended the vial slowly, deliberately, towards the shadows where Hvitra stood. "Without this… without victory here… the elders chorus of fear drowns out reason. Nyxara will be forced to draw steel. Nyxarion will fracture… and the void will feast on the pieces."

Hvitra didn't reach out immediately. Her Corvus eyes flickered from the vial to the distant chaos of the main battle, then back to Corvin's shrouded face. "Peace brokered in shadow is fragile," she murmured, the cryptic tone returning, layered with grim pragmatism. "The throne's foundations are rotten ice. Algol's deadline… it looms. Nyxarion cannot weather another storm born of ancient grudges. The rot must be cauterized, or the whole structure falls."

"Then we become the cautery," Corvin replied, his voice flat and final. He released the vial. It didn't fall. It floated, suspended in the air between them for a heartbeat, caught in an unseen current of void energy emanating from Hvitra's outstretched, gloved hand. It vanished into the folds of her cloak without a sound.

A tense, brittle respect hung in the air, colder than the Plaza's chill. They were rats in the same cosmic maze, yes, but rats with teeth bared not at each other, but at the walls. For now.

"The beast stirs," Corvin stated, his head turning fractionally towards the escalating sounds of battle, a roar that could only be Kuro, a shriek of tortured metal, Akuma's chilling, resonant laughter. "Its teeth are bared."

Hvitra's form was already dissolving, melting back into the pillar's weeping shadow like ink returning to its well. Her parting words were a fading whisper, cryptic yet carrying the weight of absolute conviction: "So are ours, Corvin. So are ours."

She was gone. Only the weeping stone and the oppressive hum remained. Corvin's ring pulsed once, a deep thoom that resonated in his marrow. He turned fully now, abandoning the pillar's shadow, his movements swift and silent. His gaze swept the Plaza. Ryota Veyne had reached the periphery of the central maelstrom. The Old Star stood, battered and bleeding, Starbreaker raised, its flickering light a challenge thrown at Akuma's towering, void wreathed form. Shiro was on his knees nearby, blood freezing black on his face, one hand pressed to his chest, agony etched into every line of his body, yet his free hand was raised, a weak sputter of amber defiance flaring from his scarred palm. Kuro fought like a man possessed, his movements a desperate blend of feral rage and chilling precision, his corrupted arm a frozen, dead weight dragging him down even as he used it as a shield against blasts of void energy. The air crackled with unleashed power, the floor trembling under the impacts.

And there, on the far edge of the light, a flicker of movement, sharp, precise, cutting through the chaos like a scalpel through flesh. A figure moving with lethal geometry, icy determination radiating even at this distance. Haruto Isamu. The disgraced Lord of the erased House approached the fray, his Polaris dagger a sliver of contained fury, his obsidian gaze fixed not on the twins, not on Ryota, but solely on Akuma. The hunger radiating from him wasn't physical; it was colder, sharper, the hunger of a scion of a fallen house for vindication, for the utter annihilation of the betrayer who had shattered his world. The air around Haruto seemed to grow colder, sharper, the runes nearby frosting over as he closed in, a silent avalanche of focused fury descending upon the Plaza of Screams.

Corvin flowed forward, a shadow joining the storm. The double game paused, the hidden dagger sheathed. Now, only the brutal calculus of survival and the mountain's gnawing hunger remained. The final fracture was here. Ryota raised Starbreaker, its light guttering but fierce, and stepped into the maelstrom beside the defiant sparks. Corvin vanished into the deeper shadows near the fray, his ring humming a silent counterpoint to the coming storm. The beast had teeth. So did they. And the fallen House of Isamu was ravenous.

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