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 immovable object, 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.

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 Nyxary 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! 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 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 Void touched! 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'!"

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"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 the word is sent to Astralon."

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.

Framed in the jagged doorway, backlit by the furious, shifting light of the gathered Starborn clans, stood not a respectful envoy, but Umbra'zel of Algol. Tall, gaunt, his skin like cracked porcelain over a furnace of endless hunger, his eyes were pits of shattered glass reflecting a starving red sun. The air around him shimmered with heat haze, the reek of void tainted ozone rolling off him in waves. Behind him, she could see the hulking, lava cool forms of Betelgeuse warriors, their Ember Bursts flickering dangerously on their fists; Vega Poets with hands poised over the silent strings of their mental harps; and the eerie, synchronized stillness of Sirius pairs, their gazes unsettlingly unified.

Umbra'zel did not bow. His voice, when it came, was the sound of grinding glass and a star's death rattle, and it cut through the cacophony like a shard of ice.

"The Council is convened, 'Queen'." The title was a spit of venom. "You wish to treat with the butcher? To offer our throat to the blade in the name of 'balance'?" He took a step forward, the organic floor sizzling under his tread. "We. Do. Not. We have felt the weakness in your line. We have seen your… distraction with these mortal sparks. The Algol Clan does not parley. We feast. And if our Queen lacks the stomach to lead the hunt…"

He let the threat hang in the charged air, a promise of usurpation written in the hungry, shattered stars of his eyes. The factions behind him growled their agreement, a single, monstrous entity of dissent.

Nyxara stood alone before them, a symphony of dying light against a tsunami of raging darkness. The fate of two worlds hung on a queen's gamble, and the first, most dangerous battle was not in the viper's den of Astralon, but here, in the heart of her sanctuary. And judging by the hungry, unforgiving eyes of her own people, she was already standing on the gallows.

The roar that had flooded Nyxara's sanctum didn't subside; it focused, condensing into the gaunt, furnace hot form of Umbra'zel of Algol. His threat hung in the ozone thick air, a promise of usurpation written in the shattered glass stars of his eyes. The factions behind him, Betelgeuse brutes, divided Vega poets, unnervingly still Sirius pairs, were a single, monstrous entity of dissent pressing at the door. Nyxara stood alone before them, a symphony of dying light against a tsunami of rage. The first battle was here, now, and the gallows was built.

"You speak of feasting, Umbra'zel," Nyxara's voice cut through the clamour, not with volume, but with a Polaris certainty that dropped the temperature in the room. The chaotic shifting of her form stilled, her skin settling into the pale, steady luminescence of the North Star, though the veins beneath traced faint, furious constellations. "While our children starve in the lower sectors. While the Hungry drain their own kin for a shred of warmth Ryo's butchers would deny them. Tell me, what exactly is on your menu? The last of our hope? The embers of Betelgeuse?" Her gaze swept over the hulking forms behind him, whose lava cracked skin was dull and cooling. "You would lead a charge with warriors who can muster one 'Ember Burst' before flickering out for days. Is that your grand strategy? A single, glorious flash before the long, cold dark?"

Phthoriel of Betelgeuse, a mountain of cooling stone, shifted uncomfortably, the orange fissures in his skin flaring with a dim, pained light at the accusation. He said nothing, but his massive fists unclenched slightly.

"We do not need their strength!" Umbra'zel hissed, the air around him shimmering with void tainted heat. "We need their fear! Strike the Crimson Crucible now, while Akuma licks his wounds! Shatter his cradle! Let the Void King feel true, gnawing hunger at his doorstep!"

"And what doorstep is that?" Nyxara's voice turned icy, laced with the chilling precision of Polaris logic. "The Blood Iron Gate? The one manned by Volrag's Void Guard? The same Volrag who butchered his own Frostguard and nearly ended Ryota Veyne? You would throw our last, desperate embers against a wall of that cold, hate fuelled iron? That is not a feast, Umbra'zel. That is a delivery."

Before the Algol envoy could spit a retort, a new, calmer voice, layered with the echo of distant caws, spoke from the edge of the room. Corvin had materialized from the deeper shadows near the pulsating tapestry, his galaxy eyes fixed on the assembly. He had returned from the fissure, the psychic stink of Kaustirix's violation still clinging to him like frost.

"The envoy's passion is noted," Corvin stated, his distorted voice a flat counterpoint to the emotional storm. "But his intelligence is outdated. The report from the Plaza of Screams is complete." All eyes turned to him, the Crow who saw everything. "Akuma was not merely stung. He was broken. His void skin was breached. Not by overwhelming force, but by precision, adaptation, and a resonance he could not fathom."

He paused, letting the weight of the statement sink into the silent, tense room. "The fallen Polaris, Ryota, fought with the rage of a dying glacier, creating openings with ground shaking fury. The Fujiwara's leader, Juro, struck with the force of an avalanche, driving the titan to his knee. The Architect, Haruto Isamu, provided the surgical strike, his Polaris dagger finding the flaw with ice cold calculation, drawing first blood and planting the seed of terror for his master." Corvin's gaze then shifted to Nyxara, including her in the report, his eyes acknowledging the shared horror they had both witnessed. "But the catalyst… the weapon Akuma could not anticipate… was the Twin Stars. Shiro Artatani's defiant light, channelled through their shared bond and scar, did not just disrupt the void energy. It reignited Kuro Oji's extinguished life force. Their connection is not a simple tether. It is a harmonic engine. They took stellar fire and void hate and forged them into a single, adaptive blade. That is what shattered the Eventide Fracture. That is what forced the Scourge to retreat, not merely withdraw. He fled, bleeding not just void ichor, but the absolute terror of Ryo's retribution."

The silence in the sanctum was now absolute, broken only by the faint, dying crackle of the Algol prisms. Umbra'zel looked as if he'd been struck. The concept of a resonant bond, of something new and unpredictable, was anathema to his philosophy of pure consumption.

It was Lyrathiel of Vega who broke the silence, her voice a tremulous, melodic thread of fear. She plucked a dissonant chord on her small lap harp. "War? With dirges and broken strings? My people are torn asunder! Half whisper rebellion with the 'Harp's Lure', half beg Ryo for scraps of his favour! Another suicidal battle will shatter what little unity we have left! We are poets, not soldiers!"

"And we are starving!" Statera, the Polaris representative, slammed her fist on the obsidian table. A tiny, pathetic frost line skittered and died. Her own faded star markings seemed to absorb the dim light, a testament to his people's plight. "Our 'Frost Walk' is a joke against Ryo's void! The Hungry drain our own people in the lower sectors! We can barely feed ourselves, let alone wage a war of attrition! This talk of resonant bonds and broken knights means nothing to a child crying from the cold!"

Nyxara listened to the cacophony of fear, anger, and despair, the dying symphony of her people. She saw it all through the Nyxary Lens: the Algol hunger, the Betelgeuse exhaustion, the Vega division, the Polaris desperation. They were fracturing before her eyes.

She raised her hands. The gesture was fluid, yet it carried the weight of epochs. Her form subtly shifted, the pale Polaris luminescence deepening, becoming the focal point in the room.

"You are all correct," she said, her voice resonating with the combined, weary truth of her lineage. "We cannot win a war of blades. We cannot stomach a feast of our own despair. And we cannot ignore the cry of a child in the dark." She turned to the Celestial Tapestry, to the guttering, sickly heart of Algol. Its faltering pulse was a mirror to their own fading strength. "Look. Truly look. Its light weakens. Our world withers. Every life lost in this futile conflict, Astralon or Nyxarion, feeds only the void that encroaches on us all. Ryo seeks to break the sky to his will. We seek only to survive within it. But survival requires more than just enduring the winter. It requires a new path."

She stepped forward, her gaze sweeping the council, and for a moment, it held the compelling resonance of Vega's persuasion. "The Plaza of Whispers proved something. It proved that Ryo's control is not absolute. It proved that his finest weapon can be broken. Not by an army, but by a new kind of power. A power born of connection, not domination." Her eyes found Corvin's, and a flicker of the terrifying, shared vision passed between them, the entity Kaustirix, the disdainful assessment. "And it proved we are not the only hunters in this frozen waste. There are scavengers circling, waiting for both us and Ryo to bleed each other dry."

She paused, letting the chilling implication settle into the silence. "This changes everything. The old calculations are void. The rebellion is no longer a nuisance; it is a pivot point. And Ryo, for all his cruelty, is a strategist. He understands force. He has now felt a force he cannot easily categorize or crush."

"So we hide behind these mortals?" Umbra'zel sneered, though the venom was less certain now.

"No," Nyxara stated, her voice regaining its Polaris steadiness, sharp and final as a shard of ice. "We leverage the board as it now stands. We act. But not with blades destined to shatter. We act with the only weapon he might, in this unique moment of vulnerability, actually hear."

She took a deep breath, the Corvus feathers in her hair shimmering with captured starlight. The resolve on her face was terrifying in its absoluteness. "I will not send envoys to be ignored, manipulated, or frozen into trophies. I will go myself. To the Black Keep. To Ryo Oji's throne. Face to face."

Pandemonium erupted anew, louder and more desperate than before.

"It is madness!" Statera roared, her faded markings pulsing with a weak, frantic light. "He'll tear you apart! Feed you to his hounds as he did to Kaya! Your head on a pike will be the standard around which he rallies his final purge!"

"A queen cannot walk into the serpent's den!" Lyrathiel cried, her harp emitting a discordant shriek of alarm. "He'll use you as a hostage! Your capture would break the clans completely! It is a trap!"

"SUICIDE!" Phthoriel bellowed, heat flaring so violently in his cracks that those near him took a step back. "Your 'balance' is a dream for poets! He knows only the language of the axe!"

Even Corvin, who had seen the truth of the rebellion firsthand, took a step forward, his galactic eyes swirling with profound alarm. "My Queen, the risk… it is absolute. Ryo is Void touched. His word is ash. His court is a slaughterhouse decorated with lies. He will see this not as strength, but as the ultimate prize delivered to his door."

Nyxara met their outrage, their fear, their despair, with an immovable, glacial calm. "The risk of inaction is absolute extinction. You think this is a gamble? Watching Algol fade day by day is a guarantee. Waiting for Kaustirix to decide we are ripe for the picking is a guarantee. Starving in the dark while Ryo hoards the light is a guarantee." Her voice dropped, but it carried even more powerfully, every word a chip of ice. "He wants control? I will offer him a path to it that doesn't demand the annihilation of my people or the complete enslavement of his. I will offer him a vision where he remains King of Astralon, unchallenged on the surface, while his people do not starve in the winter we can help mitigate. I will offer him… parley."

She outlined her terms, each one landing like a hammer blow in the tense silence:

"A cessation of all hostilities. An immediate end to the purges in the Warrens and the lower sectors. A truce along the Styx River, monitored by both sides. Shared, controlled access to the Skywells, not a surrender, but a regulated sharing of the bounty. And a joint council… Astralon and Nyxarion… its sole purpose to study Algol's fading. To pool our knowledge, our resources. To seek not conquest, but balance. To understand the dying star that binds both our fates. If Algol dies, Queen or King, we all freeze in the dark."

"He will laugh in your face!" Statera spat, her voice cracking. "He will demand tribute! He will demand the Twin Stars' heads on a platter before he even hears your terms!"

"He may," Nyxara conceded, a flicker of Betelgeuse embers glowing in her eyes, a hint of volcanic fury held in perfect check. "Or he may see the strategic value of pausing a war on two fronts. Of securing his southern border against a threat he does not yet fully understand, while he turns his full attention to crushing the rebellion at his heart. He may see the value in appearing magnanimous, in being seen to offer terms to a queen, rather than just grinding another foe into dust. He is a calculator. I will give him new variables to calculate. The variable of a united front. The variable of a shared catastrophe. The variable of a power he does not control growing in his own city."

Her resolve was a physical force now, a Polaris beacon cutting through the council's fear and doubt. She turned to Corvin, her most trusted blade, her voice brooking no further argument. "Corvin. Ready the chariot. We leave within the hour. A single vessel. Minimal escort. Korinakos will come along aswell. This is a gambit of light and truth, not of force."

She then turned her multi hued gaze back to the stunned, silent council, her final words dropping into the room like stones into a frozen pond.

"The course is set. The audience is requested. You are not to follow. You are to hold this line. If I do not return, if Ryo proves himself the monster we know him to be, then my last command is this: do not seek vengeance. Seek the Twin Stars. Seek Shiro and Kuro. And you tell them… you tell them the Queen of Nyxarion believed their bond was the bridge. And that the bridge must hold."

Without another word, she turned her back on them, a final, breathtaking act of defiance and faith, and walked toward the sanctum's exit, towards the waiting shadows and the longest of odds. The council could only stare, a tableau of shock, dread, and a terrible, dawning awe at the sheer scale of the gamble their queen was taking with her life, and with all of theirs.

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