My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 184: To Wither and Rot

Each step sank a little deeper than the last. Elias didn’t lift his boots so much as drag them forward, toes kicking through the grit as the sand shifted underfoot. It clung to the blood soaking through the side of his thigh—warm at first, now sticky, heavy. The fabric of his sleepwear tore a little more with every movement. His leg burned where the spear had passed too close, shallow enough to miss anything vital, deep enough to leave him limping.

The heat was old and dry, baked into the stone. Smoke still lingered from earlier fights—metal scorched, plasma-burnt. It stung in the back of his throat when he breathed too hard. The torches lining the arena walls spat flame at uneven intervals, and each one stretched his shadow across the sand, twisting with the rise and fall of his chest. The sky overhead looked like ash: flat, gray, low enough to touch. Like it might crush them if the match dragged on.

He kept moving.

Across the pit, Kikaru stood still. Twenty paces. Maybe less. Her silhouette was cast in red from the monitors overhead—sharp lines, burned edges. Her Ikona flared behind her in hard, uneven pulses, not just angry but strained. She hadn’t moved either. Not since the last exchange.

Her plasma spear hummed at her side, tip glowing white. Not steady. Flickering. The kind of heat that didn’t hold shape long. She was breathing harder than he remembered. Her mouth opened, but it took her a second to speak.

"You think you can wait me out?" Her voice cracked at the edges. "After what you did, Elias? You left us to rot."

Her Ikona surged. Gold traced up her arms in quick, branching veins, so bright it made the glass beneath her boots ripple. He watched her feet shift once—just enough to realign her stance. She wasn’t trying to intimidate him. She was bracing for a second throw.

And the only reason she hadn’t done it yet... was because part of her still didn’t believe he’d get back up.

Why did her words still cut like that? Elias ducked as her spear arced, the beam searing the air above his head, sand crackling where it struck. "Dot—lattice!" he grunted, voice strained. Dot’s blue form flickered at his side, her hum sharp as a steel spring lattice snapped into place beneath the sand. The construct twisted, warped by the arena’s glass veins pulsing faintly below, their energy tugging at his shard like a hook in his chest.

The lattice snapped up beneath her just as she lunged. Steel coils twisted out of the sand, anchored into the glass-veined floor. One caught her ankle mid-step.

Her shield went up on reflex, but her balance was already off. The spear veered sideways as her knee buckled, its tip carving a jagged line through the air before stabbing deep into the sand. She recovered fast—too fast. Her body kicked into overdrive, plasma snapping in a sudden burst around her as she twisted and brought the weapon down. The lattice didn’t hold. The coils split apart with a blinding crack, heat tearing through them like wire in a storm surge.

The air warped in her wake.

Elias ducked and rolled, coughing grit from his mouth. The sand was in his teeth, under his nails. Static crawled under his skin. His vision tilted as he came up again—just enough to catch the way the plasma trailed behind her. Not clean. Not tight. The spear was flaring in jagged bursts, lightning-shaped and unstable.

That was new.

He tracked the next pulse of it and saw how it bent—like the heat was reacting to her own rhythm, not just movement. Her rage was leaking through it. Stress fracturing the shape.

She was pushing herself too far.

He forced himself upright, legs shaking as blood ran from the edge of his thigh to his boot. "I didn’t want this!" he shouted, breath catching mid-sentence. "I was trying to save Junjio—trying to save you!"

Kikaru’s laugh cut across the space like glass underfoot. She stepped forward, spear lowered for a second, her shield dragging sparks from the floor. "Save us?" Her voice cracked in the middle. "You bound us, Elias. You chose him over me."

Her body blurred—Refraction Control. The light around her bent just enough to throw off his depth. Her image shimmered as she moved, difficult to pin down, harder to watch.

The veins running through the arena pulsed in response, energy humming up through the glass. It pulled at him again—low in his gut, just under the shard. He blinked hard. Dots swam in his vision. His footing shifted.

He braced his stance without thinking, boots grinding deeper into the sand.

Could he stop her without losing everything?

Pain flared through his shoulder as he hit the ground again, the plasma beam having grazed him on the way down. It felt like a branding iron had torn through both fabric and skin in one motion. His arm didn’t move right when he tried to shift it—nerves twitching from the shock.

He gritted his teeth and pushed through it, rolling onto his knees. The sand felt coarse under his palms, almost sharp, like the arena itself was rejecting his weight. His elbow dragged through the grit, sticky with blood. He planted his good arm forward to stabilize.

There was no room left. No cover. No plan. Just sand and heat and her.

"Dot—shield!" His voice cracked with it. Dry. Scraped raw from the heat.

Her glow pulsed once, sharp and immediate. A steel plate rose in front of him just as the hum from the veins in the ground surged again. The air twisted. The metal warped at the edges. Kikaru’s spear struck a second later with enough force to rattle through his wrists. Sparks burst out in scattered arcs as the shield groaned under the impact.

It held.

But just barely. Hairline fractures spidered through the center like ice on glass. Another strike, and it would collapse.

Elias steadied his breath, but his chest felt hollow. His arms ached from holding the plate. Every muscle warned him it wasn’t going to last much longer.

"You don’t get to talk!" Kikaru’s voice rang out again—louder now, unsteady with something sharp buried underneath. Her shield stayed raised, but her steps were fast, deliberate. The ground beneath her feet shimmered with warped heat as her Ikona pushed plasma into motion.

"You bound us, Elias! You left for a stupid mission prompt!"

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