My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 187: Bloodied Matter

The ground behind her burst outward as she pushed off, sand lifting into the air in sheets. Her body cut straight through the last of the haze like a comet, no flicker, no feint. Just direct radiant power condensed into a single human form.

Elias met her head-on.

She slammed into him like a hammer—forearm into shoulder, knee into thigh. They tumbled together, not out of control, but locked in motion. She was still burning. Her energy scraped along his biosuit, too close, already peeling material. He grabbed for her arm and missed. His boots skidded through molten grit.

They hit the ground hard. His back slammed into the sand first, hers overtop, the weight of her energy forcing them both down in a tight sprawl.

She tried to break away.

He held her.

Her elbow drove into his ribs, but he twisted and dragged them both sideways. One of the mirrored panels spun free, cracking beside them.

Dot blinked at his side—one flash, then another.

Elias didn’t have time to look. Kikaru’s hands were already lit with plasma again, twin bands forming along her forearms. She dragged one up, the angle wrong, light distorting off her palm. A second too late, and it was going to tear through him.

"Dot—converge. Now!"

The conjured blade formed between them.

It was jagged at first—half-formed, just a line of steel with an embedded strip of mirror running down the middle. Elias grabbed it with both hands, one foot braced in the sand, and wedged it upward. Not to stab. To reflect.

Kikaru didn’t stop. Her hands came down like axes, both glowing white-hot. Plasma split across the top of the blade and scattered in every direction. One arc flared past his cheek. Another dug into the dirt just behind his hip. He tightened his grip. The steel hissed between them.

She screamed and tried to shove through him.

They stayed locked—her knees straddling his, chest pressed against his upper arm, both of them trembling. Not from strain. From proximity. From the fact that neither of them was giving in, and both of them knew how this should’ve ended five seconds ago.

But it hadn’t.

The light kept flaring—every second longer, more unstable.

And Elias, face smeared with blood and heat rash creeping across his jaw, kept the blade steady.

It didn’t matter how much she burned.

He wasn’t moving.

She grunted and shoved against him again. The blade stayed fixed, its flat edge pressed beneath her collarbone, catching the wild flare that pulsed from her skin.

Heat poured off her like sunlight forced through a magnifier. Elias gritted his teeth.

Her elbow shifted. One foot slid for traction, heel digging a furrow into the scorched sand. Another push. Another jolt of light. The air between them shimmered.

Then she struck.

The jab slipped under his left arm, just enough clearance to catch the side of his jaw. His head snapped to the right, jawbone popping on contact. His grip on the blade faltered—one hand sliding off, the other twitching open. Blood filled his mouth before the second hit came. A tight arc. No hesitation.

Her fist slammed across the side of his face.

Elias reeled.

He staggered, boots dragging long scars through the sand before his knees gave. His shoulder hit first, then the rest of him. The grit burned his back, stuck to the blood and sweat slicking his skin. For a moment, he couldn’t feel his tongue. Couldn’t feel much of anything.

Dot blinked to life above him—glow jittering, warped by plasma interference.

"I’ve got something," she said.

His fingers twitched. "Now?"

"She’s about to break herself trying to break you. We anchor her, or the arena clears both bodies."

She didn’t wait.

The air above Elias cracked open like a wire snapping under tension. A tight coil of steel and light spiraled downward—narrow, almost flat.

It looked like a bandolier at first glance, but each segment of it gleamed with embedded mirror-strips, their surfaces polished to an almost blinding sheen. Thin copper tracers ran along its length, ending in pronged clamps rigged with magnetic tethers.

It wasn’t a weapon. It was a disruption harness—and it had only one purpose: to shut down radiant energy at its source.

Dot didn’t explain it out loud, but Elias understood. The mirror-strips weren’t decorative—they were cut at calculated angles, designed to bend radiant light back toward its point of origin. That would scramble Kikaru’s plasma shaping, especially under motion.

The wire tracers carried induction current, not power—meaning they’d flood her Ikona’s energy field with meaningless feedback, a kind of static overload. The clamps? They weren’t for pain. They were for leverage—anchored to the terrain to redirect her balance and intercept kinetic force before it could stabilize into another charge.

It was everything she wasn’t ready for.

Kikaru didn’t look up. She was already moving—boots lifting from the sand, the weight of her charge warping the air behind her. Golden arcs flickered around her wrists as she lunged. The distance closed fast. Too fast.

Elias forced himself upright, hands wide. His palms slapped together with a clap that kicked dust into the air around him.

Dot surged on cue.

The device responded in midair, shifting instantly from spiral to spread—segments widening, rotating into position. The harness didn’t just fall; it deployed mid-drop, angles locking into place, the clamps already spinning to find their marks.

Kikaru closed the final steps.

And the trap hit first.

The band snapped into place across her upper body. It didn’t wrap around her waist—it locked diagonally, one side over her left shoulder, the other under her right arm, forming an "X" that pinned across her sternum and back. The moment it hit, the clamps fired—metallic thumps followed by a pulse of magnetic feedback that anchored the harness to the floor itself.

She didn’t stop moving. But the trajectory broke.

Her center of mass twisted under the force. Her forward momentum dragged the lines taut—and she dropped. Not a stumble. A full collapse to her knees, arms lashing wide as radiant energy sputtered.

The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel