My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 195: New Allies

He lowered his gaze, hands still clenched, the edges of his fingernails digging hard into the curve of his palm. The crystal at his wrist pulsed once more—quick, sharp. Almost like it was flinching.

Faye knelt a few paces from the edge, her knees sinking into the smooth, shifting surface of the liminal platform. The material wasn’t quite stone, but it didn’t yield like sand either—something in between, soft enough to absorb weight, firm enough to hold the pain. Her bird-like Ikona hovered behind her shoulder, its wings trembling mid-hover. The melody that normally chimed like wind through glass faltered now, hanging in the air like a note that didn’t know where to land.

Her breathing was shallow. Each inhale pulled at something sharp inside her chest. Red strands clung to her damp cheeks, stuck there by sweat and something else—tears she didn’t remember shedding. Her eyes were locked on Elias’s form, the way his edges seemed to blur, his outline turning translucent, fading into the pale light that never seemed to come from any one place. Blood spread beneath him, black where it met the liminal floor, soaking outward in silence.

Faye’s hands trembled in her lap. She didn’t try to stop them. For once, she had no mask left to hold. No performance to play. The words came without thinking—quiet, broken. "Elias..."

It was all she managed. Just his name. The moment it left her lips, her voice cracked like ice under weight, and she folded forward slightly, arms wrapping around herself. Her Ikona drifted lower, letting out a barely audible chime that didn’t resolve, a suspended tone that made her chest tighten even further.

He was gone.

The realization didn’t come all at once. It seeped into her bones, slow, steady, like cold water. She could still feel him—his presence, his will—but it was slipping. Like a current pulling him further away with each breath she took. It made no sense. He’d survived worse. He’d dragged them all through hell, clawed his way back from the brink over and over again. And now... this?

The Announcer’s voice broke through the silence like a nail across glass.

"—a shard of Radiant Stability, as per the realm’s decree," he said, tone clipped, almost bored. He held a glowing fragment aloft in one hand, golden light spilling across the platform, casting long shadows from the kneeling forms around him. "A fitting reward for the survivor, wouldn’t you agree?"

He stepped forward, his gait smooth and unhurried, polished shoes gliding soundlessly across the ethereal floor. The fragment in his hand rotated slowly, catching glimmers of other colors beneath the gold—flickers of deep blue, hints of silver, like something struggling to stay hidden. He passed Junjio without a glance, skirted Faye with the ease of someone navigating a gallery rather than a battlefield, and stopped beside Kikaru.

She didn’t move.

Kikaru’s eyes hadn’t left Elias since the moment his body hit the ground. Her arms hung limp at her sides, fingers twitching only slightly when the Announcer’s shadow fell over her. The pulse of her Ikona had dimmed to a low hum, golden rings spinning slower and slower in the space around her. She didn’t speak. Didn’t look at the shard. She just kept staring at him.

Kikaru’s knees pressed into the invisible floor of the liminal realm, the smooth surface cool beneath her, unyielding as polished stone but lacking its weight, as if it existed only to reflect her failure.

Her kneecaps tingled, caught between numbness and pain, while her toes curled, searching for traction the slick façade refused to give.

Her hands trembled, fingers curled around the two jagged pieces of Elias’s shattered shard, their edges biting into her palms, a dull blue glow pulsing faintly against her skin.

Tiny beads of blood seeped around the shards’ points, tracing crooked lines across her wrists before vanishing into the floor—as though the realm drank every drop.

The fragments were rough, uneven, the size of river stones, their surfaces cracked like glass struck by a hammer, yet they hummed with a residual warmth that felt too much like him.

Each pulse sparked memory—his dry laugh during dawn drills, the crooked grin whenever she misquoted a system prompt—until the images piled into a weight that bent her shoulders.

Her breath came in shallow bursts, the air heavy with the scent of ionized blood and ash, the realm’s veins pulsing a deep crimson beneath her, a slow heartbeat that mocked her own.

The rhythm crawled through her bones, measuring every second she failed to move—failed to undo what could no longer be undone.

Elias lay before her, his body almost entirely faded, a ghostly outline against the pale light of the spirit‑like realm.

Where muscle and stubborn resolve had once filled that space, there now hovered a faint silhouette—as if the man she knew had been traced in chalk and half‑erased by a careless hand.

His chest no longer rose, the blood beneath him a dark pool that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it, and his skin—once solid, scarred, warm—had turned translucent, his ribs faint chalk lines beneath torn fabric.

Each ragged thread recalled the matches he’d refused to forfeit, the cuts he’d laughed off while telling her to swing harder.

The torchlight above flickered, casting jagged shadows across his face, but even those shadows seemed to dissolve, as if the realm itself was erasing him.

The tiniest tremor in the flame looked ready to wipe away the last trace of his jawline, stealing her right to remember how stubborn that jaw had been.

Kikaru’s fingers tightened around the shard pieces, her nails scraping against their jagged edges, as a pressure built behind her eyes, her throat too tight to speak.

Wetness threatened to blur the scene, and she swallowed hard, tasting salt and iron while forcing herself to keep watching.

The Announcer stood a few paces away, his polished shoes silent on the glass‑smooth plane, the shard of Radiant Stability still in his hand, its golden light casting sharp shadows across the unseen ground.

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