My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 209: A wealth of Space

Walls began to rise.

Not built. Not summoned. They simply manifested—stone and structure bleeding up from the nothing between tiles, forming around the path like memory solidifying into architecture. Their surfaces were rough, a patchwork of cracked black stone and crystalline bone, threaded through with pulsing red veins that beat faintly beneath the surface, like heartlines wired into the Expanse itself.

The walls didn’t rise alone.

They spiraled upward, stretching into a single massive structure—twisting like a tower of vertebrae. Jagged. Uneven. Alive in the way old things are alive. Its silhouette loomed over the void, each sharp angle catching fragments of starlight torn from the sky above. Ancient gothic spires broke along its crown—more ruins than design, but none of them fallen.

It stood like a monument to decay.

Like a fortress carved from the skeleton of something older.

Then a gate dropped in front of them.

Massive. Wooden. A groan tore through the Expanse as it fell—slow, final. The wood was dark and warped, carved with runes that glowed faintly with pale blue soul energy. They shimmered across the grain like veins beneath thin skin.

The sound echoed like thunder dragged across steel, the vibration rattling through the air as the gate settled fully into place.

The godless crucifix continued forward, his steps silent against the cracked stone floor of the corridor beyond the gate. The crimson mist followed in a slow coil, trailing like a second cloak, while the red lining of his mantle caught the fractured starlight bleeding through the rifts above—brief smears of color thrown across the uneven walls.

Elias’s soul drifted behind him.

His blue glow pulsed faintly, no longer as strained, but still burdened. The ache of Kikaru’s absence, of Dot’s silent capture, remained lodged inside him—unspoken, but not forgotten.

The corridor was narrow, but tall, its walls slanted inward just slightly, forming a long funnel of shadow. The mist curled up along the edges of the stone, bleeding from the cracks like breath rising from cold lungs. And in the space beyond, the silence bent again.

A voice stirred.

His own.

"Who... who is that?" Elias asked.

His glow flickered with curiosity, his voice a soft tremor cutting across the silence.

The corridor widened.

A single wooden table sat near the far end, lit only by faint green light reflected through a cluster of glass vials. A woman with auburn hair leaned over it, her hands moving with practiced precision as she mixed the contents of the containers—one green, one gold, one faintly gray. The liquids shifted as she worked, reacting to her movement without being touched. They glided toward one another, swirling mid-air before settling back into glass.

The scent in the room changed—herbs, sharp oils, something copper-lined that prickled behind Elias’s presence.

Her hair was pulled back into a loose braid. Strands had escaped, framing the pale outline of her face as she worked. She didn’t look up. Didn’t speak. Her focus never broke from the vials.

Each container clinked softly against the next. That sound—measured and real—cut through the chamber like it didn’t belong to the Expanse at all.

And from her fingertips came a low, steady hum.

Spirit energy.

Not powerful. But refined.

It moved with her, shaping the liquids gently, guiding their blend. Nothing forced. Nothing explosive.

Just control. Perfected over time.

She still hadn’t noticed them. Or if she had, she didn’t care.

The godless crucifix’s silver eyes flicked toward the woman. He didn’t stop walking.

A faint smile touched the edge of his mouth, not in recognition—just familiarity. His resonant voice filled the corridor as he moved, low and weighty, the sound bending the air slightly around his presence.

"Don’t worry about it for now," he said.

Each word pressed outward like pressure in the stone. The crimson mist stirred at his feet in response, and the carved runes along the corridor walls trembled faintly, their pale glow flickering with residual tension.

He led Elias’s soul deeper into the tower.

The corridor gave way to a broader chamber. The transition wasn’t marked by doors or thresholds—just space folding open, the mist shifting back to allow passage.

The air turned colder.

Heavier.

The scent of decay thickened here, sharp and clinging. It wrapped around the ozone trail left by the crucifix’s cloak, forming a layer of stillness that deadened even the echoes of their passing. frёeωebɳovel.com

The room was stark—no carvings, no scattered remnants of age or use. Its walls were smooth and seamless, carved from the same crystalline bone as the outer spires. But here, the red veins ran deeper. Slower. The pulse of spirit hunger bled through the surface like a heartbeat slowed to near silence.

At the center of the room hovered a single black screen. Perfectly flat. Suspended inches above the cracked stone floor. Its surface mirrored nothing—just reflected back soullight like water in the dark.

Around it floated thousands of tiny pale-blue dots.

Each hovered motionless in place. Each one faint, but steady.

A constellation without sky—captured essences suspended like frozen breath.

The godless crucifix stopped before the screen.

His silver eyes narrowed slightly. The smile still lingered, but it no longer touched his gaze. He studied the field of hovering lights in silence for a breath—then let his voice rise again.

"Tell me..." he said.

His words were slower now. Deliberate.

"What was his name?"

Elias’s glow pulsed, his voice faint but steady, cutting through the hum of the room.

"Dorian Kael," he said.

The name came without hesitation, but the weight behind it pressed deeper than the void around them. The ache of Kikaru’s absence, of Dot’s capture, still sat inside him—but this was different. The memory of his father pulled from another place. A thread of sorrow long tangled, now stretched thin.

His glow flickered with the effort, but held.

The godless crucifix raised his hand.

The black screen didn’t ripple or change immediately. It simply responded.

The pale-blue dots hovering above it began to shift—first in rhythm, then in form. Their pulses aligned to the crucifix’s presence, as if his manipulation of spirit energy called them into focus. One by one, they drifted into tighter clusters.

He didn’t speak.

His silver eyes narrowed, the faint smile fading completely as his focus deepened. His hand didn’t shake. His posture didn’t change. But the tension in the air grew heavier.

Not pressure—expectation.

Thousands of icons moved across the screen.

Small points of faint light, each a soul marker, each carrying the residue of a name long left behind. Their pattern twisted across the surface like stars falling through gravity, pulled inward toward some invisible center.

Sixty-five. Then ten. Then five.

Then three.

The last flickered. Briefly.

Then it too went dark.

The screen returned to its blank state—mirror-flat, untouched. The pale-blue shimmer faded, swallowed by the silence.

The godless crucifix lowered his hand. Slowly. The air stopped moving.

His silver eyes stayed narrowed, but the faint smile returned—not smug, not cruel. Just present.

He turned to Elias.

"I’m sorry," he said.

Each word landed like a pin dropped in a sealed chamber. The crimson mist stirred again at his feet, and the veins in the walls gave a low tremor in response.

"But I see no instance of his soul ever disappearing... or crossing over into another plane."

Elias’s glow pulsed, his voice trembling with a mix of confusion and desperation, cutting through the hum of the room. "Wh-what does that mean?" he asked, a weight that pressed against his fading form, his glow flickering with the effort. "And how are you able to do that... or see that? I guess I would like to ask... what is this place, as well."

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