The Frostway's suffocating, sentient embrace spat them out like unwanted refuse. One moment, the weeping black ice walls pressed close, the silence broken only by their ragged, agony torn breaths and the ever present, guttural baying vibrating through the stone itself, felt in the roots of their teeth, a subsonic dread that scraped raw nerves already flayed by pain and cold. The next, they burst through a crumbling archway choked with ice encrusted thorns, frozen claws that tore at clothes and skin, drawing fresh, stinging lines of crimson that froze instantly. They stumbled, gasping, into a space that stole breath not with grandeur, but with absolute, frozen horror.
Nyxara's Garden.
It wasn't a garden; it was a mausoleum sculpted from despair; its beauty preserved in a moment of exquisite, soul rending terror. Moonlight, filtered through a skeletal canopy of ice laden branches resembling petrified nerve endings, cast long, distorted shadows that writhed across a scene frozen in time. Petrified noblewomen stood posed throughout the courtyard, figures captured with horrifying verisimilitude, their final moments an eternal exhibit. The air hung heavy, thick with the cloying, pervasive scent of decaying lilies, a scent Shiro recognized with visceral dread from the throne room, now amplified, overlaid by the sterile, metallic tang of absolute cold, the void between stars given smell. It was the scent of entropy made manifest. The silence was profound, a suffocating blanket pressing in on their eardrums, broken only by their harsh, pained breathing, the frantic hammering of their hearts, and the distant, hungry cries of the hounds echoing as if through miles of glacial ice, a reminder that the hunt pressed close.
Ryota was the first to find his voice, a raw scrape against the tomb like stillness. "Gods below..." he breathed, his Polaris eyes wide, reflecting the frozen tableau not just with shock, but a dawning, personal horror that drained the colour from his battle hardened face.
The Laugher:Head thrown back, mouth a perfect, silent 'O' of crystalline ice, strands of frozen hair catching the pale light like spun glass. A silk gown billowed in frozen waves that glittered like shattered chandelier crystals, capturing a moment of pure, unadulterated joy instantly transmuted to abject horror. Her posture spoke of carefree abandon, now a grotesque monument to interrupted mirth.
The Sipper: Delicate porcelain cup forever tilted towards lips she would never sip, fingers forever elegant around the handle, poised in an act of mundane grace. Eyes wide, pupils dilated with a dawning, inescapable terror etched permanently into the ice encasing her face, a single tear track frozen on one cheekbone like a captured diamond. The promise of warmth in the cup mocked by the eternal cold encasing her.The Curtsyer: Frozen mid motion, elegant posture now a grotesque mockery of grace. Intricate embroidery on her bodice rendered in minute, sparkling frost patterns, one hand slightly extended in greeting, the other pressed demurely to her stomach, a gesture that might have been modesty or the first clutch of visceral terror freezing her heart mid beat.
Their skin wasn't flesh; it was translucent alabaster ice, shot through with veins of deepest cobalt and amethyst that pulsed with a faint, internal light, the captured echo of their life force? giving them the appearance of exquisite, shattered dolls displayed in a gallery of cosmic cruelty. The sheer detail was horrifying. Shiro could see the individual frozen fibres of silk, the faint pattern of lace on a sleeve, the tiny chips of ice mimicking rouge on a pale cheek. It wasn't just death; it was life stolen and displayed, a violation that curdled the blood.
"Here!" Ryota rasped, his voice rough as glaciers grinding bone, shockingly loud. He gestured towards the centre of the macabre tableau, his gaze locked on the Curtsyer with a storm of personal grief and volcanic fury swirling in his Polaris depths. A massive, long dead star tree dominated the space, its once mighty branches reduced to skeletal claws reaching towards the uncaring moon like the ribs of a colossal, frozen beast. Its trunk was split wide open, a jagged, weeping wound exuding a viscous, silvery sap that had pooled on the frozen ground beneath it, frozen solid in rippling waves like solidified mercury. "Behind the tree! Move! Now! The remaining hounds won't be stalled forever!"
They scrambled. Shiro stumbled, every jarring step sending white hot, nerve flaying agony up his ruined arms. The pulped flesh screamed; exposed bone grated against itself with each shift in balance. The freezing air bit deep into the raw wounds like acid, stealing his breath in ragged gasps. He felt like his arms were being slowly fed into a grinder set with ice shards, the pain radiating up into his shoulders, making his vision swim with black spots. He clutched his left wrist with his right hand, knuckles white, teeth gritted against the groan threatening to escape. Just keep moving. Don't fall. Don't stop.
Kuro collapsed against the massive trunk, a gasp turning into a wet, agonized cough that sprayed flecks of crimson onto the silver frozen sap. Each spasm sent fresh waves of torment through his shattered ribs. He slid down, pressing his back against the rough, ice encrusted bark, clutching his side, face deathly pale beneath layers of grime and drying blood. Sweat beaded and froze instantly on his brow despite the pervasive cold. The faint ember light of his constellation scar flickered erratically, a dying star in a frozen sky. But it was his right arm that drew Mira's horrified gasp and made Juro, immediately moving to brace him alongside Ryota, recoil with a sharp, bitten off curse.
"Kuro! Your arm...!" Mira whispered, her voice trembling, her fractured crow lens reflecting the pulsing horror like a kaleidoscope of dread, the refracted light seeming to flinch from the corrupted limb.
The frost wasn't crawling. It was spreading with sentient, cosmic hunger. From the raw, self inflicted wound on from the throne room, the mark of his liberation now a gaping gateway for corruption, tendrils of sickly blue white ice, thick as void worms, pulsed with unnatural, non Euclidean light. They writhed beneath the rapidly greying, translucent skin of his inner arm, past the elbow, creeping relentlessly towards his shoulder joint with predatory intent. The skin around the veins wasn't just grey; it was developing a faint, crystalline sheen, mirroring the petrified noblewomen, becoming less flesh and more frozen artifact. Where the frost passed, it left a trail of numbing static, a million cosmic needles of pure, alien cold burrowing deep into nerve and marrow, leaching warmth and life, whispering glacial equations of dissolution and submission directly into his being. Kuro could feel it thinking, adapting, seeking control, a cosmic termite devouring his nerves from the inside out.
Kuro looked down, his storm grey eyes widening with a profound loathing mixed with burgeoning, soul crushing terror. He tried to flex his fingers. They responded sluggishly, jerkily, like frozen puppet strings being tested by an unseen, icy puppeteer. A tremor ran through the corrupted limb, independent of his will. "Feels like..." he gritted out through teeth clenched so tight Shiro feared they'd shatter, "...fucking static... under my skin. Like broken glass grinding in my veins. Like it's... tasting me." He slammed his fist weakly against his thigh, a futile gesture of defiance against the violation. "It's... inside. Learning. Chewing. Mapping my bones for the frost." The admission hung heavy, thick with the terror of becoming something other.
Shiro, leaning heavily against the opposite side of the dead star tree, felt a wave of cold dread that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature hit his gut like a physical blow. He remembered the desperate act in the Frostway, Kuro using the ice itself to cauterize Ryo's brand, the scream that had echoed his own agony. That act had accelerated this. This was worse. Far worse. It wasn't just a wound; it was a cosmic corruption, a living blight claiming Kuro from within, turning him into a conduit for the void's hunger, a potential sculptor of frozen screams. He reached out instinctively, his now clumsily bandaged hand hovering near Kuro's afflicted arm. The crystal embedded in his palm pulsed erratically in sympathetic agony, sending fresh jolts of pain up his own ravaged nerves. "Kuro..." The word was thick with shared horror, a helpless acknowledgment of the unfolding nightmare, the potential loss of his brother in all but blood.
"Don't…!" Kuro snapped, recoiling as if burned, though his movement was stiff, hampered by the invasive frost and the grinding agony in his ribs. His gaze remained fixed on his corrupted arm, a mixture of horror and desperate defiance burning in his bloodshot eyes. "Just... don't. It... likes the warmth. The defiance. It... feeds on it." He shuddered violently, the static buzz intensifying momentarily, a visible ripple passing beneath his skin, as if confirming his words.
The cloaked figure stood slightly apart, near the frozen woman mid curtsy. Their hooded gaze seemed fixed not on the statue, but intensely on Kuro's corrupted arm. Within the deep shadow of the hood, Kuro, through his haze of pain and the maddening static, caught a fleeting glimpse: swirling galaxies forming the distinct, impossible shape of the Corvus constellation. The Crow. And on one gloved hand, resting lightly against the frozen silk of the statue's skirt, a flash of metal, a heavy, ornate ring set with a dark stone that seemed to absorb the moonlight, leaving a deeper patch of shadow. Familiar... Kuro's pain fogged mind scrabbled uselessly, a fish on ice. The shape... the heavy setting... Where have I...? The slippery thought vanished, drowned instantly by a fresh, searing lance of agony as the frost tendrils pulsed hungrily towards the vulnerable joint of his shoulder, a cold fire spreading through his scapula. Illusion... just the void fucking with me again... the pain... he dismissed it, a phantom conjured by his unravelling senses and the garden's oppressive despair.
Desperate for distraction, for anything other than the sight of his friend being consumed by sentient ice and the relentless agony in his own arms, Shiro pressed his less injured palm flat against the icy bark of the dead star tree. The rough, frozen surface bit into his skin, a minor pain lost in the symphony of his suffering. Immediately, his Polaris scar flared, the agonizing burn sending jolts of agony through his body, a deep, resonant THRUM that vibrated up his arm and into his very core, momentarily overwhelming the pain with a wave of disorienting sensory overload. The frozen garden dissolved, replaced by...
Visions, Vivid and Overwhelming:
The Star Tree in Bloom: Vibrant, impossibly alive, radiating warmth that Shiro could almost feel on his frostbitten skin. Branches heavy not with leaves, but bioluminescent blossoms, swirling nebulae of captured starlight cradled within crystalline petals. Hues of vibrant pink, deep sapphire blue, and ethereal violet pulsed with warm life, casting dancing lights on the faces below. Air hummed with ozone and honeyed stardust, thick with the scent of night blooming jasmine and spilled wine. Laughter, genuine and bright, echoed, the carefree sound of a world not yet touched by frost. Noble figures in shimmering moon silk robes and intricate masks moved beneath its benevolent canopy. One woman, elegant and warm eyed, her smile radiating genuine affection, stood near the trunk, looking up at the light with undisguised wonder, a hand resting gently on the vibrant bark as if communing with it. Shiro felt the tree's deep, celestial pulse, a heartbeat of pure, untainted life.Nyxara's Desecration: A sudden, violent plunge into freezing darkness, a sensory shock that punched the breath from Shiro's lungs. The vibrant scene shattered like dropped glass. A figure coalesced from swirling shadows and absolute void cold a woman. Not form, but anti form, a silhouette of negative space and swirling frost, her outline shifting like smoke trapped in ice, defying focus. Where her "head" should be, twin prismatic voids blazed, bottomless pits reflecting nothing, consuming everything, mirroring Mira's crow's eyes, mirroring the Algol demon, infinitely hungry. She moved with terrifying silence, a hole in reality gliding towards the magnificent tree. Shadowy hands, formed of solidified void frost, plunged deep into the roots at its base, a violation that sent a psychic scream of pure agony through the vision, tearing at Shiro's mind, was that Nyxara?The Screams: The vibrant blossoms dimmed instantly, their light snuffed out like candles in a gale. The tree's life force, its deep connection to celestial currents, was violently siphoned. A wave of pure, devouring cold radiated outwards, visible as a shimmering, expanding ring of hoarfrost that raced across the ground, freezing grass blades mid bend. Laughter turned to screams, high, pure notes of terror abruptly cut off, silenced by the instant freeze. Shiro felt the cold hit him vicariously, his own limbs locking in sympathetic terror:
The noblewoman mid curtsy locking rigid, silk freezing mid swirl, skin turning translucent ice in an instant, her widening eyes capturing a snapshot of eternal, incomprehensible dread inches from his own, The woman laughing, her joyful expression petrifying into a grotesque rictus of crystalline horror, mouth still open in the ghost of sound that Shiro's mind filled with a final, choked gasp, The one with the cup, frozen in the act of dropping it, delicate porcelain shattering silently on the now instantly frozen earth, droplets of liquid hanging frozen in the air like obscene jewels.
The wave hit the tree itself. Its vibrant bark greyed, cracked with sounds like snapping bones, the life draining visibly as the silver sap within began to thicken, then freeze solid in grotesque rivulets weeping from the cracks. The final image burned into Shiro's mind: withdrawing her void hands, stolen starlight swirling like captive, screaming galaxies within her anti form before she dissipated like malignant smoke, leaving only the perfect, frozen tableau of despair and the weeping, dead tree bleeding silver poison onto the frozen ground.
Shiro gasped, wrenching his hand away as if electrocuted, staggering back several steps, chest heaving as if he'd run for miles. The phantom echoes of those petrified screams rang in his skull, the vibrant memory of life brutally juxtaposed with the horrific reality surrounding him. The silver sap bleeding from the tree's wound now seemed a cruel mockery of the vibrant life it once represented, a frozen tear for a murdered moment. He met Ryota's gaze; the knight had watched his reaction, Polaris eyes swirling with a storm of personal grief and impotent fury, the vision seemingly confirmed in Ryota's haunted expression.
"I know this place..." Ryota breathed, the words a curse and a lament scraped raw from a place of deep, personal loss. He reached out, gauntleted fingers brushing the frozen bark with shocking tenderness, a warrior's hand performing an act of mourning. "This... this was Lady Elara Veyne's garden. My aunt." He swallowed hard, the sound unnaturally loud in the dreadful silence. "She... she hosted Kaya's last star fête here. Weeks before... before Kaya vanished." He gestured bitterly at the petrified figures, his voice thick with unshed tears. "This... this was the day after. Elara... she loved a party. Said the starlight Kaya conjured deserved a proper send off, a celebration of the light itself. Always had another gathering, just for the joy of it, the laughter, the music spilling into the small hours." His gaze grew distant, haunted by a memory too bright for this frozen hell. "Gods, she could make the sternest lord dance like a boy. Laughter that shook the chandeliers, spiced wine flowing like water... she believed joy was a rebellion against the gathering dark." He looked back at the woman mid curtsy, Elara, despair etched there for eternity. "This... this was supposed to be joy. Her 'Sky Hearth' tree... Kaya wove constellations into its branches that night too. Light danced with the blossoms..." His voice hitched, the memory clashing violently with the desecration before them. He slammed his fist against the dead trunk, a hollow, final thud echoing in the silent garden. "Now it bleeds frozen poison. A monument to how the void consumes everything bright."
Kuro, shivering violently now, the static under his skin a constant, maddening buzz threatening to drown conscious thought, reached out unconsciously with his frost touched right hand towards a nearby frozen songbird perched on a crystalline rosebush. Captured mid chirp, tiny beak open in silent song, wings slightly spread as if ready for flight. As his fingers, now visibly tinged the same sickly blue white as the invading veins, neared the bird...
His hand moved with a jerky, unnatural spasm, utterly independent of his will. His index finger twitched, then tapped the frozen bird's beak with a tiny, brittle tink.
The frozen songbird's head jerked minutely, as if startled back to a semblance of unnatural life. Its tiny wings gave a single, stiff, unnatural flutter, scraping against the frozen air with a sound like breaking icicles.
Kuro recoiled with a choked cry of pure horror, snatching his hand back as if burned by acid, staring at it with utter revulsion and burgeoning panic. "No... No, FUCK, NO!" he whispered, his voice raw with terror, the sound swallowed by the garden's heavy silence. He clenched the corrupted hand into a fist, muscles trembling with the effort to suppress the tremors, the alien sensation of cold power whispering beneath his skin, the terrifying knowledge that he had made it move, that the corruption was learning to pilot his flesh. He looked from his traitorous hand to the puppeteered bird, then up at Shiro and Ryota, his storm grey eyes wide, dilated with panic, reflecting the petrified despair surrounding them. "What... what the fuck is it making me?!" The question wasn't defiance anymore; it was a plea laced with abject terror, the raw fear of losing himself entirely, becoming part of the garden's horror. The frost wasn't just killing him; it was changing him, making him an instrument of the very horror that preserved this place, a sculptor of frozen screams.
Haruto turned from scanning a shadowed alcove, his analytical gaze instantly taking in the puppeteered bird, the fresh wave of panic on Kuro's face, the unnatural stillness of his corrupted hand. There was no pity in his eyes, only cold, grim understanding and a flicker of tactical alarm sharp as his blade. "The frost," he stated, his voice cutting through Kuro's fear like a scalpel, precise and chilling, "doesn't just kill, Kuro. It doesn't just preserve." He gestured around at the garden, encompassing the perfect, agonized expressions frozen in their final moments. "It captures. It preserves moments of absolute despair, perfect terror, exquisite agony. It feeds on the emotional resonance, the psychic imprint of that final, frozen instant. It sustains Nyxara's power, nourishes the Blight." His gaze settled on Kuro's frost veined arm, his expression grim as the surrounding ice. "And it uses what it touches. Nyxara collects these moments... these tableaux. Like a connoisseur of suffering, curating a gallery of despair. And the power she leaves behind..." He nodded towards Kuro's twitching hand, his voice dropping lower, colder. "...it seeks control. It seeks to replicate the state it preserves, helplessness, despair. To add to the collection. To make you part of it. To make you a curator of cold despair."