The grand, frozen corridors of the Corona Regis were not merely occupied; they were a theatre of ossified judgment, and the audience was composed of Spectres woven from starlight and silent, ancient malice. The architecture itself seemed to lean in, the serpentine veins of dormant silver in the basalt walls pulsing with a faint, voyeuristic light. As the procession advanced, every arched doorway, every shadowed niche sculpted into the semblance of screaming faces or weeping giants, held a still, watching form. The whispers were not merely heard; they were a psychic fungus growing on the silence, a miasma of condescension that seeped into the very air.

"The rumoured Falak heir... carried like a suckling babe, see how the light of his shame burns brighter than any royal sigil..."

"And the other one... the foundling... perched like a pet songbird on a branch of fading melody. How it preens with borrowed dignity..."

"See how the Sirius Councillor demeans herself... and him... it is a symphony of degradation."

The guardians' baby talk became a performance, a weaponized liturgy of love projected to the highest, most distant balconies where figures of pure shadow and crystallized sound observed with unblinking, multifaceted eyes.

"Is the Storm Baby holding on tight?" Lucifera's voice was a clarion call of condescension that echoed in the cavernous spaces, each syllable sharpened to a psychic point. "We mustn't let the wittle prince fall! His widdle legs are still so wobbly from all his big, strong growing! Like a new born fawn on a pane of cosmic ice!"

The first deliberate stop was before a tall, gaunt figure composed of interlocking geometric shadows that seemed to drink the very light from the air, Umbra'vil of Algol. The envoy's obsidian eyes, like chips of a dead star, swept over Kuro with detached, analytical hunger, as if assessing a specimen of fascinating, failed potential.

"Umbra'vil!" Lucifera chirped, her voice a grotesque parody of pleasantry. "Look what I have! This is my nephew, Kuro! My little Storm Baby! He's having a bit of a grumpy morning, but he's usually just precious. A bit fussy , but we love him anyway! Can you say hello to the nice void man, Kuro? Can you give him a wittle wave?"

Kuro remained rigid, his face a mask of fury, pointedly looking away. A low, derisive hiss, like steam escaping a fissure in reality, emanated from Umbra'vil. "The progeny shows... spirit. A volatile asset. Prone to... combustion. It will be interesting to see if it extinguishes itself or consumes its vessel."

"Oh, he's just shy!" Nyxara declared, jostling him so his head lolled pathetically. "All that stormy energy has to go somewhere! We're thinking of getting him a rattle. Something loud and distracting to occupy his widdle hands!"

They moved on, the Algol's cold, amused gaze burning into Kuro's back like a brand of liquid nitrogen. The swap came next, a fresh violation executed with seamless, humiliating precision. Kuro was transferred from Luci's back to Nyxara's, his new position offering no solace, only a different angle from which to view his own powerlessness.

Lyra then paused before a pair of serene, silent Sirius observers, their forms sharp and indistinct as shards of broken mirror, reflecting a thousand fractured images of the shameful parade. "Sisters! Witness my charge, Shiro! The Rain Baby! See how he rides upon the melody of our journey? He is learning the harmony of obedience! His song is one of quiet, flustered acceptance, a delicate counterpoint to the dissonant roars of his brother!"

Then, another swap. Shiro was lifted from Lyra's shoulders and settled onto Statera's back. The constant, public trading of their bodies was a brutal, unspoken reminder that they were possessions, beloved but ultimately helpless chattel in this new, terrifying ecosystem of affection.

The pressure in Kuro was building, a tectonic plates grinding against the very bedrock of his sanity. The next stop was a cluster of Betelgeuse envoys, massive, humanoid forms of cooling basalt, their skin cracked with faint, pulsing orange light like the arteries of a dying world. Phthoriel was among them.

"Nyxara," the Betelgeuse rumbled, his voice like continents colliding in slow motion. "Your... offspring. They are... smaller than reported. More... malleable."

"But no less fierce!" Nyxara laughed, bouncing Kuro on her hip as if he were an infant. "This one is my little storm cloud! He's all thunder and lightning! Aren't you, my tempest? Are you going to make a big, loud boom for the nice lava men?"

Kuro's jaw was clenched so tight his teeth ached. The Betelgeuse's fissures pulsed with what might have been laughter, a sound like mountains grinding themselves to dust. "A storm is only fearsome if it can touch the ground. This one appears... grounded. Pacified. A pretty noise in a sealed jar."

A snicker, like grinding pebbles in an abyssal tide, came from another Betelgeuse. The condescension from these hulking warriors, who respected only raw, unmediated power, was the final straw. The pressure cooker of his pride, primed by the Algol's cold analysis and the Sirius's silent judgment, could hold no more.

The breaking point came when they encountered an elegant woman from the Altair clan, her form woven from captured constellations, a living star chart of terrible, sharp beauty. "Nyxara! It is good to see you whole. And these must be the boys who have caused such a stir in the war room."

"They are!" Nyxara beamed, adjusting Kuro on her back as if displaying a prize. "This is my son, Kuro! My little storm baby! He's being such a good boy today, aren't you, darling? Not trying to escape or use any of those icky, naughty words!"

The Altair woman, named Aquilina, smiled a gentle, pitying smile that was a thousand times worse than the Betelgeuse's mockery. It was the smile of a celestial cartographer looking at a damaged, but charmingly flawed, map. "He has your fire, Nyxara. Even if it is, for the moment, a hearth fire one must gently bank lest it singe the nursery."

That was it. The word "bank." As if his spirit, his very will, were mere embers to be managed, controlled, and contained.

"I am not a fucking storm baby!" Kuro roared, the profanity a supernova of defiance in the hushed, judgmental corridor. "I am Kuro and you will not speak to me or of me as if I am a goddamn infant in a cradle! I am a weapon! A strategist! I am…"

Nyxara's face crumpled into an expression of profound, theatrical grief, a performance of maternal despair so vast it seemed to dim the very light in the hall. "Oh, Kuro!" she wailed, her voice a seismic wave of disappointment that rattled the crystalline formations overhead. "My son! Such filth! Such ugliness from your mouth! In front of my dearest friend! You have poisoned the very air with your temper!" She turned a tear filled gaze to Lucifera, her voice scaling into a shriek of mock panic. "Aunt Luci! He has done it again! The naughty, the vewy, VEWY naughty baby needs his medicine! Now! Before he corrupts the entire court with his gutter speak!"

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The scene that followed was a public execution of dignity, a ritual unmasking on a cosmic scale. As Kuro screamed and thrashed, a wild, desperate animal caught on Nyxara's back, Lucifera approached with the pacifier, her face a mask of stern, loving authority. His struggles were not the controlled defiance of before; they were the frantic, uncoordinated flailing of a trapped child, his movements pathetic and useless against their practiced, inevitable strength.

"No! DON'T TOUCH ME! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU! I'LL BURN THIS PALACE TO THE GROUND!" he shrieked, his voice cracking into a humiliating squeak, each threat more brittle and desperate than the last.

"Hush, hush, my poor, savage little thing," Lucifera cooed, her voice carrying to every distant balcony and shadowed archway. "The big, bad words are so scary, aren't they? But we have just the thing for nasty, angry mouths." With Nyxara holding his head in a grip of loving iron, Luci pried his jaw open with terrifying, maternal efficiency and slipped the smooth, humming stone onto his tongue.

The effect was instantaneous. His screams were cut off, replaced by choked, muffled grunts. "MMMPH! GMMMPH!" Tears of pure, helpless rage instantly welled in his eyes and overflowed, streaming down his face in hot, shameful rivers. The pacifier's magic was a palpable force, a soporific hum that vibrated through his skull, smothering his coherent thought under a blanket of enforced calm.

And then the true, relentless torment began.

"Aww, look!" Statera exclaimed, her voice a piercing, sympathetic chime that grated on the nerves. "The poor Storm Baby is so upset! He's crying because he knows he was a vewy, vewy bad boy! He's sorry he made all those icky sounds!"

"He's not crying, he's weeping!" Lyra corrected, her tone one of poetic ecstasy. "He weeps the song of shattered pride! It is a tragic, beautiful melody of infantile despair! Listen to the dissonance of his sobs against the hum of his pacifier! It is a masterpiece of pathos!"

Kuro, in a fresh wave of humiliation, brought his hands up to claw at the pacifier, to rip the instrument of his shame from his face. But his fingers fumbled, numb with panic, fury, and the stone's magic. He couldn't get a grip. The more he failed, the more the hot, shameful tears fell, which in turn provoked more baby talk, a feedback loop of degradation.

"Is the naughty baby trying to take his paci out?" Nyxara asked, her voice thick with fake sorrow. "Doesn't he know that's against the rules? Bad babies who swear don't get to decide when their medicine is done. They get their yucky words taken away until they learn to be sweet!"

His attempts became more frantic, his grunts more desperate. Each failed grab at the leather cord, each fumbling slip of his fingers, was a public demonstration of his helplessness, a silent scream of impotence that the entire court witnessed. A fresh, torrential wave of sobs wracked his body, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

"Oh, dear, now he's made himself all worked up!" Lucifera announced with a sigh, as if commenting on a minor weather disturbance. She didn't just take him back; she gathered him from Nyxara's back and, with a deft motion, set him down on the cold, hard floor. Not gently, but with a firm thud that sent a jolt through his already trembling frame. He sat there, slumped, a weeping, pacified infant abandoned in the centre of the grand corridor.

"Since the Storm Baby wants to act like a naughty, fussy infant having a tantrum," Lucifera declared, her voice ringing out, "then that is what he shall have. A public time out. So everyone can see what happens to bad babies who use nasty words."

For a full minute, he was left there. The silence of the court was absolute, a vacuum of judgment that pressed in on him from all sides. A hundred pairs of eyes, star dusted, shadow cloaked, molten furious, stared at him. He was a specimen under a glass, a prince reduced to a sobbing, pacified heap on the cold stone. The weight of those gazes was a physical pressure, an astronomical force crushing his spirit. He could feel the cold of the floor seeping through his clothes, the hum of the pacifier a maddening counterpoint to the silent laughter he felt emanating from the watchers. His breath hitched, his chest tightened, and the last vestige of his control, already paper thin, vaporized.

A low, guttural sob escaped around the pacifier, then another, and then he broke. He didn't just cry; he burst. Great, shuddering, hopeless sobs that tore through him with the force of a stellar collapse. He curled in on himself, his body convulsing, tears flooding down his face, his cries loud and ragged and utterly despairing, a heart breaking sound that the pacifier could not fully silence. "MMMPH HMMPH! HMMM MPH!" It was the sound of a soul being publicly flayed.

The guardians, who had been watching with stern satisfaction, now feigned a panicked, over the top concern, their voices rising in a chorus of cloying, mocking baby talk that echoed through the hall, ensuring his breakdown was framed in the most humiliating way possible.

"OH STARS ABOVE! THE WITTLE STORM BABY IS CRYING!" Nyxara shrieked, her hands flying to her cheeks in theatrical alarm. "WHAT'S WROONG, MY WITTLE TEMPEST? DID YOU MAKE YOURSELF TOO ANGY? ARE YOUR WIDDLE FEELINGS ALL HURT?"

"OH, THE POOR, POOR INFANT!" Statera wailed, kneeling nearby but not touching him, making him the sole focus of the spectacle. "HE'S SO UPSET! HE WORKED HIMSELF INTO A LITTLE FYUZY! DOES HE NEED A BINKY? OH WAIT, HE ALREADY HAS ONE! IS IT NOT WORKING?"

"LISTEN TO HIM WAIL!" Lucifera boomed, her voice a mix of mock sympathy and absolute authority. "SUCH A BIG NOISE FOR SUCH A SMALL BABY! IS THE NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY BOY SAD THAT HE'S BEEN A NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY BOY? YES, HE IS! HE'S CRYING HIS WIDDLE EYES OUT!"

"THE SONG OF HIS SPIRIT IS A DIRGE OF BROKEN PRIDE!" Lyra sang out, her voice the most piercing of all. "A SYMPHONY OF SOGGY SORROW! A MASTERPIECE OF MELTDOWN! COMPOSE YOURSELVES, COURTIERS, YOU WITNESS HISTORY! THE DAY THE STORM BABY LEARNED THE WEIGHT OF HIS OWN TANTRUM!"

Their voices overlapped, a cacophony of loving mockery that hammered into him, each word a needle of exquisite humiliation. He was naked in his despair, and they were dressing him in the clothes of a hysterical infant for the entire cosmos to see. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he could only feel the overwhelming, cataclysmic shame and the desperate, suffocating need for it to stop, even as he knew, in a shattered corner of his mind, that this was a lesson being carved into his very being with tools of affection and public ridicule. This was the ultimate humiliation, a psychological scar that would never, ever fade.

Finally, after what felt like an aeon of this exquisite torment, Lucifera moved. She didn't scoop him up with comfort. She hoisted him unceremoniously by his armpits, his legs dangling, his body limp and wrecked from sobbing. "There, there, you dreadful little storm cloud," she murmured, her voice still dripping with that infuriating, fake sympathy as she cradled him against her chest. He didn't resist. He was hollowed out. His head lolled against her shoulder, his tears soaking into her robe, his hitching sobs the only sign he wasn't completely catatonic.

"The paci comes out when you've learned your lesson, Storm Baby," Lucifera whispered into his ear, her voice a silken threat as she began to walk again, the procession resuming its shameful march. "But after a public performance like that? A spectacle of such magnificent, catastrophic emotional failure? I think you'll be wearing it until the constellations themselves forget your name. Now hush. The scary, embarrassing part is over. For now."

As they moved on, the last thing Kuro heard, before the merciful silence of the Lyra Gardens engulfed them, was the faint, echoing sound of courtly applause, a sound like shifting glaciers and tinkling cosmic ice, celebrating the most complete and utter defeat of his life.

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