The low obsidian table was a slab of frozen night, its surface so highly polished it reflected the mutilated constellations above in distorted, nightmare shapes. Nyxara took the seat offered, her movements fluid and deliberate, a queen claiming her place at a board she knew was rigged. Korinakos remained standing a few paces behind her, a tense, silent shadow. Ryo settled into the chair opposite her with an oil smooth grace, placing his petrified star wood sceptre on the table between them like a boundary marker. It was not a tool of office; it was a threat.

For a long moment, the only sound was the soft, rhythmic plink of condensation dripping from the black ice ceiling somewhere in the shadows, a timer counting down in the dark.

"Your proposals are... broad, Queen Nyxara," Ryo began, his voice that same venomous rasp, now modulated into a tone of condescending reason. He steepled his fingers, his gaze fixed on her. "A joint council. Shared access. These are concepts for poets and starry eyed dreamers. Governance requires specifics. It requires... concessions."

Nyxara met his gaze, her own multi hued eyes reflecting the guttering torchlight. The Vega persuasion was still in her voice but now layered with the unyielding hardness of Polaris certainty. She was no longer just an emissary of peace; she was a negotiator stating terms.

"Then let us be specific," she replied, her tone cool and precise. "I propose an immediate and total cessation of all hostilities. The purges in the Warrens and the lower sectors end today. Your black cloaks withdraw to the city's garrison. The 'Hunts' for my people within Astralon's walls cease." She let the first demand hang in the air, a direct challenge to his reign of terror. "Secondly, a formal truce along the Styx River. The current front line becomes a demilitarized zone, monitored by observers from both our nations. No fortifications. No troop movements. A true ceasefire."

Ryo's expression did not change, but the air around him seemed to grow colder, the reek of festering stardust intensifying. He was a statue of calm, but Nyxara could feel the fury radiating from him, a glacial hatred so intense it was a physical pressure. He is not used to being dictated to, she thought, a sliver of cold satisfaction piercing her dread. He expects supplication, not negotiation.

"Third," she continued, pressing her advantage, her voice unwavering, "shared, controlled access to the Skywells. Not a surrender of Astralon's resources, but a regulated sharing. A quota system, managed by the joint council. Your people do not freeze. My people do not starve. The energy is used to sustain both our nations, not to forge weapons aimed at each other's hearts."

She finished, leaving the final, most important term unspoken for now. The air in the throne room felt charged, thick enough to drink. Korinakos had stopped breathing behind her.

Ryo leaned forward slowly, the movement like a glacier calving. The void in his eyes churned. "You ask me," he whispered, the sound slithering across the table, "to open my borders to the very 'demons' my Temple has sworn to eradicate. You ask me to give my enemy a seat at the table of my power. To relinquish control over the very lifeblood of my kingdom." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Each word was a shard of ice, dripping with contempt. "You come into my house, a queen of a broken, starving people, and you dictate terms to me? You underestimate my resolve to protect Astralon from all threats, foreign and domestic. Even those that come cloaked in pretty words and false peace."

There it is, Nyxara thought. The Butcher King, barely concealed beneath the diplomat's mask. She did not retreat. She leaned forward as well, mirroring his posture, closing the distance. The scent of him was overwhelming.

"I ask you to reconsider what truly protects Astralon, King Ryo," she said, her voice losing its melodic quality, becoming sharp and clear as a shard of black ice. "You speak of resolve. I see a man so obsessed with dominating the sky that he is blind to the ground crumbling beneath his feet. Continued war only weakens us both, draining our resources, costing the lives of your own subjects, leaving us hollowed out and vulnerable to greater threats." She paused, letting the implication of Kaustirix hang unspoken between them. "You claim to seek strength, yet strength built solely on the suffering of others is a fragile, brittle thing. It shatters at the first true test. I am not offering weakness. I am offering a different kind of strength. The strength of a system that endures."

She hands herself to me on a silver platter, Ryo's mind hissed, a silent, venomous counterpoint to her words. She stands in the heart of my power, surrounded by the evidence of my absolute control, and she preaches to me about endurance? She believes her words are weapons? that they can chip away at a mountain of ice? How profound her foolishness is. She is a living relic of her father's naivety and my father's fatal softness. They all believed in words. They all learned, too late, actions speak louder than words.

Nyxara saw the flicker in his eyes, the utter, unshakeable disdain. She sensed the vast, unbridgeable chasm between his reality and hers. For a terrifying moment, she felt the sheer futility of her mission. This man was not capable of being reasoned with. He was a singularity of hate. But she had to try. For Eltanar. For Shojiki. For the children crying in the lower sectors.

And so, the battle began.

It was not fought with blades or stellar fire, but with clauses, implications, and fine print. It was a brutal, psychological siege that stretched for hours, measured not by any clock but by the gradual, draining toll it took on them both.

The torches in their skeletal sconces guttered and were replaced by silent, unseen attendants, the new flames casting longer, more desperate shadows that danced across the mutilated heavens above. The constant plinks of freezing water became the metronome to their duel.

Nyxara's throat grew raw. Each breath was a conscious effort, drawing in the toxic air that seemed to thicken with every passing hour. The regal posture she maintained was a suit of armour growing heavier by the minute; a dull ache settled deep between her shoulder blades, and the muscles in her neck corded with tension. Her kaleidoscopic eyes, once bright with resolve, began to feel dry and gritty, as if scoured by the endless, cold negativity radiating from the man across from her. She found herself mentally reaching for the comforting, singular light of Polaris within her, using it as a lodestone to keep her from being pulled into the despair of this place. Every time Ryo twisted a word, every time he proposed a "compromise" that was a blatant trap, it was a psychic blow she had to absorb and deflect. She was not just negotiating; she was constantly reinforcing her own mental shields against a relentless, corrosive presence.

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Ryo, for his part, was no less engaged. His mask of calm calculation was a masterpiece of control, but it required immense energy to maintain. A faint sheen of perspiration, invisible in the dim light, had broken out on his brow. The fingers he kept steepled occasionally betrayed a minute tremor, which he would instantly still by pressing them more firmly together. The endless, circular arguing was a kind of torture for a mind that preferred decisive, brutal action. This queen was like grinding water, wearing away at his patience with her infuriating, principled persistence. He was used to commands being obeyed, to threats being met with immediate submission. Her refusal to break, to even acknowledge the fundamental rightness of his power, was a constant, low grade irritant that gnawed at the edges of his focus. He found his jaw clenching so tightly a dull headache began to pulse at his temples. The temptation to simply slam his fist on the table, to summon Vorlag and end this farce, was a rising tide he had to constantly beat back. Patience, he reminded himself, the word a cold mantra. Let her believe she is winning. Let her exhaust herself against the immovable object of your will.

The negotiation became a fractal pattern of attack and parry. Each of her points was met with a counter that was not a refusal, but a perversion. He attempted to twist the joint council into a subordinate body of the Temple, its "observers" being Inquisitors with full authority to root out "stellar corruption." He proposed the "demilitarized zone" be patrolled by his black cloaks alone, to "ensure its neutrality." The Skywell quota, he suggested, should be delivered as raw, unstable energy to the border, where Nyxara's "technicians" could "attempt to harness it if they possessed the skill," a clear setup for an accidental catastrophe he could blame on her incompetence.

Each time, Nyxara retaliated. Her voice grew hoarse, but it never wavered. She reinforced boundaries, clarified language, and defended the integrity of her people with a ferocity that seemed to surprise even him. She was drawing on a deep well of resolve, fuelled by the faces of the starving hungry, the fading light of Betelgeuse warriors, the memory of her father's dream. This was no longer just politics; it was a fight for the soul of her nation, and she would bleed herself dry on this obsidian table before she surrendered it.

Hours bled together. The ache in Nyxara's back was a constant fire. A faint tremor had developed in her left hand, which she hid by folding her hands in her lap. Ryo's replies became fractionally slower, his silences more pronounced as he calculated and recalculated. The civilized veneer was thinning, the pauses between words stretching just a second too long, filled with a humming, hateful tension. They were two master duellists, circling each other in a space of endless night, their energy waning but their wills unbent, each waiting for the other to make a fatal misstep.

Finally, after a particularly brutal circular argument over the definition of "observer," Ryo fell silent. He leaned back in his chair, the movement slightly less fluid than before, a hint of fatigue in the slight slump of his shoulders. He steepled his fingers again, the gesture now looking less like a thoughtful pose and more like a man trying to keep his hands from curling into fists. His void like eyes considered her, and for the first time, she saw something new in them: not agreement, but a cold, calculating assessment of utility. He was not convinced. He was bored. He had measured her resistance and found it… sufficient to warrant a change in tactic. For now.

"You are... persistent," he conceded, the word sounding like an insult dragged from a place of deep irritation. "Your father's daughter, indeed." He paused, drawing out the moment, letting the exhaustion of the hours hang heavy between them. "Very well."

The two words dropped into the silence like stones.

"We will establish a peace along the River Styx," he said, his tone flat, devoid of any triumph or concession. It was a statement of fact, the words of a man ending a tedious business meeting. "The purges will be... suspended. For a probationary period. A joint announcement will be made to the courts of both our nations, declaring a cessation of hostilities and the framework for these... talks."

It was not the whole victory she sought. It was a fragile, temporary, and likely treacherous foothold. But it was more than anyone else had ever gotten from the Butcher King. A flicker of fragile, desperate hope ignited in her chest, so bright and painful it felt like a shard of glass. Her body screamed with relief, but she allowed none of it to show. It is a beginning. A crack in the door.

"These are acceptable terms," Nyxara said, her voice steady, a monumental effort that cost her the last of her strength. She rose, her muscles protesting, a wave of dizziness washing over her that she forced down through sheer will. The audience was over. Korinakos let out a shaky, exhausted breath behind her.

As she turned to leave, Ryo's voice stopped her, slithering across the chamber, the rasp now layered with a newfound weariness that made it somehow more sinister.

"You truly believe this will work?" he asked, the mocking, genuine curiosity now tinged with a flat, drained quality. "You believe a piece of parchment and a few pretty words will end the bloodshed? After all that has been spilled? After all this... effort?"

Nyxara turned back, her silhouette framed by the towering obsidian doors. Her kaleidoscopic eyes met his void like stare one last time. She saw not a king, but a tired, hateful man in a throne room of his own making. The hours of battle had stripped away the myth, leaving only the barren, exhausting reality.

"It is a beginning," she repeated, her expression unreadable, a queen's mask perfected at great cost. "What comes next, whether it is peace or a sharper sword…depends entirely on your choices now, King Ryo. The world is watching."

She did not wait for a reply. She turned and walked towards the doors, her steps slower than when she had entered, each one an effort of will. Korinakos fell in step behind her, his own movements stiff with spent adrenaline. The skeletal sconces seemed to lean in as she passed, their frozen claws straining towards her retreating form.

Ryo did not move. He watched her go, a statue on his dais, the energy required to maintain his facade finally spent. The heavy doors began to grind open, revealing the slightly less oppressive gloom of the antechamber beyond. As the gap widened, the sound of her retreating footsteps, slow and deliberate, echoed faintly in the chamber.

The moment the doors sealed shut with another echoing, final thoom, the polite, interested mask on Ryo's face dissolved. It was wiped away, replaced by an expression of pure, undiluted malice. A cruel, thin smile stretched his lips, a rictus of contempt and profound fatigue. He let his head fall back against the throne, closing his eyes for a second as a wave of utter exhaustion passed over him. The headache at his temples pulsed.

"Pathetic," he muttered into the suffocating silence, the word dripping with a disdain so profound it seemed to stain the very air. It was the exhausted sigh of a master after dealing with a tiresome novice. "So desperate for a kinder world that you walk willingly into the wolf's den and negotiate for your own place on the menu. All that fire... for this. For words I will erase before the ink is dry."

He remained seated on the Obsidian Throne, the smile not fading but deepening, becoming a thing of terrifying promise. The parley was over. The Queen of Nyxarion had played her gambit, and she had left him feeling not threatened, but profoundly, insultingly weary.

And the Butcher King, in his exhaustion, began to plan a downfall that would be swift, absolute, and require no more tedious conversation.

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