My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 202: Crushing Weight

Her head throbbed, a dull ache that pulsed in time with the shard pieces, as if the fragments were trying to speak, to tell her something she couldn’t yet hear.

An instinct older than training warned her that the message would demand payment, and her body was already overdrawn.

Around her, A Block lay in a row of medical beds—Faye, Tidwell, Paul, Wes, Junjio—their faces pale, eyes closed, chests rising and falling in shallow rhythm, the faint glow of their Ikonas hovering above them, trembling with residual energy.

Each glow wavered when hers flared, sympathetic yet unable to bridge the gulf between sleep and waking.

The ward was silent save for the hum of machinery and the faint drip of fluid from an IV line, a stillness that pressed against her ears, amplifying the ache in her chest.

Somewhere deeper in the facility, a distant klaxon chirped once—just once—then cut off, as if the building itself had second‑guessed the alarm.Her fingers tightened around the shard pieces, nails scraping against their jagged edges, the twin fragments grinding together with a faint, electric hiss that traveled up her wrists. Memories of Elias surged—his dry laugh during dawn drills, the crooked grin whenever she bungled a system prompt, the resigned warmth in his final words: There’s very few people I’d trust with her. You’re one of them.

Pressure built behind her eyes, heat blooming until vision blurred, and with it came the image of his fading form in the liminal realm—muscle turning translucent, blood at the corner of his mouth turning black as it dried.

She’d failed him—failed to stop the reckless burst of self‑sacrifice, failed to save him from dissolving into that cold light—and the realization lodged like a stone under her sternum, heavy and immovable.

Each heartbeat felt delayed, as though her body waited for permission to continue without him; the ward’s overhead LEDs dimmed in and out with her pulse, casting shifting shadows that made it look as if empty chairs beside each bed were quietly filling with ghosts.

A faint pulse of blue light shimmered at her chest, and Dot emerged, her tiny Ikona form flickering weakly—half of her usual brilliance gone, yet the remaining glow held unflinching steadiness, a stubborn signal through static.

She hovered inches above the shard pieces, tethered to their fractured core by threads of light so thin they resembled hairline cracks in reality itself.

Dot’s voice trembled, a hushed buzz that broke the ward’s hush: "Kikaru... he’s alive," she whispered, each syllable syncing with the fragments’ blue throb, like Morse tapped from the other side of a door.

"Protect... protect the shard."

The words snapped through grief’s fog; Kikaru’s breath hitched, her good eye widening, heartbeat stuttering into a faster rhythm that made the infusion pumps nearby recalibrate with startled clicks.

Hope flared—bright, precarious—only to shudder under the weight of uncertainty: alive how, alive where, and at what cost since the realm had spat her out alone?

Yet the flicker remained, small but persistent, and she drew it closer, cupping the shards as one might shield a candle in a storm, determined that whatever came next would not extinguish this last, fragile link to him.

She pushed herself to her feet, legs trembling, the shard pieces still clutched in her hands as she stumbled toward the ward’s exit, the cold floor biting into her bare feet.

The corridor beyond was a maze of steel and glass, every recessed light flickering as backup power cycled. Machinery hummed louder here, a restless drone layered with the tang of burnt circuits and fresh antiseptic.

She ran—one unsteady footfall after another—breath razor‑thin, heart pounding while her good eye swept each intersection for the command post, for Oliver, for anything that might explain the ragged holes in her memory.

The shards pulsed in her grip, warmth threading up her arms like an IV of borrowed courage—Elias, Dot, the fight she’d left half‑finished refusing to let her slow.

She reached the command post, a glass‑walled lookout above the central hub. Holo‑screens jittered with overflowing data streams, cold light strobing across the reinforced panes.

Inside, Oliver hunched over a console, broad shoulders corded with tension, gray uniform rumpled and spattered with something darker near the cuffs.

Kikaru burst through the door, breath sandpaper‑rough, shards still clutched tight. "Oliver—what’s happened?" Her voice cracked, raw from running and from everything else. "Since we... since we all passed out?"

Oliver stood at the console, broad frame tense, gray uniform rumpled, his eyes locked on the sealed trauma bay below. freewebnoveℓ.com

Kikaru burst in, breath ragged, the shard halves clutched tight in her hands. "Oliver—what happened?" she demanded, her good eye wide, voice cracking. "What happened after Elias knocked me out? I don’t know what I missed."

He turned slowly, a flicker of relief flashing across his face before it hardened into something colder. His jaw clenched as he pointed toward the glass wall.

"Asurik made his move right after you were out," he said, voice clipped. "He convinced Jasmine, Culdrin, and Vira to help him break loose. Jasmine and Culdrin started killing guards—fourteen dead before I stopped them."

Kikaru’s stomach turned. Her grip on the shards tightened. "You had to stop them...?"

"I did," Oliver said. "No time to talk them down. They were already too far gone."

He gestured again, this time toward a bed surrounded by med-bots. "Vira was part of it, but Elias shielded her when the shooting started. He kept her alive. She’s in critical condition."

"And Asurik?"

"Gone. Took Junjio and his father with him. We’ve got no current trace—no pings, no signals. He’s gone dark."

Oliver’s gaze shifted to the center of the trauma bay. A containment rig had been pushed back to make room for something that hadn’t been there before.

Kikaru followed his gaze—and felt her chest seize.

The trauma bay had been cleared out. Stretchers removed, walls scraped back, even the emergency rail lighting rerouted. At first, she didn’t understand why. Then her eye caught the edge of the crystal.

It rose from the floor like an exposed vein of stone, blue light flickering across its fractured surface.

Roughly the size of a car—jagged, uneven—its outer shell shimmered with a layered opacity, like ice halfway through melting. But it wasn’t ice. It pulsed. With rhythm. With purpose.

Her feet carried her forward before she realized she was moving.

Inside the crystal—suspended in the core like a body caught underwater—was Elias.

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