Chapter 85: Chapter 85

The Plaza of Screams didn’t roar; it sucked. The air itself felt thick and greedy, pulling at Shiro’s gasps, leaching the heat from his blood before it could even reach his screaming muscles. Akuma stood before them, not a warrior, but a tectonic event given form. His void black plate drank the Plaza’s sickly yellow light, the horned helm cracked but radiating an even deeper, colder malice. Around him, the spectral audience of Takeshi’s weeping black icicles, the swirling vortex of ancient hunger, seemed to pulse with anticipation, feeding on the despair thickening the air like grave fog.

Shiro’s world narrowed to the white hot agony in his wrists and the guttering ember in his palm. All that mattered was the obsidian monolith before him, the architect of Aki’s torment. He lunged, the rusted blade Haruto had given him in the hearth barracks whistling through the heavy air. It wasn’t a strike born of Haruto’s geometry, but of raw, unadulterated fury, a desperate slash aimed at Akuma’s cracked faceplate.

Akuma didn’t move. He didn’t need to.

His void gauntlet, wreathed in swirling darkness that seemed to absorb sound and light, simply rose. It met Shiro’s blade not with a clang, but with a sickening KRRRK! The rusted steel didn’t rebound; it stuck, embedded in the impossible, light devouring darkness swirling around the gauntlet like tar. Shiro grunted, the impact jolting up his arms like a lightning bolt of pure, concentrated agony. The phantom thorns buried deep in his fused wrists tore viciously, flaying nerves raw. He felt bone dust vibrate violently against the void leather braces, a grinding shriek echoing inside his own skull. His scarred palm flared amber in sympathetic protest, a weak sputter that sent nerve flaying shards of white hot pain lancing up his arm to his spine. He staggered back, wrenched off balance, leaving the blade trapped in Akuma’s swirling void grip.

"Is this," Akuma’s voice resonated, bypassing ears to vibrate directly in Shiro’s molars and Kuro’s throbbing corruption, "the best the gutter rat and the disgraced whelp can muster?" The star pupils within the cracked helm flared, infinite malice mixed with profound boredom. "Scrabbling in the dirt with fucking borrowed weapons?" With a contemptuous flick of his gauntlet, the rusted blade was discarded. It didn’t clatter; it was simply unmade, dissolving into motes of dark rust that vanished into the swirling void around his hand before they hit the fleshy floor.

Kuro moved, a blur of crimson desperation fuelled by shared agony and the static roaring in his mind. He didn’t bother with finesse. His good hand, clenched into a fist wreathed in a desperate, sputtering crimson aura from his scar, hammered towards Akuma’s side, aiming for the fissures in the obsidian plate near the hip. Simultaneously, his corrupted arm jerked. It wasn’t a controlled strike; it was a convulsive lash, driven by fury and the invasive cold fire chewing towards his heart. Tendrils of sickly blue light erupted from beneath the vambrace, lashing out like frozen whips.

Akuma sighed, a sound like glaciers settling. He shifted his weight, a movement that seemed to distort the air around him. Kuro’s crimson fist slammed into nothing, a localized pocket of absolute cold that flash froze the air inches from Akuma’s hip. The impact sent a javelin of pain up Kuro’s arm, the cold searing his knuckles instantly numb. Worse, far worse, was the backlash from his corrupted limb. The lashing blue tendrils met Akuma’s void aura and recoiled violently, snapping back like electrified wires. The invasive cold fire within Kuro’s arm EXPLODED.

"GAAAHHHGHHH!" Kuro’s scream was raw, animal, ripped from a throat constricting with frost and agony. It felt like glacial termites injected with liquid entropy. They burrowed past his elbow with frenzied ecstasy, tunnelling up towards his shoulder socket, leaving trails of absolute zero agony in their wake. The static in his mind dropped into a subsonic drone, a physical vibration grinding against the inside of his skull. His vision swam with jagged black spots. He saw his monstrous shadow swell grotesquely on the floor beside him, its edges deepening, becoming more real, more hungry. FEED US! GIVE US THE ROT! The drone seemed to whisper, merging with Akuma’s presence. He stumbled, the dead, icy drag of the corruption now a crushing anchor pulling him towards the yielding floor.

Akuma didn’t press Kuro. He turned his star pupiled gaze fully on Shiro, who was gasping, clutching his right wrist as if trying to hold the shattered bones together through the brace. "Pathetic," the void voice whispered, thick with disdain. "All that fire in the academy. All that borrowed defiance. Reduced to this? A trembling rat with broken fucking claws."

Shiro forced air into his frozen lungs, the act feeling like inhaling ground glass coated in acid. He summoned the Polaris fire again, not for attack, but for light, for hope. Agony detonated. It wasn’t the controlled burn of the Sky Hearth; it was raw, unfiltered stellar fury tearing back up the ruined conduits of his nerves. Nerve flaying shards of white hot pain lanced from his scarred palm to his spine, blinding him, stealing his breath. The amber light that sputtered forth was weak, guttering, barely pushing back the jaundiced gloom for a foot around him. It illuminated the blood freezing black on his face, the stark terror in his eyes. He choked back a scream, doubling over, vision swimming with supernovae of agony. Control the fire! Haruto’s ghostly command was a frail raft in a sea of torment. Not the scream!

Akuma moved. Not with blinding speed, but with terrible, inevitable purpose. One gauntleted hand shot out, not to strike, but to grab. It closed around Shiro’s throat, icy obsidian fingers squeezing with the pressure of tectonic plates shifting. "Let me silence the noise for you, gutter rat," Akuma purred, lifting Shiro effortlessly off the ground. Shiro’s feet kicked uselessly in the air. The void cold radiating from the gauntlet didn’t just steal breath; it froze the desire to breathe. Shiro’s eyes bulged, his scarred hand scrabbling weakly at the unyielding obsidian arm, the Polaris light sputtering and dying as consciousness flickered. The phantom thorns in his wrists became actual ice daggers driven deeper.

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"SHIRO!" Kuro’s roar was distorted by pain and static. He forced himself upright, ignoring the white hot brand of agony where the cold fire chewed near his collarbone. He couldn’t use the corruption again; it would consume him. Instead, he scooped up a jagged shard of black ice that had fallen from a weeping pillar. A pitiful weapon. He hurled it with all his failing strength, not at Akuma’s head, but at the joint of the elbow holding Shiro aloft.

It was a distraction. A desperate, futile gesture. Akuma didn’t even look. His free hand flicked dismissively. A pulse of void darkness emanated from his palm. The ice shard dissolved into harmless vapor inches from its target. The pulse continued, slamming into Kuro’s chest. WHUMPFFFFF! It wasn’t a physical blow; it was pure negation, a wave of absolute cold and despair. Kuro flew backwards as if hit by a siege ram, crashing into the yielding, fleshy wall of the Plaza with a wet, nauseating splat. He slid down, leaving a smear of crimson and frost, gasping, the static roaring back with triumphant fury, the blue luminescence in his arm flaring with agonizing intensity as the corruption burrowed deeper. His vision tunnelled. Shiro’s choking form, dangling in Akuma’s grip, seemed miles away.

Akuma turned his attention back to Shiro, whose struggles were weakening, his face turning a terrifying shade of grey blue. "Your little spark is almost out," the void voice observed, clinically. "Just like your precious Aki’s. Shall I show you how it feels? That final, gasping flicker before the eternal dark?" He squeezed tighter. Vertebrae groaned. Darkness encroached on Shiro’s vision, filled only by the twin dying suns of Akuma’s pupils.

Then, a searing lance of pure, focused Polaris light, white hot and precise as a scalpel, slashed through the space between Akuma’s head and shoulder. Not aimed to kill, but to distract, to force a reaction. It struck the cracked horn on Akuma’s helm, shearing it off with a CRACKKKKK! Void ichor spattered.

Akuma’s head snapped to the side, a fraction. His grip on Shiro’s throat loosened, infinitesimally. Shiro sucked in a ragged, burning gasp of foul air, stars exploding behind his eyes as blood rushed back to his frozen brain.

Akuma turned, star pupils blazing with fresh, cosmic fury, away from the broken twins towards the new threat. Standing ten paces away, braced against the oppressive cold, every muscle corded with strain, veins standing out like frozen rivers on his neck and temples, stood Haruto Isamu. His Polaris dagger was raised, its tip blazing with the captured fury of a dying star, its light a fragile sun in the devouring gloom. His obsidian eyes, colder than the deepest glacier, were fixed on Akuma.

"You," Akuma’s voice resonated, the indifference replaced by sharp, analytical interest. "The disgraced lord. Come to add your broken corpse to the pyre?"

Haruto didn’t answer. His gaze flickered for a microsecond towards Shiro, crumpling to the fleshy floor gasping, and Kuro, struggling to rise against the tide of corruption and void induced agony. The fallen Lord of House Isamu, erased from history but burning with a cold, silent fury, shifted his stance. The dagger’s light intensified, casting long, sharp shadows. The air around him grew perceptibly colder, sharper, the Plaza’s runes frosting over nearby. His silence was more terrifying than any roar. It was the quiet before the avalanche. The hunger of a scion denied, now focused with lethal precision. The fallen House had arrived, and it was ravenous.

The searing afterimage of Haruto’s Polaris dagger strike faded from Shiro’s vision, replaced by the looming shadow of Akuma turning away. Shiro hit the yielding, warm cold flesh of the Plaza floor, the impact jolting through his shattered body like a fresh detonation. Air, thick with ozone and the coppery tang of his own freezing blood, scraped into his lungs. Every gasp was a battle against the glacial pressure in his chest and the white hot agony screaming from his wrists. The phantom thorns weren't phantom anymore; they were ice daggers driven deep into the fused bone, grinding with every micro movement. The rusted blade was gone, unmade. His Polaris scar pulsed weakly, a dying ember radiating nerve flaying shards of pain up his arm with every sputter. He was unarmed. Broken.

Beside him, Kuro gasped, a wet, ragged sound choked with static. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, his corrupted arm a dead, frozen log encased in sickly blue luminescence that pulsed like a diseased heart. The invasive cold fire had chewed past his shoulder, tendrils of absolute zero agony tunnelling towards his collarbone. Each pulse sent jagged bolts of pain up his neck, making his teeth clatter. His storm grey eyes, wide and bloodshot, fixed on Shiro, mirroring the same dawning horror.

Akuma didn’t press the attack on Haruto immediately. He stood, a void clad monolith, radiating cosmic indifference. His star pupiled gaze swept over the fallen twins, lingering on their shattered forms with the detached curiosity of a child examining crushed insects.

"Look at you," the voice resonated, bypassing ears to vibrate in their marrow, in the grinding shards of Shiro's wrists, in the icy roots devouring Kuro. "Guttering sparks, sputtering in the wind. You clawed through stone, bled in the dark, embraced the rot… for this?" He gestured dismissively, a flick of his gauntleted hand that made the swirling void shadows around him writhe. "A final, pathetic gasp on my palette?"

Shiro tried to push himself up. His right arm buckled instantly, the fused bones shrieking protest, sending a wave of nausea so intense he retched, vomiting blood tinged bile that froze instantly on the Plaza floor. He collapsed back, the warm, yielding surface sucking greedily at his warmth. Akuma’s words weren't just taunts; they were hooks sunk deep into his soul, dragging up the images he fought so hard to suppress: Aki’s bright eyes clouding over. Her skin peeling back under glacial knives. Her voice reduced to a frozen rasp calling his name. Shiro… help…

"Can we…" Shiro gasped, the words barely audible, scraped raw by cold and despair. He stared at his trembling, useless hand, the amber glow flickering like a candle in a hurricane. "…even make a difference?" The doubt wasn't a whisper; it was a glacier calving in his chest, a collapse of the desperate hope that had propelled him this far. Akuma was right. They were insects. All their defiance, all their pain, just meaningless noise before the void’s inevitable silence. Saving Aki felt like trying to hold back the tide with bare hands. She called for you… until her vocal cords froze solid… Akuma’s earlier description echoed, a cruel soundtrack to his failure. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel⁂fire.net