The Sovereign

The second duel began with the cold certainty of a closing trap. The twins, flush with their first victory, moved with a synchronicity that was beautiful and deadly. Shiro was a phantom of motion, his street honed instincts making him a blur against Rasha's lethargic Algol aura. He feinted, pivoted, and blocked a sharp thrust from Seirios with a clean, efficient crack of wood. Kuro was an unmoving storm, his parries against Leander's furious charges so minimal and precise they seemed to drain the very heat from the Leo boy's assaults. He was building a cage of strategy around them, and for three heartbeats, it was clear the outcome was inevitable.

Then the air itself betrayed them.

It was not a single event, but a coordinated, insidious shift. A wave of psychic cold, so profound it felt like the void between stars, lanced from Rasha. It did not target Shiro's body, but the very core of his will. His next step faltered, not from muscle failure, but from a soul deep apathy, as if the reason to fight had been surgically removed. In that moment of hesitation, Seirios's wooden sword, sheathed in a barely perceptible corona of Sirius sharpness, slipped past his guard. It did not feel like wood. It felt like being struck by a fragment of frozen lightning, a searing, sub zero impact on his ribs that stole his breath and sent a wave of nauseating pain through his frame.

Shiro gasped, stumbling back, his hand flying to his side. "We agreed! No magic!" The protest was a raw thing, torn from him by betrayal.

Before the words had faded, Leander, his face contorted with effort, didn't throw a punch. He unleashed a concussive blast of raw thermal force, a unstable, sputtering echo of Betelgeuse's fury. It detonated the air directly in front of Kuro. There was no fire, only a silent, invisible shockwave that hit him like a physical wall. The force threw him backwards, his feet skidding across the mosaic. A dissonant ringing filled his skull, and the taste of copper bloomed in his mouth.

Kuro spat a glob of blood onto the stone, his eyes wide with a fury that was colder and deeper than any he had ever known. "You cheating bastards!"

Antares let out a laugh that was pure, undiluted malice. "Who said we'd listen to you? Your 'honour' is a child's fantasy. A concept for infants who still need their rules and their routines. You are nothing. A disgrace to the blood you carry, coddled and soft, and too stupid to understand that power is the only rule that matters." He gestured, and a thread of Scorpio's binding energy, invisible and sticky as psychic spider silk, wrapped around Kuro's ankle, yanking his foot from under him. Kuro caught himself, but the message was clear: this was no longer a duel.

The next hour was a descent into a meticulously orchestrated hell. The four boys, empowered by their deceit, became artists of pain. They were not trying to win; they were trying to erase.

Rasha's Algol chill was a precise instrument. He would send a targeted lance of soul numbing cold into the muscles of Shiro's sword arm, causing it to tremble and drop, leaving him open. He would flood Kuro's legs with a wave of debilitating torpor, making every step feel like wading through freezing tar.

Seirios was the surgeon. Every strike of his magically enhanced practice sword was a masterclass in agony. He did not aim for disabling blows, but for nerve clusters. A sharp, burning tap to the back of Kuro's knee sent lightning bolts of pain shooting up his thigh. A precise, searing crack against Shiro's elbow joint made his fingers go numb, his grip faltering.

Leander was the blunt instrument, his concussive blasts now a chaotic, terrifying punctuation to their suffering. He would wait until Kuro was perfectly balanced, then detonate the air beside his head, not to injure, but to disorient, to shatter his concentration with a deafening roar of compressed force that left his ears ringing and his vision swimming.

And through it all, Antares wove the tapestry of their torment. His Scorpio bindings were a constant, nagging presence, a psychic cobweb snagging a wrist mid swing, tightening around an ankle to cause a stumble, pulling at the fabric of their tunics to throw off their balance. His voice was a relentless, venomous drip in their ears.

"Look at him stagger! The mighty heir, brought low!"

"Where is your mother's favour now? Where is her protection?"

"Your struggle is pathetic. You should have stayed in your nursery."

The pain was a living thing, a second skin of bruises, searing lines of magical fire, and deep, bone deep aches. A magically sharpened strike from Seirios split Kuro's lip open, blood painting his chin. A concussive blast from Leander caught Shiro full in the chest, throwing him to the ground and leaving him gasping, the air driven from his lungs. They were being systematically dismantled, piece by piece, their hard won confidence crushed under the boot of dishonest power.

The breaking point was one of pure, desperate defiance. Antares, seeing Shiro falter from a particularly vicious chill wave, moved with Scorpio speed. He bypassed Shiro's guard, his hand snapping out not to strike, but to clamp around Shiro's throat. He lifted him and slammed him back against the cold, unyielding mosaic wall with a sickening thud.

"Had enough, gutter rat?" Antares hissed, his face inches from Shiro's, his breath a foul heat. "Ready to crawl back to your keeper?"

In a final, explosive act of will, Shiro, his vision darkening at the edges, drove his forehead forward. The impact was brutal, a wet, crunching sound of cartilage giving way. Blood erupted from Antares's nose, a shocking arterial spray that painted both their faces crimson.

Antares screamed, a raw, guttural sound of pain and blinding rage. He dropped Shiro, clutching his ruined face. "YOU FILTH!" he shrieked, his voice garbled. All pretence vanished, replaced by a need for mutilation. His eyes, wild and hate filled, locked onto the horrific X brand on Shiro's face. "You cherish this mark? I will make it a testament to your worthlessness!"

A real dagger, sleek and deadly, appeared in his hand from a hidden sheath. As Shiro tried to push himself up, Antares was on him, driving a knee into his chest, pinning him to the floor. He ignored Shiro's weak struggles, his entire focus on the brand.

"Let's see how your mothers like my improvements," he snarled, and brought the dagger point down.

The pain was an absolute. It was not the clean slice of a new wound, but the profound, violating agony of tearing open something partially healed, of ripping apart the fragile tapestry of nerve and flesh that was struggling to knit itself back together. Antares did not slice. He worked with a malicious, deliberate precision. He hooked the razor tip under the first of the thick, black stitches. The thread, designed to hold against trauma, resisted for a moment, stretching the inflamed flesh around it into a taut, white ridge, before it snapped with a sickeningly distinct ping. A line of fire, so intense it was a colour Shiro had never seen before, erupted across the brand. He screamed, a sound that was pure, animal torment, his body arching off the floor.

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Antares did not pause. Ping. A second stitch, tearing free, pulling a ribbon of skin and blood with it. Shiro's world dissolved into a white hot haze. Ping. A third. The brand, a symbol of Aella's cruelty, was now being defiled by another, the pain layered, compounded, becoming a hellish palimpsest of suffering. Ping. A fourth. His screams became ragged, wet sobs, his thrashing growing weaker. Ping. A fifth. Blood, hot and relentless, streamed down the side of his face, pooling in his ear and soaking into his hair. The X was now a ragged, bleeding ruin.

As Antares positioned the dagger for the sixth stitch, a roar of such pure, undiluted fury shook the very stones of the Refractorium. It was the sound of a bond breaking, of a line being crossed that could never be uncrossed.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HIM!"

Kuro saw it all. He saw the blood, the torn flesh, the utter violation in his brother's eyes. The strategic part of his mind shut down. What remained was a singularity of need, the need to protect. The Eagle's Talon was not a technique to be recalled; it was a truth to be enacted. His will to protect was the unbreakable grip.

There was no visible energy. Only a sound, a dry, sickening, unmistakable SNAP that cut through the air, louder than any spell.

Kuro, without moving, had focused the entirety of his being into the concept of Antares's wrist. The bones, the scaphoid, the lunate, gave way as if crushed in the fist of a god. The dagger clattered to the floor. Antares's scream was one of genuine, shocking agony, his eyes wide with disbelief at the raw, untamed power that had just broken him.

"Kill him!" Antares choked out, cradling his mangled wrist, his voice a mixture of agony and hysterical command. "Fucking hell! Kill him now!"

Seirios, Leander, and Rasha, their own courage evaporating in the face of this primal retaliation, dropped their wooden swords. In their hands, real daggers winked into existence, their edges gleaming with lethal stellar light. They advanced on Kuro, their faces masks of fear and murderous intent.

They never took a second step.

The air in the chamber died. The hum of latent power vanished, replaced by a silence so absolute it was a physical pressure. In the centre of the Refractorium, a presence manifested. It was not an arrival; it was a fundamental rewriting of local reality.

Lucifera stood there. Her form seemed both solid and impossibly sharp, as if she were a blade that had been unsheathed from the fabric of space itself. Her brilliant white eyes, usually pools of detached analysis, were now the cold, dead stars at the heart of a black hole. The fury radiating from her was not hot; it was absolute zero. It was the void that promised oblivion.

She moved. It was not speed; it was a negation of the space between points. One moment she was still, the next, she stood between the advancing boys and Kuro. There was no blur, only four discrete, perfect motions. A sharp, precise twist of a wrist, a dislocating jerk of an elbow, a numbing strike to a shoulder. Four soft, metallic clatters as the real daggers hit the floor, their owners disarmed and crippled with pain before their nervous systems could register the attack.

She came to a stop, her gaze sweeping over the four boys. It was not a look of anger, but of judgment. Final and absolute.

"You," she said, her voice a low, resonant vibration that seemed to freeze the blood in their veins. It was not the voice of the Sirius Councillor. It was the voice of the star itself, cold, remote, and merciless. "You little maggots. You dare to lay hands on what is mine. You dare to draw blood from my sons."

Her eyes locked on Seirios, and the boy flinched as if struck. "And you. Sirius blood. You use our gift, the scalpel that cuts truth from lies, for this… petty, vicious butchery. You are a cancer. A rot in the lineage." Her voice dropped to a whisper that promised not pain, but erasure. "If your dagger had touched my son's skin, I would have peeled the memory of light from your eyes and fed your consciousness to the hungriest void I could summon. Now, get out of my sight. Crawl back to the shadows you came from. If I ever see you near them again, the concept of your existence will be the next thing I dissect."

The terror that radiated from the four boys was a tidal wave. They did not run; they broke. Scrambling, falling, clutching broken wrists and dislocated joints, they fled in a blind panic, the sound of their retreat a pathetic echo in the vast chamber.

The moment they were gone, the sanctum's silence was shattered by a hurricane of desperate motion.

Nyxara, Statera, and Lyra erupted from the archway. There were no teasing nicknames, no playful lights. Their faces were pale, their expressions stark with a fear that was purely maternal.

"KURO!" Nyxara's voice was a raw, panicked cry. She was at his side in an instant, her hands trembling as they fluttered over his split lip, the bruise already darkening on his cheek. "By the stars, your face..."

Statera fell to her knees beside Shiro, a low, wounded sound escaping her. "Shiro... oh, my boy." Her Polaris light, usually a steady beacon, flickered wildly as she saw the ruin of his face, the five torn stitches, the blood streaming from the reopened brand, the agony etched into his features. Her hands, usually so steady, shook as she reached for him, not knowing where to touch without causing more pain.

The frantic energy of their arrival dissolved into a heart stopping silence, the kind that follows a disaster. Nyxara's hands, which had been checking Kuro's bruises, stilled, her fierce light softening to a shimmering, worried haze. She cupped his face, her thumbs gently stroking his temples.

"Look at me, my storm," she whispered, her voice thick. "Just look at me. Where does it hurt the most? Not the face, deeper. Tell me."

Kuro, disarmed by the sheer, undiluted worry in her eyes, found his own defiance crumbling. "My head… it rings," he admitted hoarsely. "From whatever that was."

Nyxara's breath hitched. She immediately shifted, pulling him against her, one hand cradling the back of his head, her light pulsing in a gentle, rhythmic pattern against his skull. "Shhh, I know. I know, my little one. Mommy's here. The noise will fade, I promise."

Across from them, Statera was murmuring a continuous, soft stream of words to Shiro, her Polaris glow enveloping him in a cool, calming radiance. "I'm here, my rain baby, I'm right here. Don't try to speak. Just breathe. Follow my light, just breathe with me." Her fingers, now steady, carefully brushed the hair back from his sweating forehead, avoiding the horrific, bleeding brand. Every ragged breath he took was a fresh wound in her own heart.

Lyra had sunk down beside them, her hands fluttering helplessly before she began to hum, a low, resonant melody that was not a song of power, but of pure, simple comfort, a lullaby from a forgotten childhood, meant to soothe and anchor a terrified soul.

Lucifera stood over them all, her usual sharpness replaced by a rigid, silent vigilance. Her brilliant white eyes scanned the chamber's entrance, her body a shield, but when she looked down at the huddle of her family, her expression was not one of fury, but of a profound, aching fear. The sight of their sons, broken and bleeding, had not ignited a thirst for vengeance, but had exposed the terrifying depth of a love that felt, in that moment, terrifyingly fragile.

Lyra was at Kuro's other side, her melodic voice fractured into a wordless, keening hum of distress as her hands checked him for other injuries, her touch frantic.

Lucifera turned from the archway, the cosmic fury in her eyes banked but not extinguished. She strode to Kuro, her gaze sweeping over him, assessing the damage. Her voice was low and stern, devoid of any affection, yet layered with a grim, undeniable approval. "Kuro. Breaking his wrist was a loss of control. A dangerous one." She paused, her eyes flicking to Shiro's bleeding face, and her voice hardened. "But he deserved far worse for what he did. Remember this feeling. This rage. It is a weapon. Learn to wield it, do not let it wield you."

The twins, battered, bleeding, and shell shocked, could only lay there as the four women descended upon them. The air was thick with the scent of blood and ozone, and the only sounds were their ragged breaths, the mothers' frantic whispers, and the soft, terrible drip of Shiro's blood on the celestial mosaic. In the devastating silence that followed the storm, surrounded by the fierce, terrifying, and utterly serious protectiveness of their mothers, they understood the true nature of the bond that now held them. It was not just love. It was a covenant, written in blood and fury, and it was unbreakable.