It was Ryota who shifted the fragile equilibrium. His pain glazed eyes, fixed on Haruto, sharpened slightly as he looked past him towards the deeper shadows at the rear of the fissure. Corvin stood there, unnervingly still, his galactic eyes observing the exchange, his void stone ring pulsing its low, resonant thoom. Ryota's voice, though weak, carried a new edge, the gravelly tone of a Commander assessing an unknown variable.

"You," Ryota rasped, fixing Corvin with a stare that demanded answers even from his prone position. "Corvin. Nyxara's watcher." He coughed again, wincing, but pressed on. "You talk of being captivated. Of judging our worth." He paused, gathering strength, his gaze sweeping the battered group, Haruto's internal storm, Shiro and Kuro's silent pact, Juro's vigilance, Mira's fractured sight. "You saw us bleed. You saw us break. You saw Haruto..." Ryota hesitated, the word 'hesitate' hanging unspoken but palpable, "...choose a path that spits in the face of everything he swore."

Corvin remained impassive, the galaxy eyes unreadable.

Ryota's voice hardened, fuelled by pain and a dawning, protective suspicion. "You wield tools from gilded cages," he nodded faintly towards Corvin's ring hand, the Oji crest hidden but not forgotten by Kuro's sharp intake of breath. "You speak of observation, of keys and keyholes." He locked eyes with him, the Old Star's fading light still capable of piercing ambiguity. "But trust isn't won by watching, Corvin. It's forged in the fire alongside those you observe."

He took a ragged breath, the effort visible. "So tell us, spy," the word landed with deliberate weight, fracturing the tentative unity, "now that you've seen the depths of our defiance... and our desperation... how can we trust a shadow that only steps into the light when it suits Nyxara's purpose?"

The thoom of Corvin's ring seemed louder in the sudden, charged silence. The fissure walls felt closer, the dripping water like a timer counting down. Haruto's internal conflict was momentarily eclipsed by the stark challenge hanging in the damp air. Distrust, cold and sharp, had been voiced. The rebellion's fragile hope now faced a new precipice, and the enigmatic, his true allegiance the unanswered question casting a long, dark shadow over their hard won respite.

The damp fissure air crackled with Ryota's challenge, the Old Star's ragged breath underlining the stark accusation: "How can we trust a shadow that only steps into the light when it suits Nyxara's purpose?" Distrust, cold and sharp as a void forged blade, hung suspended in the condensation heavy gloom. Juro's grip tightened on his axes. Mira's fractured lens flickered erratically. Shiro and Kuro exchanged a glance heavy with their own unspeakable burden, their focus momentarily pulled from the Algol vision's internal war to this new, external threat cloaked in galactic eyes.

Corvin didn't flinch. He stood within the deeper shadows at the fissure's rear, his void stone ring pulsing its steady thoom, a counterpoint to the tension. But beneath the impassive facade, beneath the star filled depths of his gaze, a spark ignited. Not anger. Not defensiveness. Something colder, sharper: approval.

A slow, almost imperceptible curve touched his lips, devoid of warmth but rich with a chilling kind of satisfaction. They questioned. They challenged. Ryota's suspicion, born of pain and hard won cynicism, wasn't a setback; it was a validation. It proved the ragged band before him wasn't composed of desperate, gullible pawns, but of survivors with the initiative to doubt, the cunning to probe, the intellect to recognize ambiguity. Precisely the qualities Nyxara needed. Precisely what made them invaluable beyond mere symbols of defiance.

"Trust," Corvin echoed, his distorted voice cutting through the charged silence, "is not a currency easily minted in the forges of observation alone, Ryota. You are correct." He took a single, deliberate step forward, emerging fully into the dim, amber tinged light filtering from the Plaza. His galactic eyes swept the group, lingering on each battered face, Ryota's pain etched defiance, Haruto's internal tempest barely contained, Juro's grounded vigilance, Mira's fractured insight, Shiro and Kuro's shared, haunted resolve. "It requires action. Proof. Shared stakes."

He paused, letting the weight of Ryota's accusation settle, then deliberately turned it into a pivot. "You question my commitment? My alignment with Nyxara's cause against Ryo's tyranny?" A faint, humourless smile touched his lips again. "Then let proof be offered, not of my loyalty to you, but of the stakes we share, and the critical juncture upon which Nyxarion now balances."

He drew himself up, the shadows seeming to cling to him even in the light. The air grew perceptibly colder, sharper. "King Ryo Oji," Corvin stated, the name dropping like a block of glacial ice, "has agreed to receive an envoy from Queen Nyxara. In the next few days. In the heart of Astralon itself." He let the words hang, watching the shock ripple through them.

Juro stiffened, a low growl rumbling in his chest. Mira gasped, her lens flaring violently, projecting jagged, panicked light patterns. Shiro's eyes widened, his breath catching. Kuro's head snapped up, his storm grey eyes blazing with sudden, fierce intensity. Haruto's internal storm stilled momentarily, frozen by the sheer, audacious implication. Ryota pushed himself up slightly, wincing, his pain glazed eyes sharpening with disbelief and dawning alarm.

"An envoy...?" Ryota rasped, disbelief warring with the chilling logic. "After the Spire? After Volrag? After this?" He gestured weakly towards the fissure mouth, towards the Plaza of Screams.

"A calculated risk," Corvin replied, his voice flat. "A desperate gambit for peace initiated by Nyxara, against the counsel of her more... militant elders. She believes Ryo can be reasoned with. That the cycle of blood can be halted through dialogue." He paused, letting the sheer, terrifying naivety of the statement sink in. "She arrives at the Palace soon, under banner of truce, to broker an end to the war."

The revelation was a detonation in the confined space. Not just the news itself, but the sheer, terrifying vulnerability it exposed. Nyxara, walking into the serpent's den.

"Peace?" Kuro's voice cut through the stunned silence, raw with a lifetime of bitter understanding. He barked a harsh, static laced laugh. "With him? My father?" He met Corvin's gaze, his eye burning with a fury born of intimate knowledge. "I never bought the Temple's lies. Never swallowed their sermons painting Nyxara as some void spawned demon queen. Not after seeing the 'peace' he brokered with the Razorwind clans. Not after hearing the screams from the palace dungeons he called 'interrogations'." He spat the word. "This... this just proves it. Who sends assassins? Who flays strategists? Who turns sons against fathers? Who sends Void Knights to crush defiance in a mountain's heart?" His voice rose, trembling with conviction. "The real Tyrant isn't Nyxara. It's my father. King Ryo, You cannot trust anything he says."

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His words hung, stark and undeniable. Shiro nodded fiercely, his own voice thick with the memory of Ryo's venomous revelations. "He told me... on the throne. About my mother. Burned. 'Contaminated'. He revelled in it. Nyxara... she fights for her people. Ryo only fights for his power. Kuro's right you cant trust a word he spouts."

Haruto finally spoke, his voice a controlled blade of ice, yet beneath it ran a current of profound, weary disillusionment. "The King's sermons were always... flawed. Twisted logic to justify cruelty. To centralize power. To feed the fear that sustains him. I saw the equations. They never balanced. Only served Ryo." He looked at Corvin, the icy mask fracturing slightly to reveal the depth of his cynicism. "Nyxara walking into Astralon isn't bravery. It's a death warrant signed in naivety."

Ryota grunted, a sound of grim agreement. "Peace talks with Ryo? I saw his 'negotiations' after the Vostra. Ended with Vostra being split into two, heads on pikes and villages salted. The only peace he understands is the peace of the grave." He fixed Corvin with a hard stare. "So why tell us this, Now? If Nyxara walks into this trap willingly?"

Corvin didn't answer immediately. Instead, he reached up with deliberate slowness. His long fingers brushed aside the high collar of his dark, nondescript tunic, revealing the skin just below his jawline, on the left side of his neck.

There, etched into the pale skin, was a sigil.

Not a tattoo. It looked like starlight beneath the skin, formed of eight distinct, sharp points radiating from a central nexus. It pulsed with a soft, internal light, a faint, pure white that seemed utterly alien to the Plaza's corrupted amber glow and the void's hungry darkness. It was intricate, ancient, and radiated a subtle, potent energy that made the air hum faintly and caused Mira's lens to emit a high pitched whine.

"The Corvid Octagram ," Corvin stated, his distorted voice carrying a new weight, a resonance that seemed to vibrate with the sigil's light. "The mark of Nyxara's Chosen. Unique to each one. I'm seen as her right hand." His galactic eyes held theirs, no longer just observing, but implicating. "And her eyes in the sky." He released his collar, the sigil disappearing from view, but its afterimage burned in their retinas. "I am not merely her watcher, Commander. I am her blade in the dark, her voice in the silence, and her shield against the shadows within her own court. I orchestrated the observation, yes. I judged your worth. But my presence here, fighting beside you, revealing this... it is not just for Nyxara's cause."

He took another step forward, closing the distance slightly, his presence now radiating an undeniable authority. "It is because I believe the rebellion is Nyxara's cause. Your defiance is the path to the peace she seeks, not the doomed parley she attempts. Ryo will never honour a truce. Astralon is a trap." His gaze swept them again, fierce and demanding. "I offer this intelligence not just as proof of my access, but as proof of our shared imperative. Nyxara walks into the viper's nest. We cannot stop her decree. But we can be ready. We can be the counter stroke. The safeguard she refuses to acknowledge she needs."

The fissure plunged into stunned silence, heavier than before. Distrust hadn't vanished; it had morphed into something more complex, more dangerous. Corvin was no longer just a spy or a Crow. He was Nyxara's Chosen, marked by starlight, wielding the Oji heir's discarded ring and bearing news of a queen's potential doom. The revelation was a seismic shift, offering critical, terrifying insight while binding them to a fate hurtling towards Astralon.

The fragile hope sparked in the Plaza's amber gloom now faced the blinding, perilous light of the eight pointed star. The road ahead didn't just lead through frozen wastes and shadowed battles; it led straight to the Palace, and tomorrow balanced on the edge of a tyrant's treachery. Trust remained a frayed thread, but the stakes had just become astronomically higher. The rebellion's next move was no longer just about survival; it was about intercepting destiny at the heart of the enemy's power. The clock was ticking, synchronized with the pulse of starlight hidden beneath Corvin's collar.

The silence that followed was a physical entity, thick with the scent of wet stone, blood, and the ozone tang of cosmic revelation. It was Juro who shattered it, his gravel grind voice lower, more dangerous than a shout. "Her right hand," he repeated, the words like stones dropped into a well. His flint chip eyes were locked on the spot where the Octagram had blazed. "So all this… the watching, the judging… it wasn't just some celestial fucking audit. It was a recruitment drive for a suicide mission to the heart of the fucking lion's den." He spat, the glob sizzling faintly on the damp stone. "And you're the recruiter. Fancy fucking title doesn't change the job."

Mira whimpered, her hands flying to her temples. Her fractured lens pulsed, not with light, but with a deep, bruised violet, as if overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the political abyss opening before them. "The threads… they're not just tangled… they're being pulled from the top… by hands we can't see…" she gasped, blood trickling from her ear. "The Palace… it's a web… and the spider is smiling…" the crow let out a muffled, terrified keen from beneath her hood.

Haruto's internal storm had stilled, frozen into a glacier of calculation. His obsidian gaze was fixed on Corvin, no longer looking at a mysterious ally, but a strategic asset of unimaginable value and equal risk. "The Octagram confirms your access level. The intelligence confirms the threat matrix." His voice was flat, analytical, yet it carried the weight of a paradigm shifting. "Nyxara's gambit is a catastrophic variable. Your presence here recontextualizes our entire operational scope. Astralon is no longer a secondary objective. It is the primary battlefield."

Shiro's mind reeled, the Algol induced visions of cosmic chains momentarily eclipsed by the very real, very terrestrial chains of royal tyranny. He looked at Kuro, seeing the same dizzying realization in his storm grey eyes. This wasn't just about surviving the mountain or defying a Void Knight. It was about storming the seat of the very power that had broken their families, corrupted their mentors, and hunted them like animals. The scale was terrifying. The Polaris scar in his palm gave a dull, sympathetic throb, not of power, but of dread.

Kuro's voice was a low, static laced rumble, his gaze boring into Corvin. "You carry my family's crest and bear my father's greatest enemy's mark. You watched us break and now you offer us a chance to break his throne." He shook his head, a bitter, almost admiring smirk twisting his lips. "The fucking audacity." It wasn't acceptance. Not yet. It was the grudging acknowledgment of a move so brazen it might just be the only one left.

Ryota said nothing. He lay propped against the wall, his breathing shallow, but his pain glazed eyes were clear. He watched the reactions of his team, his family, to this seismic shift. The path of the rebellion had just been violently rerouted, not by their choice, but by the desperate gambit of a queen and the calculated revelation of her shadow. The forge of their defiance was about to be moved from the frozen hinterlands to the gilded, treacherous heart of the empire itself. The anvil awaited.

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