The kaleidoscopic eye of the crow, a vessel of stolen starlight and invasive will, lingered for a microsecond in the fissure's gloom, its gaze a scalpel dissecting their resolve. It saw the blood, the fear, the desperate architecture of their plan. It saw them. Then, with a whisper of iridescent wings that seemed to sigh insects, it was gone, leaving a silence thicker and colder than the mountain's heart.

The connection didn't just break; it was severed, the psychic feedback a needle of ice retracting from their minds. In its wake, the fissure felt violated, their grim solidarity profaned by an unseen, judging presence. The plan, so carefully built on a foundation of sacrifice, now felt like a house of cards in a glacial wind. Had their one chance been seen, quantified, and already countered before the first move was even made?

Before the question could form, the world dissolved.

For Shiro, Kuro, Haruto, and the others, the transition was a violent lurch, a sensory overload of jostled shadows and dizzying velocity. The perspective was not their own. It was a borrowed, feathered nightmare, a blur of obsidian walls, the Plaza's dying amber light, then the shocking, frigid openness of the glacial air outside the mountain's wound. The world tilted, banking sharply towards the distant, glittering fangs of the Astralon Palace spires, a beacon of tyranny under a hard, star strewn sky.

Then, the link shattered completely.

The sensation of flight vanished, replaced by the crushing, intimate weight of a different reality.

The air in Nyxara's sanctum screamed.

It was a silent, psychic shriek that vibrated in the marrow of the obsidian walls, a resonance felt rather than heard. The haunting chime crackle of crystallized starlight didn't just falter; it shattered, a shower of microscopic, dying light raining down like frozen tears. Nyxara, Queen of the fractured Nyxarion legacy, gasped, a sharp, involuntary intake of breath that was part her own, part the thousand ancestral echoes within her. Her knees buckled. One hand flew to her temple, fingers digging into skin that momentarily flared with the hot, volcanic craquelure of Betelgeuse before cooling to the pale, shocked luminescence of Polaris.

One moment, her kaleidoscopic eyes, swirling Polaris blue, Algol red, Vega silver, had been fixed on the guttering, sickly heart of Algol in her Celestial Tapestry, seeking a sliver of hope in its fading pulse. The next, she was ripped from her body.

She saw through a borrowed, feathered lens, a perspective that was both hers and not hers, a violation and a revelation. A cramped, damp fissure, smelling of copper blood, void tainted ichor, and the stark, animal scent of human desperation. The images slammed into her, each one a hammer blow to her soul:

Shiro and Kuro, a single, shuddering organism of shared agony, their bond not just a tether but a resonant circuit, thrumming with a power that was both beautiful and terrifying, Polaris defiance intertwined with Algol's hungry hate, refined into something new, something adaptive.

Ryota Veyne, the fallen Polaris giant, a dark, spreading stain on the hungry stone, his life bleeding out, yet his spirit a bedrock of stubborn, weary fury, a Vega dirge sung in a major key of sheer, unyielding will.

Haruto , a statue of obsidian and ice, his mind a visible, calculating engine building a scaffold of survival over an abyss of personal horror, the cold, precise geometry of a Betelgeuse ember contained within a Polaris shell.

Juro, the anchor, his acceptance of a death warden's role a testament to a loyalty that ran deeper than strategy, a Sirius bond to a cause, not just a person.

Mira, shattered, her gift overloaded by a presence so vast it had broken her lens, leaving her a vessel of pure, wordless terror.

And Corvin. Her watcher. Her blade. The calm, galactic pools of his eyes were storm wracked, swirling with a fear she had never, ever seen him show. It was that, more than anything, that iced the blood in her veins.

She felt the echo of their plan, a desperate, brutal architecture of sacrifice and timing, a house of cards built on a knife's edge. She felt their new, chilling terror of a presence that had named itself Kaustirix, a name that sent a seismic ripple of profound, ancestral dread through the very core of her being. And for a single, heart stopping second, she pushed her own consciousness down the link. A queen's resolve, a desperate plea for understanding, a flicker of regal concern aimed at her chosen, battered hope. Hold on. Believe.

Then, it happened.

The connection didn't break; it was defiled. An ancient, infinite cold, vaster than the void between galaxies, flooded the link. It was Kaustirix, his presence not a wave but a single, perfect, zero point needle, sliding effortlessly into the channel she'd opened. His gaze, cold, analytical, utterly, cosmically bored, swept over the rebels' plan. It wasn't assessed; it was consumed, digested in a nanosecond. The sensation was not of being seen, but of being 'catalogued'. Filed away. A silent, mocking sneer echoed in the shared psychic space, a gesture of such profound, indifferent contempt that it was more terrifying than any roar of fury. The message was clear: Your defiance is a mildly interesting strain of bacteria. Your plans are the scuttling of insects. I will watch you die, and I will take notes.

The crow's perspective wrenched away, shooting toward the Palace, a blur of stolen night, but the feeling of violation remained, a psychic stain that felt like it would never wash clean.

Nyxara stumbled back, catching herself on the edge of the pulsating Celestial Tapestry. The solid obsidian felt insubstantial. The sanctum's light seemed to curdle, the Algol prisms overhead groaning as if in mortal pain. The scent of charred sugar, Algol's decay, clawed at the back of her throat, thick and suffocating. Kaustirix was not just an opponent; he was an extinction level event given consciousness, a scavenger of empires, and he had just leaned down from the cosmos, sniffed the air, and marked her people, her world, and her last, desperate hope as carrion.

The weight of it threatened to atomize her. The shifting clamour of the clans within her rose in a screaming, discordant crescendo, the desperate, gnawing hunger of Algol, the sputtering, dying embers of Betelgeuse, the fearful, divisive whispers of Vega, the scattered, hunted defiance of Polaris. She was their living archive, their crucible, and she was failing. The "Wandering Star" weakness of Polaris was a phantom chill in her bones; the metallic thirst of Algol was a film on her tongue.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

From the swirling shadows near the cavern's entrance, a figure coalesced not with Corvin's silent, predatory grace, but with a frantic, shuddering pop of displaced air, as if the darkness itself had coughed him forth.

It was Korinakos.

Second of the Corvus Clan. Where Corvin was a shadow given purpose, Korinakos was a nerve ending exposed to the void. His robes, the same starless midnight, were slightly askew. The iridescent feathers woven into his black hair were ruffled. But it was his eyes, smaller, sharper than Corvin's vast galaxies, but that distinct Corvus shape was present, like chips of fractured obsidian reflecting a supernova, that held pure, undiluted panic.

"The link, it screamed…I felt it…" he blurted, his voice a raw, distorted rasp, lacking the layered echo of his superior. He clutched at his own chest, where the hidden Corvid Octagram would be burning against his skin. "The channel you forged…it was breached! The signal wasn't just intercepted; it was inverted! He used our own network, my Queen! Kaustirix… he…" Korinakos's words failed him, his face ashen.

Nyxara straightened, forcing the clamour inside her into a temporary, fragile silence. The Queen's mask slid back into place, though it felt thinner than ever. "Report, Korinakos. Not your fear. The facts." Her voice was a whip crack, layered with the chilling precision of Polaris, a tone that brooked no hysteria.

Korinakos flinched as if struck, then drew a shuddering breath, his training overriding his terror. "The Plaza of Screams. The observation is confirmed. Akuma has fallen."

The word fallen did not land; it detonated. The prism crystals overhead shivered violently, and for a moment, the entire tapestry of stars flickered.

"Elaborate. Now."

Korinakos did, his report a rapid, staccato burst of information, each fact a fresh tremor in the sanctum's reality. He spoke of the Twin Stars' bond evolving from a tether into a harmonic weapon, a frequency of pure defiance that Akuma's void born nature could not compute. He detailed Shiro's Polaris scar flaring not with pain, but with a cleansing, igniting fire, searing through the killing frost that Akuma conjured. He described Ryota's last stand, a tectonic fury that shook the Plaza's very foundations; Juro's avalanche like impact; Haruto's surgical, ruthless precision in cutting down his own traitorous leader and Akuma.

And finally, the impossible: Akuma's vaunted void skin, breached. Not by overwhelming force, but by a perfectly timed, resonant strike, Haruto's precision and Kuro's disruptive entropy meeting at a single, flawless point of vulnerability. The Scourge, bleeding his own black, shimmering ichor, had not merely retreated; he had fled, translocating to the Crimson Crucible, broken not just in body, but in spirit, his invincibility shattered by the very "gnats" he'd despised.

Nyxara absorbed it, the visions overlaying her own inherited sight, the Corvus Lens. She saw it all, not as data points, but as a symphony of terrifying, beautiful power. Shiro's unbroken Polaris light. Kuro's Algol hate refined, focused, turned into a shield. Ryota's Vega song of loss fuelling a berserk strength. Haruto's Betelgeuse like core of contained, explosive will. They weren't just surviving; they were crystallizing. Becoming the bridge the shattered shards of the Sovereign Prophecy had foretold. A bridge between starborn and clay. Between her people's desperation and this world's right to exist.

"The clans…" Korinakos continued, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper, dragging her back. "The clans suffer as we speak, My Queen. The news of Akuma's fall… it is a quake. The Algol Hungry, they sense the weakness, the potential for a greater feast, their desperation making them reckless. Their 'Feasts of Light' leave deeper husks, drawing more of Ryo's butchers down upon us! The Dying… whole Betelgeuse phalanxes flicker out, their Ember Bursts barely warming their hands. The Vega Poets are at each other's throats, some use their Harp's Lure to whisper rebellion, others sing hymns to the Temple for scraps of safety! The Sirius bonds… Kaustirix's faction uses the strain to sunder pairs, to foster paranoia, while Lucifera's are neutral undecided! And the Unbroken Polaris… they are hunted like vermin, their light snuffed in the dark. Ryo's response to this humiliation will be absolute. Astralon and Nyxarion will not be purged; it will be erased. This war… it serves only the encroaching silence. It bleeds both our worlds dry, and the scavenger you felt… he licks his lips for the spoils."

He was right. The calculation was inescapable, etched in ice and blood. War was a downward spiral into mutual extinction, with Kaustirix waiting at the bottom to pick the bones clean.

A resolve, cold and clear as Polaris ice, settled within her, a singular note that finally silenced the internal, screaming discord. Her kaleidoscopic eyes stilled, holding the deep, unwavering, terrifying blue of the Unbroken North Star. The path was clear. It was madness. It was the only choice. It was a queen's duty.

"Enough," she declared, her voice becoming singular, resonant, final. It did not echo; it cut. "This cycle of blood and frost ends now. I will parley with King Ryo Oji."

Korinakos stared, his fractured obsidian eyes wide with utter disbelief. "My Queen! You cannot! He is a cancer! He will see this not as strength, but as the most profound weakness! He will not parley; he will break you on a public stage! He will flay your hope before the entire court and feed it to his Void Guards!"

"He will see it as a strategist," she countered, a hint of Vega's compelling resonance firming her words, weaving a thread of undeniable logic. "He has felt their strength now. Not in reports, but in the shattered remains of his finest weapon. I will not offer him surrender. I will offer him a choice: endless, draining war that weakens us both for the scavenger circling us both, or a cessation. A sharing of the sky's bounty he so desperately covets. A joint endeavour to understand Algol's fading. To seek not domination, but balance. No more bloodshed to feed the void that will eventually consume him, too."

"He will demand a price! He will demand the rebels heads in exchange! Shiro. Kuro. Ryota. Haruto. All of them! Their blood on a silver platter as the first term of any 'truce'!"

"He will make demands," Nyxara acknowledged, her gaze hardening, the orange heat of Betelgeuse pulsing in the veins beneath her skin. "I will make counter proposals. The existence of the Twin Stars changes everything. They are not just rebels; they are a phenomenon. A key. Perhaps the key to Algol itself. To the very power he seeks to dominate. He is a man who understands leverage, power, utility above all else. I will make him see it. I will make him see that their value alive far, far outweighs their satisfaction dead."

She turned from the dying tapestry, her form radiating a regal purpose that pushed back against the chamber's cloying despair. "Summon the full Council of the Starborn. Here. Now. In this chamber. They will hear my decision from my own lips before I depart."

Korinakos's panic shifted into a deeper, more grave dread. He bowed deeply, his form trembling slightly as he began to dissolve into a swirl of shadow and iridescent feathers. "It will be done. But… My Queen… they are already gathered at the Conclave Ground. They felt the breach. They felt Kaustirix's touch. The factions are… volatile. Korinakos stands ready to enforce your will, but he reports that the Algol contingent, led by Umbra'zel, is already calling your proposed parley 'treasonous appeasement.' They are armed for a conclave of war, not peace."

As the last feather of his form vanished into the oppressive gloom, Nyxara was left utterly alone in the geode of her dying cosmos. The words of the Sovereign Prophecy glowed faintly on a nearby Algol prism, the ancient Nyxarion script seeming to pulse with a malevolent, mocking light.

"When Twin Stars burn amidst the frozen strife..."

She had made her choice. She would bet the survival of Nyxarion on a bridge of Twin Stars, on a tyrant's cold calculus, and on her own ability to walk a razor's edge between annihilation and salvation.

The heavy, rune carved doors to her sanctum began to grind open, not with the slow dignity of state, but with a jarring, violent suddenness. The haunting chime crackle of the sanctum was instantly drowned out by the roar of a hundred conflicting voices, a tidal wave of fear, anger, and militant fervour that crashed into the chamber. The air grew thick with the scent of ozone, charred sugar, molten rock, and the electric tang of barely restrained violence.

They were not waiting. They had come for her.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.