The first sign was a subtle tightening around Kuro's mouth. The wry, embarrassed smile he'd worn during the teasing vanished, replaced by a bloodless, rigid line. His single, storm grey eye, which had been alight with rare warmth, clouded over, focusing on some internal, horrifying horizon. A fine tremor started in his hands, rattling against the fur of his blanket.

Across the divan, Shiro's breathing hitched. The comfortable, drowsy rhythm stuttered. His single amber eye flew open, wide and unseeing for a moment, before the consciousness of pain flooded in. It was a wave, building from the deep, internal bruising left by Aella's boots, cresting with the searing, blasphemous fire of the X brand on his face.

He drew a sharp, wet breath to scream.

Nyxara's hand was there in an instant, clamping over his mouth with a mother's terrifying speed. Her other hand found Kuro's shoulder, gripping it hard, a silent command for silence.

"No sounds," she whispered, her voice a blade of strained steel. Her multi hued eyes were wide with shared panic, reflecting the dawning horror in her sons. "The patrols. The corridors outside are not empty. A scream in this dead place would be a beacon."

The order was a cruelty worse than the pain. The agony demanded voice. It was a living thing, a parasite of pure sensation that needed to be expelled through the throat or it would devour the mind from within.

Kuro's body arched, a silent, rigid bowstring of torment. A strangled, guttural sound, like the death rattle of a beast, was muffled by the sheer force of his will, vibrating against his clenched teeth. Tears of pure, animal suffering welled in his eye and traced hot paths through the grime on his cheeks.

Shiro was less controlled. The pain was a white hot star going supernova behind his eye socket. He thrashed against Nyxara's hold, a frantic, weak struggle. His scream, trapped behind her palm, was a high, desperate whine that seemed to shake his very bones.

"Lucifera," Statera's voice was low, urgent, stripped of all its earlier melody. She was already moving, her own pain forgotten, her Polaris light sharpening into a beam of focused purpose. "Something to stifle sound. Now."

Lucifera was already there. She didn't move with haste, but with a devastating, silent efficiency that was more frightening than panic. From a fold of her robes, she produced two strips of soft, clean leather. Without a word, she gently but immovably pried Nyxara's hand from Shiro's mouth and replaced it with the gag, tying it securely behind his head. He fought her for a second, a wild, terrified animal, before the fight left him, replaced by a shuddering, silent sob as the leather stifled his anguish.

She repeated the process with Kuro. He didn't fight. He merely opened his mouth, his body trembling violently, and accepted the violation. His eye, locked on Nyxara's, was a well of such profound, helpless suffering that she felt her own heart crack anew.

The sanctum was now a chamber of silent horrors. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire, the ragged, nasal breathing through clogged nostrils, and the terrible, wet, muffled sounds of screams that could not find freedom. Their bodies were the canvases upon which their agony was painted in violent strokes: backs arching, fists clenching and unclenching, feet scrambling uselessly against the furs.

Statera knelt between them, the chest of medicines open beside her. Her face was a mask of compassionate ruthlessness.

"Listen to me," she said, her voice cutting through their private hells. She held up a small, crystalline vial filled with a substance that seemed to writhe with a faint, silver light. "This is a more potent Luminis salve. It will cool the burn. It will soothe the raw nerves. But it must be applied. The contact… it will be intense."

She looked from Shiro's terrified eye to Kuro's resigned one. She forced a lightness into her tone, a grotesque parody of her earlier teasing, a lifeline of normality thrown into the abyss. "Consider this the easy part. A little sting. Tomorrow… tomorrow, my brave little infants, we must sew you back together. And for that, the sedatives are gone. We need you awake. We need you still. So, enjoy this momentary discomfort."

The promise was a fresh torture. Tomorrow held a new, sharper blade.

She didn't wait for a response. She dipped her fingers into the vial. The salve clung to her skin, glowing with a cold, fey light.

She went to Shiro first. He flinched back as her hand approached his face, a low, desperate moan escaping around the gag. His eye was wild, pleading.

"I know, my rain baby," she whispered, her own tears finally falling. "I know. Be brave for me. Just for a moment."

Her fingers made contact with the ruined flesh of the X brand.

The effect was cataclysmic.

It was not cooling. It was not soothing. It was a new kind of agony, a searing, cosmic cold that felt like liquid nitrogen being poured into the wound. It was the absolute zero of pain, a cold so profound it became a fire. Shiro's body jack knifed. A scream, perfectly silenced by the leather, tore through him with such force that Nyxara had to throw her body across his legs to hold him down. His back bowed off the divan, every muscle corded and straining against an enemy that was inside him.

Statera worked quickly, her touch feather light yet relentless, spreading the glistening silver salve over every millimetre of the burned, ravaged tissue. With each pass, his silent convulsions intensified. When she was done, she sat back, breathing heavily, her face pale. The salve sank into the wound, and the visible, angry red inflammation began to recede, but the price had been a temporary escalation into a realm of pain that bordered on the metaphysical.

Kuro watched it all, his own pain forgotten in the horrific spectacle of his brother's suffering. His eye was wide with a shared terror.

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Then it was his turn.

Statera approached with a second vial. This salve was black and thick, like tar dredged from a lightless ocean trench. It smelled of grave earth and frozen metals.

"For the eye," she stated, her voice trembling slightly. "To keep the darkness at bay. To fight the corruption Athena left behind."

Kuro squeezed his eye shut. He gave a single, sharp, jerky nod. Do it.

Nyxara held his head steady, her hands framing his face, her own eyes squeezed shut as if she could absorb the pain through her touch.

The moment the black salve touched his ruined socket, Kuro understood Shiro's reaction.

It was not cold. It was a presence. It was a thick, sentient sludge that seemed to writhe into the shattered orb, a million tiny, icy claws scrabbling and digging into the raw nerve endings. It was a violation so intimate, so deeply personal, that it bypassed pain and became a form of spiritual rape. His body, which had been trembling, went utterly rigid. A single, silent, breathless scream locked in his chest. His good eye rolled back in his head, showing the white.

Lucifera, observing dispassionately, noted, "Physiological response indicates, the pain is likely transcending somatic parameters and achieving a psychic resonance."

Statera finished packing the socket, her jaw set. The black tar seemed to absorb the light around it, making the injury look like a hole into nothingness.

For a long moment, the only movement was the violent, shuddering aftershocks wracking their bodies. The initial, world ending peak of the salve's application began to recede, leaving behind the original, "dull" agony, which now felt almost manageable by comparison. Their breathing began to slow from frantic, nasal gasps to ragged, sobbing pulls of air.

Slowly, carefully, Statera reached over and untied Shiro's gag. He sucked in a huge, shuddering breath, but no scream followed. Only a broken, wet sob. She did the same for Kuro, who merely turned his head and vomited weakly onto the stones beside the divan, his body wracked with dry heaves.

The worst was over. The salves were working, their magic now a cool, numb blanket slowly smothering the inferno.

But Statera did not look relieved. She looked at their ashen, sweat soaked faces, at the way they flinched at her slightest movement. She looked at the vial of Luminis salve, then at the needle and thread laid out for the morrow's butchery.

A new, terrifying resolve settled on her features.

"No," she whispered, almost to herself.

She reached into the chest and pulled out a different instrument. It was a slender syringe, filled with a liquid that was not silver or black, but a deep, mesmerizing violet. It seemed to swirl with a light of its own.

"Change of plan," she said, her voice hollow.

Both boys' eyes snapped to her, to the needle. A fresh, different kind of terror dawned, the terror of the unknown.

"Wh't 's 'at?" Shiro slurred, trying to push himself away.

"The salves… they are a temporary measure. The pain will return in waves, stronger each time," Statera explained, her voice clinical, forcing herself to detach. "You will scream. You will bring the entire palace down upon us. I cannot stitch you while you are like this. This…" she held up the syringe, "…is a direct infusion. An extreme sleeping agent. It will not heal you. It will shut you down. For about twelve hours. When you wake, the worst of the inflammation will be passed. Then… then I can sew."

"No," Kuro gasped, trying to sit up. "No, you said… tomorrow…"

"The situation has evolved," Lucifera stated, her voice supporting Statera's grim decision. "The risk of discovery is too high. This is the logical choice."

"It is the only choice," Nyxara said, her voice thick with grief. She looked at her son. "It is a kindness, Kuro. A retreat. Let go."

But they were warriors. A needle was a weapon, and it was coming for them. As Statera approached Shiro first, he tried to scramble back, a weak, pathetic crab like motion. "No… Mother, please… not a needle… anything but that…"

It was a child's fear, primal and absolute.

Nyxara and Lucifera moved as one. There was no malice in it, only a grim, loving necessity. Nyxara held Shiro's shoulders, murmuring soft, meaningless comforts into his hair. Lucifera pinned his legs with an effortless, unbreakable grip.

Statera's hand did not shake. She found a vein in his arm, and before he could plead again, she plunged the needle in.

The effect was instantaneous. His struggles ceased. His eye lost focus, the amber light dimming to a soft, hazy glow. A sigh of pure, blissful nothingness escaped his lips, and he sank into the furs, asleep.

Kuro was next. He didn't fight. He just stared at the needle with his one good eye, a look of utter betrayal on his face. "You promised," he whispered to Statera.

"I promised to make you whole," she replied, her voice cracking. "This is the path."

She injected him. His rigid body went limp. The storm in his grey eye was quelled, replaced by an empty, calm sea. He was out.

The silence that returned to the sanctum was absolute and heavy. The battlefield was won. The patients were subdued.

Wordlessly, exhausted, Statera turned her skills on Nyxara, cleaning and properly stitching the gash on her thigh with quick, precise movements. Nyxara bore it in silence, her hand resting on Kuro's still chest. Then, Statera tended to her own shoulder, her face a mask of concentration as she sutured her own flesh without a sound, a testament to a lifetime of discipline.

When it was done, the three women were spent. The energy required to hold back the horror, to inflict pain to cause healing, had emptied them.

Nyxara didn't speak. She simply lay down on the wide divan, pulling Kuro's unconscious form against her, wrapping her arms around him as if he were still the small boy he'd never been allowed to be. Statera did the same on Shiro's side, curling her body around his, her head resting near his, her hand on his heart to feel its steady, drugged beat.

They were a portrait of exhaustion and protection, two queens clinging to their broken sons in the heart of a dead kingdom.

Lucifera watched for a moment. The scene was illogical. It was inefficient. It was the most defenceless they could possibly be. And it was, therefore, the moment they were most in need of a sentinel.

She did not join the pile. Instead, she extinguished the main hearth fire, plunging the room into the deep, bloody gloom of the dying Tapestry. She stood for a moment, a silhouette against the faint light, watching the four forms on the divan settle into the uneasy stillness of trauma and drugged sleep. The silence was a physical weight.

The unyielding sentinel posture finally broke. A deep weariness, earned from the brutal flight through the tunnels and the psychological toll of the evening, seemed to settle into her bones. She was not a machine, and the body that had carried a prince for hours now demanded its due.

Quietly, she moved to a small, arched doorway set into the far wall of the sanctum, the entrance to Nyxara's private spare room, a place for handmaidens or honoured guests in a lifetime long past. She pushed the heavy curtain aside and disappeared inside.

The room was small, spartan, and cold. A simple bed with a thin mattress and a single fur lay in the corner. It was a world away from the communal nest of furs in the main chamber, but it was shelter. It was privacy.

Lucifera did not bother to undress. She simply lay down on the bed, pulling the single fur over herself. The actions were not those of the deadly Sirius councillor, but of a soldier finally off duty. Her brilliant white eyes closed. The constant, analytical hum of her mind stilled. For the first time since the ambush in the fissure, Lucifera allowed herself to truly rest, her body surrendering to the profound exhaustion she had held at bay for so long. The Councillor was gone. Luci was asleep, finally granting her own strained muscles and weary mind the same mercy she had given her nephews. The sanctum, and its precious, vulnerable occupants, were left to the guard of silence and stone.

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