Time shattered. The Plaza of Screams, frozen in its tableau of imminent death, Akuma's void charged gauntlet a breath from Shiro's throat, Haruto's dagger poised for a lethal strike, Juro's axes mid arc, Kuro convulsing in silent torment, vanished. Reality peeled away like burning skin.

For Shiro and Kuro, the world dissolved into pure, incandescent agony. It wasn't physical pain; it was the sensation of their very consciousness being dipped in the heart of a dying star and then flash frozen in the absolute zero of the void, repeated infinitely in a single nanosecond. Molten lead seemed to pour into their neural pathways, searing synapses to ash, while glacial scalpels flayed the raw nerves left behind. They felt their minds unravel, thoughts shredded into screaming fragments, identities dissolving in the white hot forge of absolute suffering. There was no sound, only the silent, universe shattering scream vibrating in the marrow of their souls. This was the Eclipse Vision Algol: not a sight, but an invasive, brutal lesson carved directly onto the bedrock of their being with instruments of cosmic torment.

Amidst the searing white void of pain, two paths crystallized, horrifyingly vivid:

Path One. The pain receded, replaced by a chilling clarity. They saw the Plaza now, but fractionally ahead. Haruto's face, stripped of all humanity, contorted into a rictus of cold fury. His Polaris dagger didn't hesitate. It plunged downward with vicious, surgical precision, not into Akuma's back, but through the cracked horn of his helm, deep into the base of his skull. CRUNCHHHHH. Void ichor and fragmented obsidian sprayed. Akuma's star pupils flared once, impossibly bright, filled with cosmic terror and the phantom echo of Ryo's mocking voice, then extinguished. His body jerked, then slumped, a puppet with its strings cut. Victory. But it tasted like ashes and void. The Plaza erupted. Akuma's uncontrolled void energy, released by his sudden death, detonated outwards in a silent, expanding sphere of absolute negation. Shiro and Kuro saw themselves thrown back, their cries swallowed by the devouring darkness. Ryota's still form near the wall was engulfed, vanishing without a trace. Juro's axes vaporized inches from his grasp. Haruto, closest to the epicentre, was consumed mid snarl, his form dissolving into motes of light snuffed by the void. The explosion ripped through the Plaza, cracking weeping pillars, silencing the runes, leaving only a crater of smoking, corrupted stone. Then, the vision pulled back. They saw Volrag, slumped against another wall, witnessing the cataclysm. His glacial eyes, filled with a profound, echoing loss as he saw Ryota consumed, hardened into absolute, desolate fury. The vision shifted: Volrag twisted by Ryo for months, they see the torture the agony then months later, Volrag finding Ryota, broken, barely alive, hidden away. No words. Only a frost blade plunging into the Old Star's heart, vengeance for the tirle stolen vengeance for Akuma twisted by Ryo. Then, Shiro and Kuro, consumed by their own grief and the lingering void taint, hunting Volrag down. A brutal, icy confrontation. Kuro's corruption flared uncontrollably, consuming Volrag in a wave of blue white agony. As Volrag fell, his eyes locked not on them, but on the horizon, filled with a terrible emptiness. But the victory was hollow. The cycle didn't end; it mutated. Standing over Volrag's frozen corpse, Shiro and Kuro felt a new, deeper chill. A shadow detached itself from the greater darkness, not a hallucination, but an entity born of the concentrated hatred of their vengeance. It had no distinct form, only swirling darkness and eyes like fractured stars, radiating pure, predatory hunger. It stalked them silently through a desolate, frostbitten landscape, relentless, feeding on their lingering rage and despair. It was the embodiment of the cycle they'd perpetuated, endless, consuming, inescapable. The lesson screamed silently: Kill the monster, become the monster. Feed the void, and it will feast on you forever.

Path 2: The agony shifted, morphing into a different kind of pain, the sharp, clean hurt of a bone being reset, a nerve severed to save the limb. Back in the frozen Plaza moment. Haruto's face, still etched with the cold fury of his father's memory, twitched. The killing thrust wavered. His eyes, locked on the crack in Akuma's armour, flickered. Not with mercy, but with a dawning, horrifying recognition. He saw the flayed corpse of Takeru Isamu, but superimposed over it, he saw the endless chain, Yuki burned, Kaya torn apart, Takeru flayed, Akuma executed and the cycle continues on forever.

Haruto's lips moved. The words were silent in the vision, but they vibrated through Shiro and Kuro's souls with the force of tectonic plates shifting: "This cycle… ends here." His dagger didn't plunge. It swept down, but with a brutal, precise hammer blow to the same crack Haruto had struck earlier. KRACKKKK! Not a kill, but a shattering impact. Akuma's cracked chest plate splintered further. Void ichor fountained. Akuma convulsed, a gargling shriek escaping him, not of death, but of profound shock and the sudden, terrifying absence of Ryo's phantom presence, severed by the unexpected act. The Plaza's violently crimson runes flickered… then dimmed. The unstable void energy lashing from Akuma's gauntlet near Shiro's throat sputtered and receded, pulling back into the Void Knight like a wounded serpent. Akuma didn't die. He slumped, broken, gasping, his star pupils wide with confusion and a dawning, primal fear that had nothing to do with Ryo and everything to do with his own sudden vulnerability. He was defeated, humiliated, alive. Shadows deeper than Akuma's void coalesced, spectral figures in ornate, frost rimed armour, Juro and Corvin acted. They seized the broken Void Knight, their touch freezing his struggles instantly, and dragged him backwards into the weeping darkness near a shattered pillar. His terrified eyes locked on Haruto for a final, bewildered second before he vanished. The Plaza felt… different. The oppressive hunger remained, the mountain's pulse thrummed, but the sharp edge of imminent annihilation had blunted. The cost was still written in Ryota's still form, Kuro's corruption, Shiro's agony, but the future… The vision pulled back again. They saw Ryota, recovered but bearing the deep scars, physical and spiritual. Not in a war room, but in a quiet, frost rimed courtyard within Astralon. Opposite him stood Volrag. Not armed, not armoured in hate. The void taint was gone from his eyes, replaced by a profound weariness and sorrow. They didn't embrace. They didn't even speak. They stood in silence, looking out at the recovering city, a shared understanding passing between them, the terrible cost of the path they'd walked, the burden of choices made in shadow. There was peace. Not joy, but an absence of war. The haunting entity born of vengeance was absent. There was only the clean, cold air and the fragile hope of a morning after the long winter. The lesson resonated, a deep, clear chime after the cacophony: Breaking the chain hurts. It leaves scars. But it opens the path. Spare the monster, starve the void. Choose life, choose the harder peace.

The Eclipse Vision Algol withdrew as violently as it had struck. The molten lead vanished, the glacial scalpels ceased. Shiro and Kuro gasped in unison, lungs burning as if surfacing from drowning. They slammed back into their bodies in the Plaza of Screams. The frozen tableau was breaking.

Shiro flinched violently backward, his throat untouched but burning with phantom cold, his right wrist shrieking anew. He stumbled, retching, the visions of the stalking entity and the quiet courtyard warring in his fractured mind. Kuro cried out, a raw sound, clutching his corrupted arm as if the disruptive entropy he'd gathered had backlashed internally. The static around his head flared and died, leaving a pounding headache and the searing memory of both consuming corruption and the absence of the wraith.

Before them, Akuma staggered back, his void gauntlet retracting as if burned. The unstable energy was gone. His star pupils flickered wildly, no longer fixed on a phantom Ryo, but darting around the Plaza in raw, animal confusion and terror. The blow Haruto hadn't delivered seemed to have struck deeper than any killing thrust could. He was broken, vulnerable, momentarily paralyzed by the psychic backlash of the vision he hadn't shared.

Haruto stood frozen, his dagger still extended, his knuckles white on the hilt. His face was pale, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. He hadn't seen the vision, but the echo of his own silent declaration, "This cycle of avenging ends here" seemed to hang in the charged air before him, a choice suddenly imbued with terrifying, cosmic weight. He stared at the space where Akuma had vanished, then down at his dagger, as if seeing it for the first time.

Juro lowered his axes slowly, his gaze darting between Shiro and Kuro's evident trauma, Haruto's frozen stance, and the spot where the spectral enforcers had dragged Akuma away. The crimson pulse of the runes bathed the scene in blood light, but the immediate, crushing danger had passed, replaced by the heavy silence of a choice suspended and a future trembling on the edge of a knife. The Algol lesson, agonizingly learned, now demanded action.

The silence after the Algol vision shattered like thin ice. Shiro gasped, the phantom cold at his throat replaced by the Plaza's biting reality, the searing brand of the twin futures still scorching his mind. Kuro shuddered, the static receding to a low, painful throb within his skull, the invasive cold fire in his arm pulsing in agitated response to the psychic onslaught. They exchanged a single, lightning fast glance, a shared understanding of horrors witnessed that transcended words, unknown to the others.

Before them, the tableau unfroze. Haruto Isamu stood rigid, his Polaris dagger still extended towards the space where Akuma had been dragged into shadow. His knuckles were bone white on the hilt, his breath pluming in rapid, shallow bursts that fogged the cold air. He hadn't seen the vision. He hadn't heard its silent scream. He stood amidst the echoes of his own internal war, the image of his flayed father warring with the chilling clarity of an endless cycle of retribution, Yuki burned, Kaya defiled, Takeru butchered, Akuma executed, Volrag consumed, on and on into a future painted only in blood and frost. The weight of House Isamu's fall, the burden of vengeance, pressed down, threatening to crack his icy composure.

Then, decisively, his arm lowered. The fierce Polaris light winking along the dagger's edge dimmed, not extinguished, but banked, controlled. A conscious choice. He turned his head slightly, his obsidian gaze sweeping the battered survivors, Shiro trembling, Kuro clutching his corrupted arm, Ryota's still form a dark stain on the floor, Juro poised with grim vigilance. His voice, when it came, cut through the Plaza's oppressive hum with the cold, clear ring of a blade being sheathed, not in defeat, but in resolve.

"This cycle ends today."

The words weren't loud, but they carried the weight of a vow. A promise etched not just for Akuma, but for the ghosts haunting Haruto's steps, for the fractured rebellion gasping around him, and for the bleak future he refused to inherit. It was a line drawn in the ichor stained stone.

Akuma, staggering back from the void enforcers' grasp but still reeling from the psychic shockwave of the Algol vision's abrupt end and Haruto's unexpected declaration, misinterpreted the lowered blade. He saw only hesitation. A chink. The phantom Ryo's mocking voice seemed to crescendo in his terror fractured mind: "Fucking Weakness! Strike NOW!" Desperation, feral and survival driven, overrode strategy. With a guttural snarl that sounded more like a cornered animal than a cosmic predator, he lunged.

It wasn't the lethal precision of the Void Knight. It was a wild, panicked swing of his void charged gauntlet, aimed directly at Haruto's head. Unstable energy crackled around the obsidian fist, a sputtering, uncontrolled eruption of his fear and failing power.

Haruto, his focus still internal, processing his monumental choice, was fractionally slow to react.

Shiro moved first. The gruesome visions, the stalking entity, the endless chain of death, were still raw, fuelling pure instinct. Ignoring the grinding agony in his wrist, he threw himself bodily sideways, colliding with Haruto's shoulder. The Architect stumbled, the wild void gauntlet whistling through the air where his head had been a microsecond before. Void energy seared the spot, leaving a patch of smoking, corrupted stone.

Akuma, unbalanced by the wild swing, pivoted with feral speed, already bringing his other gauntlet around in a vicious backhand aimed at Haruto's exposed flank. Kuro was there. Gritting his teeth against the white hot brand where the Algol vision had flayed his mind and the invasive cold surging in his arm, he planted his good leg and shoved Haruto hard, sending the Architect sprawling clear. Kuro braced himself, raising his corrupted arm instinctively as a frozen shield.

THMPPPPPP!

Akuma's backhand slammed into the sickly blue luminescence surrounding Kuro's corrupted limb. The impact jarred Kuro violently, sending fresh javelins of agony lancing from his shoulder to his heart as the invasive cold fire flared in protest. He cried out, stumbling back, the static roaring back to life around his head like angry hornets. The shield held, barely, but the cost was etched in the sudden grey pallor of Kuro's face and the deeper blue veins now visibly pulsing towards his collarbone. The corruption fed on the strain.

The moment of chaos solidified into a defensive formation. Juro stepped forward, placing himself solidly between the staggering Kuro and Akuma, his twin axes raised in a guard position. Shiro, gasping from the effort and the renewed pain in his wrist, scrambled to Haruto's side, helping him up. Haruto's icy composure was back, his obsidian eyes fixed on Akuma with renewed, calculating focus, though a flicker of acknowledgment passed between him and Shiro. Ryota remained a still, grim reminder of the cost on the periphery. They formed a tight, battered semicircle facing the Void Knight, Shiro and Haruto on the left, Juro anchoring the centre, Kuro leaning heavily but defiantly on the right, his corrupted arm held low, still crackling from the impact.

Akuma stood hunched, panting, void ichor weeping steadily from the cracks in his armour and the wound Haruto had inflicted. His wild attack had failed, leaving him more exposed. He looked from one resolute face to another, the gutter rat's defiance, the disgraced lord's icy resolve, the Frostguard heir's protective fury, the corrupted prince's pained endurance. He saw no fear. Only determination. His star pupils, wide with residual terror and dawning realization, darted to the shadows where the enforcers had retreated. No help would come. The tide had irrevocably turned. His void aura, once a crushing mantle, flickered erratically, sputtering like a dying flame. The intense cold radiating from him lessened perceptibly, replaced by a faint, unnatural warmth emanating from his damaged armour, a sign of his failing grip on the void's power, the energy leaking out uncontrolled.

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A low, guttural snarl escaped Akuma's cracked helm, part fury, part desperate bravado. "You'll regret this mercy," he hissed, the void voice distorted, thin, lacking its former cosmic weight. The threat rang hollow against the backdrop of his visible wounds and destabilizing power.

Haruto took a single, deliberate step forward. His voice cut through Akuma's fading snarl and the Plaza's groan, cold, precise, and utterly final. "The cycle of vengeance ends here," he repeated, the words resonating with the force of a judicial decree. "But your actions today will be remembered along with the atrocities you committed but, tell Ryo a storm is brewing."

It was more than a statement; it was a pronouncement. A challenge flung at the retreating shadows of Ryo's regime. A promise of accountability. And a warning, not just to Akuma, but to any who sought to perpetuate the Butcher King's legacy of blood and ice. The words hung in the charged air, a line drawn not just in the Plaza, but in the soul of the rebellion.

Akuma's cracked helm tilted. He seemed to shrink within his damaged armour. The flickering void aura around him pulsed once, weakly, then contracted tightly against his form. His star pupils, fixed on Haruto for a final, searing moment filled with impotent rage and a drenching terror of the master he'd failed, seemed to dim. Then, with a speed that defied his injuries, he melted backwards. Not with a teleport's flash, but like ink dissolving into stagnant water, flowing into the deeper shadows pooling at the base of a nearby weeping pillar. One second he was there, a broken monument to fear and failure; the next, only swirling darkness and the fading echo of his ragged breath remained. He was gone, retreated like the shadow he served.

A heavy silence descended, broken only by Kuro's pained breathing, the drip of ichor from the walls, and the low, fading thrum of the Plaza's corrupted runes. The immediate threat had vanished. Akuma, the implacable Void Knight, had been broken and forced to flee. The chain of vengeance, at this moment, for this enemy, had been decisively severed. They stood victorious, bloodied, exhausted, and burdened with the weight of choices made and futures glimpsed, in the eerie, blood light gloom of the Plaza of Screams. In the deepest shadows, unseen by the weary victors, Corvin's void stone ring pulsed once, a silent, resonant thoom that vibrated in the bones of the mountain itself.

The silence after Akuma's retreat was thick enough to choke on. Blood dripped, freezing before it hit the Plaza's hungry floor. Void ichor steamed where it wept from cracked obsidian walls. Ryota lay deathly still, a dark stain spreading beneath him, Starbreaker's extinguished haft inches from his slack hand. Shiro gasped, cradling his right arm; the void leather braces were visibly cracked, grinding bone dust against fused joints with every shallow breath. Kuro leaned against a weeping pillar, his corrupted arm a dead weight encased in sickly, fading blue luminescence, tendrils now visible beneath his collarbone, the static around his head a low, painful drone. Juro stood guard, axes notched and dulled, his gaze sweeping the shadows where Akuma had vanished. Haruto wiped his Polaris dagger clean of void ichor on his sleeve, the motion precise, cold, his obsidian eyes calculating the cost.

From the deeper gloom near a colossal, weeping statue, a shadow detached itself. Corvin. He moved with utter silence, the yielding floor not even whispering beneath his tread. His hood was drawn, face invisible, but the void stone ring on his finger pulsed with a low, resonant thoom that vibrated in their marrow, a counterpoint to the Plaza's dying groan.

Haruto didn't turn his head. His voice, scraped raw by frozen air and internal strain, cut through the oppressive quiet, colder than the ichor underfoot. "Assessing the rebellion, Corvin?" It wasn't a question. It was an indictment, laid bare. "I had Mira track you. Your movements… calculated absences… the risks taken to force this confrontation. You revealed it perfectly." He finally turned, his gaze a glacial weight fixing on the shadowed figure. "You are a spy for Nyxara. Correct?"

No denial. Corvin stepped fully into the jaundiced light cast by a nearby, pulsing rune. His hands rose, pale and long fingered, and grasped the edges of his deep hood. With a deliberate slowness, he pulled it back.

The face revealed was sharp, intelligent, etched with the intensity of a blade honed on cosmic secrets. High cheekbones, a strong jawline shadowed by stubble, lips set in a thin, serious line. But it was the eyes that arrested them. Deep set and unnervingly familiar: vast, dark irises shaped like the Corvus constellation, seeming to absorb the Plaza's sickly light rather than reflect it. Galaxy eyes. Eyes that had watched from rooftops and shadows. Eyes Shiro and Kuro had glimpsed in the prismatic gaze of a crow.

"Yes," Corvin confirmed, his distorted voice flat, stripped of its usual masking effect. The single word hung heavy.

A sharp intake of breath came from the shadows near another weeping statue. Mira stepped forward, her movements hesitant, stunned. The fractured lens over her damaged eye glinted, reflecting the rune light and Corvin's face. Her visible eye was wide, filled with dawning, terrifying awe. "You…" she whispered, her voice trembling. "You're the Galactic Crow. The one who watched them… at the academy. The crow with the galaxy eyes." Her hand rose unconsciously to touch her fractured lens. "I… I saw echoes. Fractured paths leading back to… to you."

Corvin's galactic gaze shifted to her. A flicker of something complex passed through those dark stars, recognition, perhaps respect. "I am," he affirmed, his voice losing some distortion, becoming clearer, sharper. "And you, Mira, have proven invaluable. Your lens… it perceives more than just fractured paths. It sees the hidden currents." He turned back to Haruto, then swept his gaze over the battered group, Shiro's agony, Kuro's corruption, Juro's vigilance, Ryota's stillness. "I came to observe the rebellion. To judge its mettle, its worthiness for Nyxara's cause." He paused, the intensity in his eyes deepening. "What I witnessed today… it wasn't just convincing, It was captivating."

The confession, the surrender of his hidden purpose, landed like a physical blow. His void stone ring pulsed again, a deep thoom resonating in the silence.

Haruto's expression remained an icy mask, but a fractional tilt of his head acknowledged the weight of Corvin's words, the strategic value laid bare. "You'll have to earn our trust," he stated, the cold edge of his voice blunted, just perceptibly, by a sliver of hard won respect. "Actions, not observations, will forge that bond. But for now…" His gaze flickered towards where Ryota lay. "…you're with us. After all," his voice dropped, carrying a rare, grudging acknowledgment, "you did help me regain my senses amidst that storm. For that… I thank you."

A fragile unity settled over the battered group. Juro gave a curt nod, his axes lowering slightly. Mira remained wide eyed, processing. Shiro managed a weak, pained nod of unaware of the confession from the pain searing his wrists, the watcher in the shadows, now stepping into the light, the crow that had haunted their steps revealed as an ally.

But it was Kuro who reacted viscerally. His storm grey eyes, clouded with pain and the static's residue, had been fixed on Corvin since the hood dropped, drawn inexorably downward. Not to the galaxy eyes, but to the man's hands. To the ring on his finger. The heavy band of cold, black iron. The unnaturally weighty metal. The crest stamped upon it…

Recognition detonated.

It wasn't just memory; it was a physical sensation. Kuro's left hand spasmed. His thumb instinctively rubbed the bare skin of his ring finger, where a stark, pale band remained, the phantom imprint of the ring that had bitten into his flesh for years. He saw the academy rooftop bathed in moonlight, felt the terrifying freedom of release, heard the crow's triumphant, ear splitting screech as it dove. He saw the heavy Oji signet tumbling, end over end, a falling star of relinquished power, the snarling crescent moon devouring smaller stars glinting one last time before being snatched from the air by a thief dipped in poisoned dye and possessing impossible, galaxy dark eyes.

His breath hitched, a wet, ragged sound choked by static and dawning horror. He pushed himself off the pillar, ignoring the fresh wave of agony from his corrupted arm, his gaze locked on the ring pulsing on Corvin's finger. His voice, when it came, was a shattered rasp, scraping raw against the Plaza's cold, carrying the weight of a terrible, impossible revelation:

"That ring…" Kuro choked, pointing a trembling finger, the static flaring violently around his head. "On your finger… It's the Oji ring. The one I threw away. Months ago. On the academy rooftop… when I apologized to Shiro."

The silence after Kuro's shattered accusation hung thicker than the Plaza's cloying stench. Corvin's revelation as Nyxara's agent, the Galactic Crow, had been a seismic shift. The fragile unity Haruto had acknowledged, the wary acceptance born of shared survival and Corvin's timely intervention, now fractured under the weight of Kuro's trembling finger and raw, disbelieving voice.

The words struck like physical blows. The heavy band of cold, black iron on Corvin's finger seemed to pulse with malevolent life under the jaundiced rune light, the snarling crescent moon devouring its cluster of smaller stars suddenly grotesquely visible.

Shiro gasped, the grinding agony in his wrists momentarily forgotten. His amber eyes snapped from Kuro's devastated face to the ring, then to Corvin's impassive, galaxy dark eyes. Memory flooded him, the rooftop chill, Kuro's raw confession, the violent yank as Kuro tore the ring off, the stark pale band left on his finger, the heavy iron tumbling through moonlight… and the crow. The impossible, prismatic eyed crow that had snatched it mid air with a triumphant, ear splitting shriek. That crow had galaxy eyes. The connection slammed into him with the force of Ryota's axe blows. A choked sound, half recognition, half dread, escaped his lips. His gaze locked onto Corvin's face, searching for confirmation in those star filled voids.

Haruto's icy composure, already strained, froze completely. His obsidian eyes narrowed to slits, the analytical engine whirring furiously. Corvin's admission of being Nyxara's agent was one thing, a strategic variable assessed and tentatively accepted. But this? The Oji heir's ring, a symbol of Ryo's tyrannical lineage, worn by the enigmatic Crow? Suspicion, cold and sharp, replaced the sliver of respect. His grip tightened on his Polaris dagger, knuckles bleaching white. The ring wasn't just an heirloom; it was a shackle Kuro had violently discarded, a rejection of everything Ryo stood for. Its presence on Corvin's hand felt like a violation, a thread leading back to the very darkness they fought.

Mira flinched, her hand flying to her fractured lens. It flared violently, prismatic shards of light dancing erratically across its surface. "The paths... they converge... there," she whispered, her voice trembling with the strain of sudden, overwhelming insight. "The rooftop... the fall... the snatch... the ring... it led to him. It was always... leading to him." Her visible eye was wide with terror, the lens reflecting not just the ring, but the terrifying, complex web of fate suddenly tangling around Corvin.

Juro shifted, his battered axes coming up instinctively, not pointed at Corvin, but held defensively between the Crow and the stunned, wounded group. His gaze, sharp beneath his fur lined helm, darted between Kuro's anguish, the damning ring, and Corvin's unnervingly calm face. The revelation of Nyxara's involvement had been a potential boon; this felt like a betrayal buried deep within it.

Corvin didn't flinch. He didn't snatch his hand away or offer excuses. He simply raised his hand slightly, turning it so the Oji crest caught the dim light. His galaxy eyes met Kuro's storm grey ones, holding the prince's devastated gaze without pity, but with a profound, unsettling understanding.

"A discarded shackle," Corvin stated, his distorted voice devoid of defensiveness, layered with a chilling certainty. "Falling through moonlight. A key offered to the night." His gaze flickered infinitesimally towards Shiro, acknowledging the shared memory. "I saw its potential. Not as a symbol of Ryo's power, Kuro Oji, but as a keyhole. A crack in the gilded cage you fled." He lowered his hand, the ring pulsing with its low thoom. "It found its way to me. A tool, like any other. Its origin doesn't dictate its use. Only the hand that wields it."

The explanation was cryptic, unsatisfying. It didn't erase the visceral horror on Kuro's face, the profound sense of violation that the symbol of his inherited nightmare now adorned the hand of a potential ally. Kuro swayed, the corruption in his arm flaring blue white as a fresh wave of agony, both physical and psychic, washed over him. He looked ill, his knuckles white where he gripped his corrupted limb. "A tool..." he echoed, his voice thick with disgust and a dawning, terrible comprehension. "You kept it... used it..." The implications, surveillance, manipulation, a constant, hidden connection to the thing he'd tried so desperately to destroy, were staggering.

Before the tension could snap, before accusations could fly, a wet, rattling cough shattered the fraught silence. Ryota Veyne stirred on the floor, a fresh gout of dark blood bubbling on his lips. The sound was weak, desperate, a stark reminder of the immediate, brutal cost of their victory, pulling them back from the precipice of internal conflict.

Haruto was the first to move, his strategic mind compartmentalizing the ring's terrifying implications for later dissection. "Juro!" he barked, the command cracking like ice. "Pressure on his wound! Now!" He sheathed his dagger and knelt beside Ryota, his hands already moving to assess the catastrophic damage. The Old Star's survival was paramount; the mystery of the ring could wait, though the cold suspicion in Haruto's eyes as he glanced at Corvin promised it would not be forgotten.

Shiro stumbled towards Kuro, his own pain forgotten in the face of his friend's distress. He gripped Kuro's uninjured arm, grounding him. "Princeling... breathe," he urged, his voice low and strained. The shared memory of the rooftop, the terrifying freedom of that moment, felt tainted now, overshadowed by the Crow's shadow and the ring's reappearance.

Mira rushed to Haruto's side, her lens still flickering, but her focus now on the immediate crisis. "The void chill... it's deep... eating at his Polaris core..." she murmured, her fractured sight probing Ryota's fading light.

Corvin watched them for a heartbeat, his galactic gaze unreadable. Then, without a word, he moved. Not towards the exit, but towards the group clustered around Ryota. He reached into a pouch at his belt, withdrawing a small, crystalline vial filled with a viscous, glowing substance that pulsed with a soft, warm light, ward stone essence, purified energy wrested from the Spire. He offered it silently to Haruto.

Haruto hesitated for a microsecond, his eyes flicking from the vial to the Oji ring still visible on Corvin's hand, then to Ryota's grey, blood streaked face. The cold calculus of survival overrode suspicion. He took the vial with a curt nod, his touch brief and impersonal. "Mira, guide me. Where's the deepest ingress of the void cold?"

As Haruto and Mira worked, Juro applying brutal pressure to Ryota's side, Shiro supporting a trembling Kuro, the Plaza's oppressive atmosphere seemed to shift. The violently crimson runes embedded in the walls and floor began to dim, their pulsing slowing, deepening from the hue of fresh blood to a faint, pulsing amber. Like cooling embers. The organic floor steamed gently where void ichor and blood had been spilled, the hungry stone seemingly sated, or perhaps merely resting.

Corvin's admission, of his role, of his observation, of his captivation by their defiance, lingered in the air, irrevocably altered by Kuro's revelation. It was a new, tangled thread woven into the tapestry of their rebellion, stained with the dark iron of the Oji crest. Trust was shattered before it could fully form, replaced by a wary, necessary alliance forged in the crucible of Ryota's desperate need and the shared enemy that still loomed.

They stood together, battered, bleeding, bound by shared sacrifice and the fallen giant at their feet. Shiro's braces were cracked, Kuro's corruption pulsed weakly but ominously, Juro's axes were notched and dulled, Haruto's dagger was smudged, his icy composure chipped, and Ryota hovered on the brink. Yet, amidst the wreckage and the fresh, chilling mystery of the Crow and the Ring, the dim amber light of the Plaza wasn't just dying embers. It was the faint, fragile glow of hope. Hard won, potentially treacherous, but undeniably present. The road ahead was jagged ice over fathomless darkness, fraught with peril and poisoned secrets. But for the first time, standing in the aftermath of their defiance against Akuma, facing the terrifying ambiguity of their new ally, they truly believed, battered knuckles gripping weapons and comrades alike, that this fight, against Ryo, against the void, against the crushing weight of their own pasts, might not be in vain. The long winter wasn't over, but the first, tentative promise of thaw flickered in the amber gloom.

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