The voice did not echo. It simply ceased to be, leaving behind a silence that was somehow louder and more terrible than the cosmic hum that had preceded it. The fissure felt different. The air, once heavy with their own fear and resolve, now felt violated, scraped raw by an awareness that was ancient, cold, and utterly indifferent to their existence. The dim amber light from the Plaza's runes seemed weaker, as if cowed.

For a long moment, no one moved. No one breathed. The sense of being observed, of being known by something that viewed Nyxara's courageous gamble as a 'disappointing' triviality, was a psychic wound.

It was Kuro who broke first. A violent tremor wracked his frame. His corrupted arm, which had pulsed with a low, ominous thrum of purpose, now erupted in a chaotic frenzy of sickly blue light. The tendrils beneath his skin didn't just writhe; they thrashed, as if trying to burrow out of his flesh to escape the very sound of the voice. A raw, agonized cry was torn from his throat, the sound strangled by the static that roared back around his head with vengeful force. He collapsed against the wall, sliding down it, clutching the frozen, searing limb to his chest. "It… it knew…" he gasped, his storm grey eyes wide with a terror that went beyond his father's cruelty. "It wasn't just watching… it was tasting… the fear…" The corruption's violent reaction wasn't just pain; it was a horrifying recognition, a resonance with the voice's void touched chill that made his own affliction feel like a loyal pet turning on its master. The invasive cold wasn't just chewing toward his heart; it was vibrating in tune with a far greater, more ancient malevolence, a harmony of annihilation that made his teeth ache.

Shiro stumbled backward, his braced right arm held out as if warding off a physical blow. The Polaris scar on his palm wasn't aching with remembered pain. It was… singing. A high, thin, discordant vibration that shot up his arm, a sensation utterly alien and deeply wrong. It wasn't the warm, defiant burn of his power, nor the grinding agony of his injuries. It was a cold, celestial frequency, a needle of star dust being plucked by a monstrous, unseen hand. "It's in the light," he whispered, his voice trembling, his amber eyes staring at his own palm as if it belonged to someone else. "The stars… it's using them… listening through them…" His connection to Polaris, the source of his fragile defiance, felt suddenly like a leash, and something on the other end had just given it a sharp, threatening tug. The comforting notion of the stars as guides, as his mother's legacy, felt profaned. This was a different cosmos, a hungry, predatory one.

Ryota pushed himself upright with a grunt of sheer will, his face ashen. The Old Star's pragmatism was incinerated by a veteran's instinct for an unseen, overwhelming enemy. "What the fuck was that?" he snarled, the words dripping with blood and fury. His pain glazed eyes locked onto Corvin, all pretence of strategic patience gone. "No more fucking shadows, Corvin! No more cryptic drivel! What just scraped its mind against ours? And if you knew that was out there, why the fuck are we sitting here waiting for a queen to walk into a trap it's clearly watching?!" His hand, trembling slightly, gestured wildly towards the fissure mouth. "This isn't a gamble anymore; it's a public execution, and we're the audience! We need to move now, even if it's just to die on our fucking feet!" The void chill in his gut felt trivial compared to the existential freeze that voice had left in its wake.

Juro had not moved, but his stillness had changed. It was no longer the patient vigilance of a guard, but the coiled tension of a predator sensing a larger, more dangerous beast in its territory. His knuckles were white on his axe hafts again, but his gaze wasn't fixed on the exit. It was fixed intensely on Corvin, studying the Crow's every micro expression, every faint shift in posture, searching for the lie, the hidden motive. The shared battlefield he'd acknowledged moments before now felt like a killing field, and he needed to know if Corvin was a fellow soldier or the one who'd led them into it. The memory of Takeshi's betrayal was a fresh brand, and this new, incomprehensible threat felt like another layer of the same trap.

Mira had not made a sound. She stood frozen a few paces away, her back pressed against the cold obsidian. Her visible eye was wide, unblinking, the pupil dilated to a black pit of pure, uncomprehending terror. The fractured lens over her other eye was utterly dark, no longer casting its usual prismatic shards. It was as if the entity's passage had short circuited her gift, overloading it with a presence so vast and malicious it could not be parsed into paths or patterns. She was shaking, a fine, constant tremor that vibrated through her entire slight frame. She didn't know a name. She didn't need to. Her gift, her curse, had felt the sheer shape of the consciousness behind that voice, a yawning, infinite hunger, a intellect so cold and vast it perceived their struggles as nothing more than the frantic scuttling of insects before a coming frost. The fear she radiated was primal, wordless, and in its own way, more terrifying than any of their vocalized panic.

Haruto however, stood perfectly still, but his mind was a vortex. The Architect's cold calculus was desperately trying to process a variable so far off the chart it threatened to crash his entire system. His analytical mind, which could deconstruct battle formations and political manoeuvres, scrabbled for purchase against a presence that operated on a cosmic scale. His controlled demeanour was fractured; a faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through his hands. "The voice carried Ryo's signature chill but was… purer. Older," he stated, his voice low and tight, forcing the words out through a jaw clenched against a scream of pure, analytical frustration. "It didn't threaten. It assessed. And found us… negligible. A factor in an equation it has already solved." His obsidian eyes, burning with a need to understand, snapped to Corvin. "You recognized it. You knew its… texture. What is it? A Lord? Something from beyond the Spire? Its awareness of Nyxara's movements suggests an intelligence network that makes Ryo's look childish. Explain. Now." It was not a request. It was a demand from a commander whose strategic map had just been set on fire.

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All eyes turned to Corvin. He had not flinched during the entity's visitation, but the aftermath was written on him in subtle, terrifying strokes. The usual impenetrable calm was gone, replaced by a grim, focused intensity. The swirling galaxies in his eyes churned as if stirred by a dark wind, the stars within them seeming to dim under a sudden, immense pressure. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his brow, something none of them had ever seen. He looked… older. Weighed down by a knowledge he clearly wished he didn't have to share, a dread that was not just professional but deeply, personally felt.

He took a slow breath, and when he spoke, his distorted voice had changed. The echo of distant caws was gone, replaced by a new, sharper resonance, the sound of ancient ice cracking over a bottomless sea. There was a gravity to him now that spoke of centuries of hidden war, of watching this particular horror from the shadows.

"What you experienced," he began, his voice low and deliberate, each word chosen with precision and laden with a history of dread, "was not a random echo of the void. It was not some mindless hunger from the deep. It was a targeted projection. A psychic scalpel wielded by a surgeon of souls." He paused, letting the horror of that distinction sink in. It hadn't been a broadcast; it had been meant for them, specifically, a precise incision into their group consciousness.

His galactic gaze swept over them, acknowledging their individual terrors, Kuro's corrupting resonance, Shiro's violated light, Ryota's veteran's fury, Haruto's shattered equations, Juro's silent scrutiny, Mira's frozen, wordless terror.

"The voice," Corvin said, the new, icy resonance in his voice deepening, taking on a harder, more fearful edge, "belonged to Kaustirix."

The name dropped into the silence like a shard of absolute zero. It meant nothing to them, but the way Corvin said it, with a mixture of deep seated dread and visceral loathing, instantly painted a picture of immense, malevolent power that had haunted him for a very long time.

"Leader of the faction within the Sirius Clan that opposes Nyxara's rule," Corvin clarified, his eyes darkening, the nebulae within them seeming to coalesce into the form of a snarling, spectral hound made of frozen star fire and malice. "Do not mistake them for mere dissidents. They are not. The Sirius Clan's power is not of the void, but it is just as cold, just as relentless. It is drawn from the Dog Star itself, from its binary pulse, its fierce, possessive light. They are masters of resonance, of thought and voice. They can project their will across distances, make whispers carry for miles, or plant a single, corrosive thought in a sleeping mind that can unravel a personality from the inside out over decades."

A flicker of understanding crossed Haruto's face, the Architect latching onto a quantifiable concept. "Telepathy. Psychokinesis. A mental attack."

"Of a sort," Corvin conceded, his voice tight. "But it is not some simple parlour trick. It is a fundamental manipulation of energy and consciousness. And it is not limitless. Their range is bound, tethered to the strength of their connection to their star. One hundred paces. No more. For Kaustirix himself to have reached us here, down in this stone gut, to have spoken with such clarity and… disdain… he is close. Very close. He is within the mountain, or just beyond its skin. Watching. Waiting. He has been here longer than we knew." The revelation was a second, more intimate blow. The threat wasn't some distant, cosmic horror; it was here, now, lurking just outside their perception, its breath on the back of their necks.

"He leads those among the Starborn who believe Nyxara's path of integration is a mortal weakness," Corvin continued, his voice like grinding ice, each word seeming to cost him. "They see your world not as a refuge, but as a carcass to be stripped. They crave the raw, undiluted power they believe Ryo hoards, the kind of energy that can be ripped from a screaming soul. They see his tyranny not as an abomination, but as… a pristine, beautiful efficiency. Kaustirix would sooner see Nyxarion burn to cinders and pick the frozen meat from the bones than share a single crust of bread. His presence is not a warning; it is a statement of intent. He is waiting for Nyxara to fail. He is waiting for Ryo to overplay his hand, to weaken himself in the act of breaking her. And the moment that happens…" Corvin's fist clenched unconsciously, "…he will move. Not to save anyone. To claim the pieces. To consume the spoils."

He looked at each of them, his expression stark, the fear in his own eyes now completely unconcealed. It was this, more than anything else, that drove the poison of terror deep into their hearts. If the unflappable Crow was this afraid, what hope did they have?

"Ryo is a butcher," Corvin whispered, the sound carrying in the dead air. "A brutal, predictable monster. Kaustirix… is a scavenger. But not of the weak and the dead. He is a scavenger of empires, of hope, of light itself. And he has just caught the scent of blood in the water. Our blood. Nyxara's blood. Ryo's blood. He does not distinguish. Rushing out now would not be walking into a trap; it would be leaping into the open mouth of the larger predator circling it. Our patience is no longer just a strategy. It is our only shield against an extinction that would make Ryo's reign look like a merciful summer." The fissure felt smaller than ever, the walls pressing in. The enemy was no longer a single tyrant in a palace. It was a multi headed hydra of ambition and ancient, stellar hatred. Nyxara was walking into the lion's den, unaware that a pack of far deadlier, infinitely more patient wolves had just gathered at the gate, and their alpha had already marked her, and them, as prey. The game had just become infinitely more complex, and the cost of a single misstep was no longer just death, but utter, silent annihilation, picked apart by a force that found their defiance… disappointing.

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