The Plaza of Screams didn't roar; it sucked. The air itself felt thick and greedy, pulling at Shiro's gasps, leaching the heat from his blood before it could even reach his screaming muscles. Akuma stood before them, not a warrior, but a tectonic event given form. His void black plate drank the Plaza's sickly yellow light, the horned helm cracked but radiating an even deeper, colder malice. Around him, the spectral audience of Takeshi's weeping black icicles, the swirling vortex of ancient hunger, seemed to pulse with anticipation, feeding on the despair thickening the air like grave fog.

Shiro's world narrowed to the white hot agony in his wrists and the guttering ember in his palm. All that mattered was the obsidian monolith before him, the architect of Aki's torment. He lunged, the rusted blade Haruto had given him in the hearth barracks whistling through the heavy air. It wasn't a strike born of Haruto's geometry, but of raw, unadulterated fury, a desperate slash aimed at Akuma's cracked faceplate.

Akuma didn't move. He didn't need to.

His void gauntlet, wreathed in swirling darkness that seemed to absorb sound and light, simply rose. It met Shiro's blade not with a clang, but with a sickening KRRRK! The rusted steel didn't rebound; it stuck, embedded in the impossible, light devouring darkness swirling around the gauntlet like tar. Shiro grunted, the impact jolting up his arms like a lightning bolt of pure, concentrated agony. The phantom thorns buried deep in his fused wrists tore viciously, flaying nerves raw. He felt bone dust vibrate violently against the void leather braces, a grinding shriek echoing inside his own skull. His scarred palm flared amber in sympathetic protest, a weak sputter that sent nerve flaying shards of white hot pain lancing up his arm to his spine. He staggered back, wrenched off balance, leaving the blade trapped in Akuma's swirling void grip.

"Is this," Akuma's voice resonated, bypassing ears to vibrate directly in Shiro's molars and Kuro's throbbing corruption, "the best the gutter rat and the disgraced whelp can muster?" The star pupils within the cracked helm flared, infinite malice mixed with profound boredom. "Scrabbling in the dirt with fucking borrowed weapons?" With a contemptuous flick of his gauntlet, the rusted blade was discarded. It didn't clatter; it was simply unmade, dissolving into motes of dark rust that vanished into the swirling void around his hand before they hit the fleshy floor.

Kuro moved, a blur of crimson desperation fuelled by shared agony and the static roaring in his mind. He didn't bother with finesse. His good hand, clenched into a fist wreathed in a desperate, sputtering crimson aura from his scar, hammered towards Akuma's side, aiming for the fissures in the obsidian plate near the hip. Simultaneously, his corrupted arm jerked. It wasn't a controlled strike; it was a convulsive lash, driven by fury and the invasive cold fire chewing towards his heart. Tendrils of sickly blue light erupted from beneath the vambrace, lashing out like frozen whips.

Akuma sighed, a sound like glaciers settling. He shifted his weight, a movement that seemed to distort the air around him. Kuro's crimson fist slammed into nothing, a localized pocket of absolute cold that flash froze the air inches from Akuma's hip. The impact sent a javelin of pain up Kuro's arm, the cold searing his knuckles instantly numb. Worse, far worse, was the backlash from his corrupted limb. The lashing blue tendrils met Akuma's void aura and recoiled violently, snapping back like electrified wires. The invasive cold fire within Kuro's arm EXPLODED.

"GAAAHHHGHHH!" Kuro's scream was raw, animal, ripped from a throat constricting with frost and agony. It felt like glacial termites injected with liquid entropy. They burrowed past his elbow with frenzied ecstasy, tunnelling up towards his shoulder socket, leaving trails of absolute zero agony in their wake. The static in his mind dropped into a subsonic drone, a physical vibration grinding against the inside of his skull. His vision swam with jagged black spots. He saw his monstrous shadow swell grotesquely on the floor beside him, its edges deepening, becoming more real, more hungry. FEED US! GIVE US THE ROT! The drone seemed to whisper, merging with Akuma's presence. He stumbled, the dead, icy drag of the corruption now a crushing anchor pulling him towards the yielding floor.

Akuma didn't press Kuro. He turned his star pupiled gaze fully on Shiro, who was gasping, clutching his right wrist as if trying to hold the shattered bones together through the brace. "Pathetic," the void voice whispered, thick with disdain. "All that fire in the academy. All that borrowed defiance. Reduced to this? A trembling rat with broken fucking claws."

Shiro forced air into his frozen lungs, the act feeling like inhaling ground glass coated in acid. He summoned the Polaris fire again, not for attack, but for light, for hope. Agony detonated. It wasn't the controlled burn of the Sky Hearth; it was raw, unfiltered stellar fury tearing back up the ruined conduits of his nerves. Nerve flaying shards of white hot pain lanced from his scarred palm to his spine, blinding him, stealing his breath. The amber light that sputtered forth was weak, guttering, barely pushing back the jaundiced gloom for a foot around him. It illuminated the blood freezing black on his face, the stark terror in his eyes. He choked back a scream, doubling over, vision swimming with supernovae of agony. Control the fire! Haruto's ghostly command was a frail raft in a sea of torment. Not the scream!

Akuma moved. Not with blinding speed, but with terrible, inevitable purpose. One gauntleted hand shot out, not to strike, but to grab. It closed around Shiro's throat, icy obsidian fingers squeezing with the pressure of tectonic plates shifting. "Let me silence the noise for you, gutter rat," Akuma purred, lifting Shiro effortlessly off the ground. Shiro's feet kicked uselessly in the air. The void cold radiating from the gauntlet didn't just steal breath; it froze the desire to breathe. Shiro's eyes bulged, his scarred hand scrabbling weakly at the unyielding obsidian arm, the Polaris light sputtering and dying as consciousness flickered. The phantom thorns in his wrists became actual ice daggers driven deeper.

"SHIRO!" Kuro's roar was distorted by pain and static. He forced himself upright, ignoring the white hot brand of agony where the cold fire chewed near his collarbone. He couldn't use the corruption again; it would consume him. Instead, he scooped up a jagged shard of black ice that had fallen from a weeping pillar. A pitiful weapon. He hurled it with all his failing strength, not at Akuma's head, but at the joint of the elbow holding Shiro aloft.

It was a distraction. A desperate, futile gesture. Akuma didn't even look. His free hand flicked dismissively. A pulse of void darkness emanated from his palm. The ice shard dissolved into harmless vapor inches from its target. The pulse continued, slamming into Kuro's chest. WHUMPFFFFF! It wasn't a physical blow; it was pure negation, a wave of absolute cold and despair. Kuro flew backwards as if hit by a siege ram, crashing into the yielding, fleshy wall of the Plaza with a wet, nauseating splat. He slid down, leaving a smear of crimson and frost, gasping, the static roaring back with triumphant fury, the blue luminescence in his arm flaring with agonizing intensity as the corruption burrowed deeper. His vision tunnelled. Shiro's choking form, dangling in Akuma's grip, seemed miles away.

Akuma turned his attention back to Shiro, whose struggles were weakening, his face turning a terrifying shade of grey blue. "Your little spark is almost out," the void voice observed, clinically. "Just like your precious Aki's. Shall I show you how it feels? That final, gasping flicker before the eternal dark?" He squeezed tighter. Vertebrae groaned. Darkness encroached on Shiro's vision, filled only by the twin dying suns of Akuma's pupils.

Then, a searing lance of pure, focused Polaris light, white hot and precise as a scalpel, slashed through the space between Akuma's head and shoulder. Not aimed to kill, but to distract, to force a reaction. It struck the cracked horn on Akuma's helm, shearing it off with a CRACKKKKK! Void ichor spattered.

Akuma's head snapped to the side, a fraction. His grip on Shiro's throat loosened, infinitesimally. Shiro sucked in a ragged, burning gasp of foul air, stars exploding behind his eyes as blood rushed back to his frozen brain.

Akuma turned, star pupils blazing with fresh, cosmic fury, away from the broken twins towards the new threat. Standing ten paces away, braced against the oppressive cold, every muscle corded with strain, veins standing out like frozen rivers on his neck and temples, stood Haruto Isamu. His Polaris dagger was raised, its tip blazing with the captured fury of a dying star, its light a fragile sun in the devouring gloom. His obsidian eyes, colder than the deepest glacier, were fixed on Akuma.

"You," Akuma's voice resonated, the indifference replaced by sharp, analytical interest. "The disgraced lord. Come to add your broken corpse to the pyre?"

Haruto didn't answer. His gaze flickered for a microsecond towards Shiro, crumpling to the fleshy floor gasping, and Kuro, struggling to rise against the tide of corruption and void induced agony. The fallen Lord of House Isamu, erased from history but burning with a cold, silent fury, shifted his stance. The dagger's light intensified, casting long, sharp shadows. The air around him grew perceptibly colder, sharper, the Plaza's runes frosting over nearby. His silence was more terrifying than any roar. It was the quiet before the avalanche. The hunger of a scion denied, now focused with lethal precision. The fallen House had arrived, and it was ravenous.

The searing afterimage of Haruto's Polaris dagger strike faded from Shiro's vision, replaced by the looming shadow of Akuma turning away. Shiro hit the yielding, warm cold flesh of the Plaza floor, the impact jolting through his shattered body like a fresh detonation. Air, thick with ozone and the coppery tang of his own freezing blood, scraped into his lungs. Every gasp was a battle against the glacial pressure in his chest and the white hot agony screaming from his wrists. The phantom thorns weren't phantom anymore; they were ice daggers driven deep into the fused bone, grinding with every micro movement. The rusted blade was gone, unmade. His Polaris scar pulsed weakly, a dying ember radiating nerve flaying shards of pain up his arm with every sputter. He was unarmed. Broken.

Beside him, Kuro gasped, a wet, ragged sound choked with static. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, his corrupted arm a dead, frozen log encased in sickly blue luminescence that pulsed like a diseased heart. The invasive cold fire had chewed past his shoulder, tendrils of absolute zero agony tunnelling towards his collarbone. Each pulse sent jagged bolts of pain up his neck, making his teeth clatter. His storm grey eyes, wide and bloodshot, fixed on Shiro, mirroring the same dawning horror.

Akuma didn't press the attack on Haruto immediately. He stood, a void clad monolith, radiating cosmic indifference. His star pupiled gaze swept over the fallen twins, lingering on their shattered forms with the detached curiosity of a child examining crushed insects.

"Look at you," the voice resonated, bypassing ears to vibrate in their marrow, in the grinding shards of Shiro's wrists, in the icy roots devouring Kuro. "Guttering sparks, sputtering in the wind. You clawed through stone, bled in the dark, embraced the rot… for this?" He gestured dismissively, a flick of his gauntleted hand that made the swirling void shadows around him writhe. "A final, pathetic gasp on my palette?"

Shiro tried to push himself up. His right arm buckled instantly, the fused bones shrieking protest, sending a wave of nausea so intense he retched, vomiting blood tinged bile that froze instantly on the Plaza floor. He collapsed back, the warm, yielding surface sucking greedily at his warmth. Akuma's words weren't just taunts; they were hooks sunk deep into his soul, dragging up the images he fought so hard to suppress: Aki's bright eyes clouding over. Her skin peeling back under glacial knives. Her voice reduced to a frozen rasp calling his name. Shiro… help…

"Can we…" Shiro gasped, the words barely audible, scraped raw by cold and despair. He stared at his trembling, useless hand, the amber glow flickering like a candle in a hurricane. "…even make a difference?" The doubt wasn't a whisper; it was a glacier calving in his chest, a collapse of the desperate hope that had propelled him this far. Akuma was right. They were insects. All their defiance, all their pain, just meaningless noise before the void's inevitable silence. Saving Aki felt like trying to hold back the tide with bare hands. She called for you… until her vocal cords froze solid… Akuma's earlier description echoed, a cruel soundtrack to his failure.

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Kuro heard the crack in Shiro's voice, the despair threatening to drown him. He felt it resonate in the static roaring in his own skull, in the hungry pull of the corruption towards the mountain's core. He saw his monstrous shadow swell on the floor, edges deepening, mocking him. FEED US. But beneath the consuming pain and the encroaching void, a cold ember of the Defiance Variable sparked, forged in the crypts crucible. Not hope. Resignation. Understanding.

With a groan that tore from his chest, Kuro dragged himself closer to Shiro, ignoring the fresh wave of agony the movement cost him. His good hand, trembling violently, clamped onto Shiro's shoulder, not gently, but with desperate, grounding force. The touch sent a jolt through Shiro, pulling his gaze from the abyss of his own doubt to Kuro's pain racked face.

"No," Kuro rasped, the static layering his voice like grinding ice, but beneath it was a terrifying certainty. Blood and void ichor crusted his jaw. "We're not… strong enough to stop him." He met Shiro's despairing eyes, his storm grey gaze holding a bleak, flint hard truth. "Never fucking were."

The admission hung in the air, heavier than the mountain above. It wasn't surrender. It was a brutal recalibration. Akuma watched, star pupils flaring with mild interest, a predator savouring the prey's internal struggle.

"But maybe…" Kuro choked, the effort of speech immense against the cold fire chewing deeper. He tightened his grip on Shiro's shoulder, a lifeline against the void's pull. "…we can stall the bastard."

The words landed like a hammer blow. Stall. Not win. Not save. Just… delay. Buy moments. Heartbeats. For what? For Ryota, bleeding out nearby? For a miracle as impossible as thawing the void itself? The goal shrunk from salvation to simple, brutal persistence. From defiance to distraction.

Akuma chuckled, the sound like glaciers shearing. "Stalling the inevitable? How quaint. Like grains of sand trying to hold back the tide." He took a step towards Haruto, the void energy around his gauntlet intensifying. "Your struggles are meaningless noise, fuel for the mountain's dream. Watch now, as I extinguish another borrowed light."

Shiro looked from Kuro's grim, pain etched face to Akuma's towering form turning towards Haruto. The image of Aki flickered again, not broken, but waiting. Trapped. Time. They needed time. Even if it was just seconds. Even if it cost them everything.

A spark, not of hope, but of desperate purpose, ignited in Shiro's gut, battling the numbness spreading from his wound and his wrists. He met Kuro's gaze. A silent understanding passed between them, forged in shared agony and the ashes of their grand defiance. The fight wasn't about victory anymore. It was about attrition. About being the most irritating, persistent grains of sand in Akuma's cosmic boot.

Shiro rolled, a movement that tore a cry from his throat as phantom ice daggers twisted in his wrists. He didn't try to stand. He scooped up a chunk of shattered black ice fallen from a weeping pillar. Not a weapon. A projectile. He hurled it, not at Akuma's head, but at the Plaza floor behind the Void Knight's advancing foot. "NOW!" he croaked.

Simultaneously, Kuro shoved himself forward, not rising, but sliding on his knees across the slick floor. He didn't aim for Akuma. He aimed for the Void Knight's shadow, his corrupted arm held low. He didn't try to unleash the unstable power; he focused on the cold radiating from it, the invasive chill that resonated with the Plaza's hunger. He pushed that sensation outwards, not as an attack, but as a localized wave of intense, distracting cold, a psychic shiver across Akuma's void touched senses.

The ice shard shattered harmlessly on the yielding floor behind Akuma. The wave of cold from Kuro was a gnat's buzz against a hurricane. But Akuma hesitated. A fraction of a second. His step faltered. The star pupils flickered minutely towards the source of the insignificant distractions.

It was enough. Haruto, seizing the microsecond of diverted attention, flowed sideways with lethal grace, his Polaris dagger flashing in a defensive arc as Yumi Isamu's spectral void blade sliced the air where he'd been standing.

Akuma's head snapped back towards the twins. Not with fury, but with a flicker of genuine annoyance. "Persistent vermin," the void voice grated. He raised his gauntleted hand, not towards Haruto, but towards Shiro and Kuro. Void energy coalesced, a swirling orb of absolute negation forming above his palm. "Time to sweep the floor."

Shiro braced, the icy daggers in his wrists screaming. Kuro gritted his teeth, the corruption flaring blue white as he prepared to meet the blast, knowing it would likely unmask him. They wouldn't stop it. They couldn't win. But for one more heartbeat, for one more ragged gasp, they were still in the way. The feast was delayed. They were the grit in the machine, the blood on the blade, the defiant, broken sparks refusing to be extinguished just yet. The cost was written in their agony, the next breath bought with screams yet to come.

The orb of absolute negation swirling above Akuma's gauntlet pulsed, a localized black hole sucking the jaundiced light from the Plaza. Shiro braced, the icy daggers in his wrists twisting as he tried to summon a futile helix of amber light, knowing it would shatter. Kuro, teeth gritted against the glacial fire chewing towards his heart, tensed his good leg, ready to throw his corrupted body as a final, frozen barrier. The air crackled with impending annihilation, thick with ozone and the metallic tang of their despair. Akuma's star pupils held only cosmic indifference, the executioner raising the blade.

Then, the world fucking exploded, not with void energy, but with searing Polaris light and the shriek of tortured frost.

"AKUMAAAAA!"

The roar wasn't sound; it was a force of nature, a collapsing glacier given voice. It slammed into the Plaza, vibrating the yielding floor and rattling the weeping pillars. A blinding lance of white hot starlight, erratic but ferocious, slammed into the void orb from the side. SIZLEEEEE! The negation energy recoiled, writhing like a wounded serpent, its formation disrupted. Simultaneously, a blur of obsidian and frost forged steel crashed into Akuma's flank.

Ryota.

He moved like a landslide, powerful, inevitable, but visibly broken. Blood, dark and steaming, poured freely from the horrific wound in his side where Volrag's blade had been, soaking his furs and pooling briefly before the hungry floor gulped it down. His face was a mask of blood, ice, and agony, his Polaris eyes blazing with a light that flickered violently, like a guttering star in its death throes. Starbreaker, the massive double bladed axe, trailed searing light, but its arc was slower, less controlled than before, betraying the ruin within. He didn't aim for a killing blow; it was a battering ram charge, fuelled by sheer, desperate will. CRUNCHHHHH! The axe head, wreathed in dying Polaris fury, smashed into Akuma's void black pauldron. Frost spiderwebbed across the obsidian plate, void ichor spurted, and Akuma, caught off guard by the suicidal ferocity of the attack, staggered sideways a single, heavy step.

Shiro gasped, the breath freezing in his lungs. Not with fear, but with a surge of raw, disbelieving relief so potent it momentarily eclipsed the agony in his wrists. Ryota. The Old Star, battered, bleeding out, but here. Beside him, Kuro choked out a sound that was half sob, half snarl of feral gratitude. He didn't have words; the static roared too loudly, the cold fire chewed too deep. But his storm grey eye locked onto Ryota's battered form, a desperate anchor in the devouring dark.

Akuma recovered instantly, a low growl like grinding neutron stars vibrating the air. He turned his star pupils on Ryota, cosmic indifference replaced by sharp, predatory annoyance. "The crumbling monument returns," the void voice grated. "Dragging your entrails behind you. How… irritably persistent." He raised his gauntlet, void energy coalescing, aiming now at the staggering Commander.

Before the energy could lash out, another figure flowed into the fray with lethal silence. Haruto Isamu. His arrival wasn't heralded by a roar, but by a sudden, intense drop in temperature near Akuma's other flank. His Polaris dagger was a needle of contained stellar fury, aimed not at Akuma's vitals, but with surgical precision at the vulnerable seam behind the Void Knight's knee, the same flaw Kuro had tried to exploit moments before. Haruto's face was a mask of analytical ice, but his obsidian eyes burned with a cold, focused fury directed solely at the task: protect the twin stars, disrupt the enemy.

Akuma was forced to pivot, diverting the void blast intended for Ryota to intercept Haruto's strike. SCHZORTT! Void energy met Polaris light in a shower of frozen sparks and searing vapor. Haruto disengaged fluidly, the jarring force sending tremors up his arm, flash freezing the synovial fluid in his elbow. He didn't flinch. His gaze flickered to Ryota, a micro assessment: critical damage, fading light, unsustainable aggression. Then to the twins: Shiro disarmed, writhing in silent agony, Kuro barely conscious, corruption visibly spreading. The tactical matrix reformed instantly.

"Veyne! Disrupt his grounding!" Haruto's voice was a whip crack of command, devoid of warmth, heavy with urgency. "Twins! Now!" He didn't explain; he expected obedience forged in the crucible of the Sky Hearth crypt. He lunged again, not to kill, but to harry, his dagger a silver blur forcing Akuma to constantly adjust his defence, preventing him from focusing his devastating void power.

Ryota didn't question. He understood the language of the desperate fight. Gritting his teeth against the white hot inferno in his gut, he hefted Starbreaker. Its light was dimmer now, faltering, but he channelled the last dregs of his Polaris fury not into a strike, but into a massive, two handed downward slam onto the fleshy Plaza floor directly in front of Akuma. CRACKKKKK! The yielding surface buckled violently, sending a shockwave of rippling force through the organic stone. Black ichor geysered from ruptured vesicles. Akuma, mid pivot to track Haruto, stumbled as the ground lurched beneath his feet, his void energy sputtering.

Shiro and Kuro reacted on instinct, driven by pain and Haruto's command. Shiro, ignoring the grinding shriek threatening to shatter his wrists, scooped another chunk of ice. He didn't throw it at Akuma; he hurled it high, aiming for the pulsing, diseased rune embedded in the ceiling directly above the Void Knight. It shattered harmlessly against the stone, but the spray of frozen fragments rained down. Kuro, summoning agony as a weapon, focused the invasive cold radiating from his corrupted arm. He didn't try to attack Akuma; he pushed the sensation of absolute zero towards the Void Knight's void touched senses, a psychic shiver of disruptive cold across his focus.

It was chaos. Haruto darting in and out like a frozen wasp, precise strikes forcing constant parries. Ryota staggering but unleashing ground shaking impacts that destabilized the footing. Shiro hurling debris with trembling, agonized arms. Kuro projecting waves of soul numbing cold. None of it could hurt Akuma significantly. But together, it was a whirlwind of irritating, persistent defiance. Akuma snarled, a sound of genuine frustration now. His void blasts became less focused, swatting at the distractions. He was the storm, but they were the relentless grit in its eye.

"ENOUGH!" Akuma bellowed, the word a physical force that slammed Haruto back a step and made Ryota stagger. Void energy exploded outwards from him in a concussive ring. WHUMPHHHH! Shiro was thrown backwards, crying out as he landed hard on his damaged wrists. Kuro crumpled, the backlash sending the invasive cold fire chewing deeper, a white hot brand against his heart. Ryota braced, Starbreaker digging into the floor, blood streaming down his leg. Haruto skidded, his boots leaving steaming trails on the icy flesh.

They formed a ragged semicircle around the Void Knight, Ryota leaning heavily on his axe, breath pluming in ragged gasps, his light guttering dangerously low; Haruto poised, dagger ready, face impassive but veins standing out on his neck from strain; Shiro pushing himself up on elbows, wrists screaming, face pale with agony; Kuro on his knees, head bowed, corrupted arm pulsing with sickly light, static roaring in his skull. Battered. Bleeding. Barely standing. But together. Forcing the executioner to acknowledge the persistent grit.

Akuma straightened, void energy swirling around him like an angry nebula. The star pupils blazed with cold, infinite fury. "Pathetic Vermin," he hissed, the word dripping with cosmic disdain. "You sting. You irritate. You buy heartbeats with your own blood. But Ryo cares not for the struggles of ants before the boot descends." He raised both gauntleted hands, void energy coalescing into twin orbs of devouring darkness, larger, more potent than before. "Time to sweep the floor fucking CLEAN."

As the titanic power gathered, poised to unleash annihilation upon the battered quartet, a deeper shadow stirred.

High on a ledge formed by a grotesque, weeping statue, untouched by the Plaza's jaundiced light or the combat's fury, Corvin stood. He hadn't materialized; he simply was, a natural extension of the darkness clinging to the stone. His hood was drawn, his face invisible, but his posture was one of absolute stillness, of observation. His ring pulsed with a low, resonant thrum, a counterpoint to the Plaza's hungry groan and the building void energy below. He didn't move to intervene. He didn't signal. He simply watched.

His presence wasn't seen by the fighters locked in their desperate struggle below. But it was felt. A subtle shift in the oppressive atmosphere, a deepening of the shadows just beyond the periphery of Akuma's gathering power. A silent, enigmatic observer at the brink of annihilation. Was he assessing the rebellion's last stand? Measuring their worth for Nyxara? Or waiting for the precise moment to reveal which side his hidden dagger would strike? His allegiance remained shrouded, a chilling ambiguity hanging heavier than the void orbs gathering in Akuma's hands. The cavalry had arrived, battered and broken. The hidden player watched. And the mountain's heart beat on, hungry and patient, beneath the feet of the doomed.

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