Shiro lifted his head. The movement required immense effort, like breaking through a shell of ice encasing his entire being. Not to look at Kuro, a ghostly echo of his own despair across the short, infinite distance. Not towards the untouched food, the stark monument to his refusal, to his belief that he didn’t deserve the energy to continue. His gaze, hollow and stripped of everything but a terrible, exhausted clarity, slid past the weeping mirrors, past the multiplied, mocking reflections of his own ruination. It fixed, with the finality of a condemned man looking towards the gallows, on the far end of the crypt. Past the last obsidian pane, past a jagged pile of fallen rubble, yawned a low, crumbling archway. Partially collapsed, choked with frost heaved stones and veiled in deeper, beckoning shadow. But beyond it… not the barracks. Not Ryota’s crushing expectation. Not Haruto’s clinical assessment or Juro’s contempt. Not even the suffocating weight of their shared, monumental failure.
Just… the vast, frozen silence of the Razorwind Peaks. A void. An end.
An escape route. A void colder than the crypt, but infinitely cleaner. A place devoid of people he could fail, could harm, could accidentally immolate with the unstable power he carried. A place where the supernova trapped in his palm could finally detonate, unleashing its annihilating fury harmlessly against unfeeling rock and endless ice, leaving no scar but his own vanishing. A place where his very existence would cease to be a flickering threat to everyone he’d ever dared to care for. Protecting her stars… the cold, logical whisper curled around his frozen heart, its seductive tendrils offering the only solution that absolved him of further failure, …means leaving. Removing the danger. The thought wasn’t grand or tragic; it was the final, chilling solution to an impossible equation written in pain and fear. Sacrifice the flawed, dangerous vessel to preserve the fragile light he’d sworn to protect. The seductive relief of it washed over him, a paradoxical warmth spreading through his icy limbs, a stark, almost cruel counterpoint to the grinding agony in his wrists. It promised an end to the constant fear, the gnawing shame, the paralyzing terror of his own potential. Just… walk. The words formed in his mind, simple, final, heavy with a terrible kind of peace. Walk away from the war you were never equipped to fight. Walk away from the people you only ever hurt, the lives you endanger just by existing near them. Walk away from the crushing weight of a destiny you were broken for from the start. Let the frost take you. It’s already in your bones. It’s the only thing you deserve. It’s where you belong.
Who the fuck am I? The final echo was a breath, thin and cold, almost peaceful as it dissolved into the crypt’s relentless hum. Someone who finally understands. Someone who causes only harm. Someone who walks away to save them.
Kuro followed the direction of Shiro’s gaze, his own eye tracking slowly across the weeping mirrors, the pools of cold mercury light, the jagged teeth of the rubble pile. He saw the same archway. The same promise of obliterating silence. The same end. The corruption in his arm flared, sending fresh, jagged needles of alien cold deep into his chest cavity, a final, vicious protest from the parasite within. But this time, the pain felt… distant. Abstract. Insignificant against the vast, yawning relief offered by the void beyond the stones. The static drone faded, muffled, replaced by the seductive, whispering call of the infinite frozen wastes, promising numbness, promising an end to the struggle, the shame, the constant battle against the rot inside and the judgment outside. Leave. The word wasn’t a thought; it was a balm poured directly onto his scorched soul. Leave the burden of a crown of Ash, a legacy heavier than any mountain. Leave the legacy of a Butcher King father and an extinguished mother whose light I can never reignite. Leave the Twin Star bond that only chains Shiro to your inevitable decay, your certain corruption. Leave before the Blight inside you breaks its chains and consumes them all, Shiro first, burning him from the inside out with your poison, then Haruto, Juro, Mira… Ryota. He pictured it with terrifying, serene clarity: trudging into the endless white, the cold fire within finally consuming him from the inside out, cell by frozen cell, until there was nothing left but a silent statue of frost, anonymous and harmless, reclaimed by the indifferent ice. No more failures etched on Juro’s skin like a brand. No more terror shadowing Mira’s spirit when he moved. No more analytical reassessments from Haruto, calculating his viability as damaged goods, a liability to be managed or discarded. They’d be safer. Lighter. Unburdened. Ryota could rally true warriors, unsullied, unbroken, warriors forged of something other than rot and despair and broken promises. Mira could breathe without flinching at the darkness he carried, the darkness he was.
He looked down at his corrupted arm, the grey translucence pulsing with a slow, sickly rhythm, like the dying heartbeat of some frozen leviathan. This tumour… he thought, the revulsion replaced by a strange, cold acceptance, a surrender to the inevitable. …it ends with me. Out there. In the clean silence. Where it can’t hurt anyone else. He pushed himself up, leaning heavily against the weeping mirror beside him. The cold mercury light smeared across his tunic, wet and strangely inert, like the tears of a dead god. He took a single, shuffling step. His boots crunched loudly on frost and grit in the tomblike silence. Not towards Shiro. Not towards the centre of the crypt, the crucible they’d failed so utterly. Towards the archway. Towards the vast, frozen silence that promised the only victory left within his grasp: the end of his contamination. The removal of the flaw.
Who the fuck am I? The question died on his lips, unanswered, unnecessary now. The path was clear. The answer was written in the weeping mercury and the endless white beyond the stones. Someone who finally does the only useful thing left. Someone who removes the infection. Someone who walks into the frost and ends.
The crypt’s hum deepened, harmonizing jarringly with a new sound threading through the oppressive silence: the low, mournful HOWL winding through the partially collapsed archway at the far end. It wasn’t just the wind of the Razorwind Peaks; it was twisted, distorted, carrying the weight of the void beyond the mountains. Every gust carried a thin, off key WHISTLE, the skeletal, mocking remains of Aki’s lullaby, the melody she’d hummed, soft and defiant, while tracing Cassiopeia’s tilted throne on the sun bleached plank. Now it snaked through cracks in the stone like a spectral taunt, a funerary dirge played on broken bone flutes by the indifferent frost. It resonated with the grinding shriek in Shiro’s wrists and the static drone chewing Kuro’s thoughts, amplifying their despair into a tangible, vibrating pressure that pressed against their skin, their eardrums, their very sanity.
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Kuro was on his hands and knees, the cold stone biting deep into his palms. The mercury light pooled around him, reflecting his distorted agony, his resolve to end it. The archway called, its dark maw a siren song of oblivion, the howling wind and whistling lullaby its chilling anthem. Just crawl. Crawl into the white. Let the cold fire consume you. End the contamination. End the failure. Spare them. He took a ragged, shuddering breath, steeling himself against the pain, against the pull of the bond, against the faint, treacherous flicker of something else he couldn't name. "Fuck this," he rasped, the sound thin and brittle against the wind's howl. "Fuck all of this." His good hand pushed against the grit strewn floor, muscles trembling. "I was never fucking built for crowns... or stars... or... or this." He meant the weight, the expectation, the constant, losing battle against the rot inside and the monsters outside. "Better for everyone..." His voice cracked. "...less of a fucking burden..." He moved an inch forward, towards the archway, towards the whistling void promising release. One shuffling knee, then the other. The static roared its approval. Go. End it.
His knuckles dipped into a shallow puddle of mercury light as he moved. The viscous fluid rippled, distorting his reflection. He caught it. Not the panicked prince, the corrupted liability crawling towards escape. For a fleeting, heart stopping second, he saw her. His mother, Queen Kaya Oji. Her storm grey eyes, fierce and kind, impossibly clear, looking back at him from his own face in the reflection. The eyes he’d inherited. The eyes that held the starlight legacy he’d failed. Her gaze held no judgment, only a deep, unwavering love. Then, the reflection CONTORTED violently. Those same eyes widened in silent, eternal horror. The skin around them peeled back, revealing raw, glistening muscle and scorched bone beneath. Not plague decay. Ryo's handiwork. Carved away. Extinguished. Forgotten. A monument to failure.
Kuro RECOILED as if physically branded, scrambling back, mercury light splashing onto his tunic, cold and slick like spilled blood. A choked sound escaped him, half sob, half retch, torn from a place deeper than pain. The static in his head spiked into a physical jolt of agony, a white hot nail driven into his temple. He slammed his fist onto the stone again, not in rage, but in shamed, desperate denial. "NO!" The word tore from him, raw and ragged, echoing briefly before being swallowed by the wind's howl. He stared at the puddle, the horrific afterimage of his mother's mutilated gaze seared onto his vision, overlaying the dark archway. "I promised..." His voice dropped to a venomous whisper, thick with tears he ruthlessly suppressed, the taste of copper sharp in his mouth. "I promised her ashes..." The image of her pyre, the stolen urn, the oath sworn in smoke and grief. "I'd pull his fucking crown through his teeth..." He looked towards the archway, the whistling lullaby now sounding like a cruel mockery of his cowardice. "If I walk now... if I just leave..." The crawl towards escape froze. The burden wasn't lifted; it was reforged in the image of his mother's mutilated eyes, heavier, hotter, an anvil of shame strapped to his soul. "...she stays... a forgotten ember. Forever." Oblivion wasn't escape; it was the ultimate betrayal.
Shiro flinched as Kuro’s cry, that raw, wounded "NO!" echoed in the confined space, momentarily piercing the wind's howl and the lullaby's ghostly whistle. He’d been hunched, staring at his scarred palm, the Polaris scar pulsing erratically against the cold mercury glow bleeding from the nearest mirror, the grinding a constant, nauseating counterpoint to the external cacophony. Just walk. Spare them. Spare her. Let the frost have you. It’s clean. It’s simple. He braced his good hand on the freezing floor, knuckles white, preparing to push himself towards the archway, towards the silence where his unstable power couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.
Then he heard it. Clearer than Kuro’s cry, sharper than the wind’s moan. Amidst the dissonance, a fragment of the whistled tune resolved. Not the whole melody, but a specific, slightly off key trill, the exact inflection Aki used when tracing Cassiopeia’s central curve. It pierced the static of his despair, the grinding in his wrists, the seductive whisper of surrender.
The GRINDING in his wrists STUTTERED. HALTED. For the span of a single, stolen breath, the world fell silent except for that haunting, familiar note.
A flash frame memory detonated behind his eyes, vivid as the day it happened: Aki’s fingertip. Frail, trembling with the early, insidious tremors of the plague that was stealing her strength, her future. Yet, pressed firmly against the rough grain of the sun warmed plank they’d scavenged. Guiding his clumsy finger along the groove she’d started for Cassiopeia’s throne. Tilted west. Her touch, though weak, was STEADY on the star line. Unyielding. Defiant. Not carving for some distant, hopeful future, but carving against the dying of her light, etching defiance into wood as her body failed. "Defiant. Like us," her voice, thin but unwavering, echoed in the memory. Thɪs chapter is updated by ⓝovelFire.net
The breath ended. The GRINDING SHRIEK slammed back, louder, angrier, a furious protest against the intrusion of hope, of memory, of purpose. Shiro gasped, doubling over, clutching his forearms as fresh bolts of agony lanced up to his shoulders. He looked down at his scarred palm, the scar pulsing chaotically, then towards the dark archway, the whistled lullaby twisting back into a taunt. The image of Akuma lowering the flaying knife onto her neck, onto her defiance, superimposed itself over the dark opening, the knife poised over her heart. His voice scraped out, a raw, broken rasp, echoing Kuro’s despair but laced with a different, more familiar kind of fury, the fury of the Warrens, the fury of the powerless witnessing desecration: "I swore... I swore to her stars..." He slammed his fist onto the floor beside where Kuro had struck, the impact jarring his ruined wrists, sending white hot shards of pain through his arms, but the physical agony was secondary. "...I’d bring them home..." He choked, the words fighting past a throat tight with shame and a rage that refused to be extinguished, a rage that suddenly felt like the only thing holding him together. "...Can’t... can’t do that..." He forced the words out, each one a struggle. "...if I’m too fucking weak. Broken. And just... fucking pathetic." Walking away wasn't protection; it was the ultimate surrender. The final, complicit flaying of everything Aki had tried to carve. Surrender wasn't in his Warrens bred bones. Not truly.