The silence in the wake of their confessions was not empty; it was full. It was the dense, humming quiet of a universe holding its breath, the space between heartbeats where entire galaxies could be born. The five of them remained locked in the embrace, a single, breathing entity under the faded tapestry of a dying star. The light from their combined auras, Nyxara's multi hued aurora, Statera's Polaris beacon, Lucifera's sharp Sirius glimmer, and Lyra's soft lunar glow, interwove around the twins, who blushed with the heat of a thousand suns.

After a long, suspended moment, a muffled voice emerged from the centre of the huddle.

"Can't... breathe..." Shiro gasped, though he made no move to pull away.

"Crushing... ribs..." Kuro wheezed in agreement, his own arms tightening around Lucifera.

The response from the circle of women was immediate and unified. Instead of releasing them, the embrace tightened further, a gentle, inescapable pressure.

"Hush, my Rain Baby," Statera murmured into his hair. "This is called love. It is supposed to feel like a pleasant, all consuming asphyxiation."

"A vital sign of familial bonding," Lucifera added, her voice warm and utterly devoid of its old clinical chill, now rich with a fond amusement. "Note the blushing and the sputtering. It signifies a healthy, living heart."

"Just a little longer," Nyxara whispered. "I am memorizing this constellation. It is now my favourite."

Lyra simply hummed a soft, contented note that vibrated through them all.

Finally, with a collective, shuddering sigh of mock suffering and real contentment, the embrace loosened. They parted, not fully, but enough to see each other's faces, flushed, tear streaked, and glowing with a shared, unspoken understanding. They settled back onto the divan, a tangled, comfortable heap of limbs and furs.

It was Kuro who spoke first, his strategist's mind, now wrapped in a newfound warmth, returning to the practicalities. "You said you focus on four clans here. But the Falak blood can channel more. What is the limit? Could you use all ten clans of this city at once?"

Nyxara leaned back, her expression turning contemplative. "Theoretically, yes. To draw on all ten... it is possible. But it is like trying to contain a nascent nebula within a thimble. The power is immense, but unstable. The voices become a cacophony that scrapes at the sanity. The will fractures. My father once spoke of a Falak ancestor who attempted it during a cataclysm. She saved the city, but her mind was never whole again. She spent her remaining years whispering to constellations only she could see, her consciousness adrift in a sea of alien song. It is a last resort, a weapon that unmakes the hand that wields it." She looked at her son, her gaze serious. "A queen must be a steady flame, not a supernova. So, I rotate. In this city, I am the heart of its ten stars. If I were to travel to the eastern citadel, I would gradually attune to its ten different stellar resonances, becoming the nexus for their power instead. The Falak line is the living tuning fork for the entire kingdom."

"That's... a terrifying amount of power to have flowing through you," Shiro said, his single eye wide. "To be a conduit for so many different... hungers."

"It is not a gift," Nyxara agreed softly. "It is a symbiosis. And sometimes, the symbiotes quarrel."

Kuro absorbed this, the scale of his mother's burden dawning on him with horrifying clarity. "Then why only five clans in the war council? If there are a hundred, why only five voices?"

"The other citadels are silent, my storm," Nyxara explained. "Their loyalty is to the Falak line, but their immediate survival depends on secrecy. To summon them now would be to reveal all of Nyxarion's remaining hearts to Ryo at once. We must fight with the limbs we have, not risk the whole body."

Shiro, flexing his hand and frowning at the persistent tremor, looked at Statera. "When? When can we stop feeling like... like useless infants? When can we hold a sword without our hands feeling like they're full of static and broken glass?"

Statera took his hand in hers, her touch cool and calming. "The deep healing is done, my love. The flesh is knit; the bone is whole. What you feel now is the final stage. The nerves, which have been screaming in protest for so long, are now learning a new, quieter language. They are adapting to peace. The trembling, the weakness... it is the body relearning the simplicity of being. It should pass in two days. The energy your body has been pouring into repair will be yours to command again."

"Two days," Kuro repeated, a spark of grim determination in his good eye. "And then we begin."

Nyxara's eyes gleamed with a mix of pride and maternal anxiety. "And then, my little storms, we can begin your true training. Honing you into the weapons you were always meant to be." She held up a hand as she saw the fierce light ignite in their eyes. "Though, a part of us would rather seal you in a vault of starlight and keep you safe forever. But we can already see the tantrum you would throw. The strategic, brooding tantrum and the dramatic, heartfelt tantrum. It would be magnificent, but counterproductive. So, training it is."

Kuro, ever hungry for tactical information ignored the dig at his dignity, turned his gaze between all four women. "Which is the strongest clan? Besides the Falak."

Nyxara chuckled. "You must be more specific, my son. Strongest in numbers? The Betelgeuse legion is countless, though they cool quickly, their fury as brief as it is terrible. Strongest in a single, concentrated burst of power? Algol's void touched fury is unparalleled, a hunger that can devour light itself. But if you mean the strongest overall... the most formidable, loyal, and unyielding... it is the Altair clan. Their numbers are not vast, but each of them is a force of nature. They are the eagle's talons. Their loyalty to the crown is absolute, a legacy of my father's bond with them."

"The eagle's talons," Kuro murmured, filing the information away. "Good to know."

Shiro, emboldened, asked the next question that hung in the air. "Were we... were Astralon and Nyxarion always at war? Always... eating each other?"

A profound sadness descended upon Nyxara's face, dimming her light for a moment. "No," she said, her voice soft with the memory of a lost golden age. "No, it was not. Once, under my father's reign and that of your grandfather, Ryo's father, the good King Shojiki Oji, we were united. One great, world spanning tree, with roots in the mountain and branches brushing the outer voids. Astralon and Nyxarion were twin citadels under a single, benevolent sky. Shojiki was a kind man, a wise king. I regarded him as an uncle, for he and my father were as close as brothers. There was trade, there was travel, there was... a symphony." The word was a sigh that seemed to hold the ghost of forgotten music. "Ryo destroyed that. When he took the Astralon throne, he severed all ties. He spread his poison, his propaganda about Nyxarion being a decadent, dying realm of monsters. He turned a brotherhood into a blood feud. He cut down the beautiful tree and planted a field of thorns in its place."

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"A good king," Shiro whispered, a strange ache in his chest for a history he never knew. "It's hard to imagine."

"It is a history Ryo worked very hard to erase," Statera said. "He prefers the world to see only the thorns."

After a moment of respectful silence for that lost world, Lucifera looked around at the boys, a playful glint returning to her brilliant eyes. "Well, my wonderful infants? Is there anything else your boundless curiosity wishes to excavate from the ruins of our past? Any other cosmic secrets you'd like to turn into bedtime stories?"

A mischievous smirk, identical and perfectly synchronized, spread across the faces of Shiro and Kuro. They tried to hide it, to school their features into innocence, but a spectacular flash of red betrayed them completely.

"Well..." Shiro began, feigning nonchalance. "Since you asked..." Kuro continued, his tone deceptively light. They looked at each other, nodded, and then turned their grinning faces back to the four women.

"Why aren't you all married?" they asked in unison.

The effect was instantaneous and glorious. The four powerful women, queens and councillors and poets, were utterly, completely flummoxed. They stared, mouths slightly agape, as if the twins had suddenly spoken in a forgotten, alien tongue.

Nyxara recovered first, drawing herself up with regal indignation that was utterly undermined by the blush creeping up her neck. "That is a rather... personal and impertinent question to ask your mothers and aunts! The gall of my own infants!"

Seeing the genuine, flustered shock on their faces, the twins' bravado faltered. "Sorry!" Shiro said quickly, the red on his cheeks deepening. "We didn't mean... it was just a question."

"We were just curious," Kuro added, looking down, his own face a magnificent crimson.

The admission of remorse, however flimsy, softened the adults surprise, replacing it with a wry, shared amusement at their own reaction.

Nyxara sighed, a small smile touching her lips. "The crown is a demanding spouse, my storm. It leaves little room for another. Its burdens are my constant companion. Its whispers are the only lullaby I know."

Lucifera shrugged, her blush more subtle but present, a faint rose hue on her alabaster cheeks. "Husbands? Oh, my dear nephews, the Sirius path was a solitary one for so long. I had protocols, not suitors. Connection was a variable I never had time to calculate into the equation." She pinched their cheeks playfully, her meaning clear. "Until a certain Rain Baby and Storm Baby bloomed into my life and crashed it all down with their chaotic, heartfelt nonsense."

Statera's gaze grew distant. "For me... after what happened to Adrasteia... love became intertwined with a loss so profound it felt like a hole in the universe. I built walls of ice and logic. I thought it was safer to be an observer, a point of balance, rather than a participant. I was... less trusting of the heart's fragile light." She looked at Shiro, her love for him a radiant rebuttal to her own past fears. "A rather foolish strategy, in hindsight."

Lyrathiel, ever the poet, smiled a wistful smile. "For me, that particular song has simply not yet reached my heart. The melody of a partner... it is a composition I have yet to hear clearly amidst the grand symphony of existence. Though," she added, her eyes twinkling as she looked at the flustered faces of her friends, "it seems the orchestra is tuning up around me. The air is thick with new harmonics."

Now it was the women who were blushing, Nyxara a magnificent amethyst, Statera a soft silver pink, Lucifera a stubborn rose, and Lyra a luminous pearl white.

Seeing this, the tables had well and truly turned.

"Oh?" Kuro said, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across his face. "What's this? A simultaneous stellar flare up?" "A red giant phase in four distinct spectral classes?" Shiro chimed in, his single amber eye alight with glee. "Now that's a celestial event worth recording!"

"It would seem," Lucifera said, trying and failing to sound stern, "that our infants have learned to bite back. And they have surprisingly sharp teeth."

"And it seems," Nyxara retorted, her own smile breaking through, "that your aunts and mothers are not as impervious to a well aimed question as we thought."

Emboldened by their small victory, but with the memory of the spoon feeding and the constant, loving humiliation fresh in their minds, Shiro gathered his courage. "Speaking of which... Mothers, Aunts... we... we need to talk about the teasing."

Kuro nodded, his expression turning serious, though the blush remained. "Yes. We are grateful, truly. For everything. But we are fifteen ( a lie). We are the Twin Stars. You cannot... you cannot keep treating us as absolute infants forever. The spoon feeding? The nicknames at every turn? You three especially," he said, looking pointedly at Nyxara, Statera, and Lucifera. "You go so far over the top it's... it's..."

"Embarrassing?" Shiro supplied. "Overwhelming? We don't mind it sometimes, it's... nice, in a way. But it's constant. Aunty Lyra is fine," he added quickly, nodding to the poetess who smiled serenely. "She's more... poetic about it."

Nyxara, Statera, and Lucifera exchanged a look. It was not a look of concession. It was a look of pure, unadulterated, shared mischief. A terrifying gleam entered their eyes.

"Oh, my darling, foolish storms," Nyxara said, her voice dripping with maternal condescension. "You think this has anything to do with your age?"

Statera picked up the thread, her tone gentle but absolute. "Whether you are fifteen, twenty, or thirty cycles old to us it's just a number. A triviality."

Lucifera leaned forward, her grin widening. "If you were a hundred years old, with beards down to your knees and voices like grinding stone, and you stumbled and scraped your knee, do you know what we would do?"

She didn't wait for an answer. "We would swaddle you in furs. We would spoon feed you broth. We would call you our grumpy little old man babies. And we would rock you to sleep."

"Because," Nyxara declared, her multi hued light flaring with triumphant finality, "you are our infants. And that is a truth more immutable than any law. It is a fact written into the foundation of our reality."

"You will always be our infants," Statera confirmed, her Polaris glow warm and unyielding. "Always. And forever."

"Maybe it will stop when you find love of your own," Lyra mused playfully. "Or maybe not. Perhaps we will just tease your partners, too, for loving our messy, wonderful boys."

The twins stared, utterly aghast, their faces undergoing a spectacular, catastrophic red shift that would have been visible from another galaxy. "You... you can't be serious!" Shiro spluttered.

"You are monstrous!" Kuro gasped, a laugh of pure disbelief caught in his throat. "This is a lifelong sentence!"

"Oh, we are perfectly serious," Lucifera said, and with a sudden, coordinated movement, the three women surged forward and dragged the protesting twins into a crushing, rocking embrace. "See?" she crooned as they flailed weakly. "We couldn't care less about your age. The concept is meaningless to us."

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"Truly like infants!" Nyxara laughed, holding Kuro tight. "Can't even form proper words! Just sputters and flails!"

"Utterly endearing, don't you think, everyone?" Statera asked, nuzzling the top of Shiro's head as he mumbled incoherently into her shoulder.

"Yes!" the four women chorused in unison.

The twins' protests were reduced to a slurry of helpless, muffled sounds, their bodies limp with defeat and a strange, warm, inescapable affection.

Lucifera looked down at their crimson faces, her expression one of pure, auntly delight. "And just think, my dear little stars... you have two more days of this before your training begins. Two more days of being our perfect, helpless, blushing infants. We are going to make these next two days an absolute hell of love and humiliation for you. Consider it our gift."

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