My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 203: Not an Illusion

Not a memory. Not an illusion.

Him.

Weightless. Translucent. His body was suspended in the very center of the structure, arms limp at his sides, head tilted slightly downward as if sleep had taken him mid-thought. His skin looked pale through the glow, tinged faint blue by the crystal’s internal light.

And just beneath his ribs—

Her steps faltered.

A gash split his torso wide, like something had torn outward from his center. The edges were jagged, burned in places. Not cauterized. More like the energy had tried to escape and the body failed to hold it in. There was no fresh blood, just dried patterns, locked inside the walls like paint sealed behind glass. His uniform was half-shredded, some of it melted into his side, some of it clinging like ash.

The shard pieces in her palms began to pulse. Hard. Loud. She could feel it in her wrists, through her arms, into her chest. The light from them stung her skin, bright enough to paint her reflection against the crystal’s face.

Dot’s form buzzed weakly at her shoulder. The faint hum of her wings had dropped into a soft, unsteady flicker, as if the light was too much. Her glow was steady, but fragile—thin around the edges, like she was barely holding together.

Kikaru didn’t realize her hands were shaking until she saw the blur of her own fingers through the shardlight.

"What the hell happened?" Oliver’s voice broke in, sharp and unfiltered, cutting across the hum of nearby holoscreens. He wasn’t looking at Elias anymore. He was staring at her.

His face was pale, not angry—but confused. Fear behind the questions. "What did that to him?"

She blinked. Her mouth was dry. The words wouldn’t come. Her chest still felt caught halfway between breath and collapse.

Kikaru didn’t answer right away.

She stared at the jagged tear in Elias’s side, the wound locked inside that crystal like it was frozen mid‑detonation. Her chest felt too tight to breathe.

"We fought," she said finally, voice dry. "The system threw us into the arena. I didn’t know it’d be him."

She didn’t look away.

"I was still angry. After the breakout. After what happened with Asurik. After Elias tied me up and left me behind. I thought he’d turned on us. Thought he was hiding something—using the system to settle it in front of everyone."

Her voice dropped.

"I came at him hard. He didn’t fight back. Not really. He dodged. Blocked. Talked."

She swallowed.

"But I wouldn’t stop. I didn’t care."

The shard halves pulsed in her hands.

"He used Dot’s ability—reformed the whole arena. Made it a maze of logic and position. I still chased him. Still tried to break through."

Her good eye flicked toward Oliver.

"He disarmed me. Had me pinned. Could’ve ended it. But he didn’t. He said it wasn’t supposed to go like that. Said the fight wasn’t fair, that it wasn’t right."

Then her fingers tightened. The light between them flared once.

"And then... he drove the shard into himself."

Oliver stiffened.

"Right under the ribs," she said. "I saw the blood hit the floor. The shard cracked when it went in. Everything started shaking. Dot screamed. And his body—"

She blinked, slow.

"—it started fading. Like it couldn’t hold together anymore. He looked at me one more time, told me to protect her, and then he dropped. Fully collapsed. And then... nothing." freёweɓnovel_com

Her voice fell quiet.

"We woke up back here. Just lying on the med floor. And he was gone."

She motioned to the crystal.

"That wasn’t there when we reappeared. It wasn’t in the arena. It wasn’t part of the system. It just... grew around him. I didn’t see it happen. But I felt it—right when I picked these up."

Her fingers uncurled, letting the two shard pieces flicker in her open hands.

"He did something we weren’t supposed to do. Something the system couldn’t stop. And now he’s in there."

She looked straight at Oliver.

"I didn’t kill him. But I watched him die for us."

She paused, then added—soft, certain:

"And he’s still in there. I know it."

()*-Meanwhile, far and away-*()

The moment his boots touched the first floating tile, he felt it.

Not gravity. Not weight.

Memory.

The Shattered Expanse spread out in all directions—an endless field of broken obsidian plates suspended above a green-black abyss. Each fragment shifted beneath his steps, hovering just far enough apart to remind him this place was never whole. Veins of dull red pulsed underfoot, running through the stone like infected capillaries, slow and rhythmic. Alive.

He stepped forward, silent.

Above, the sky bled light. Not stars—splinters of them. Fractured celestial bodies trapped in an eternal flicker, caught between collapse and rewind. Red fissures sliced the sky wide open, exposing distant realities—twisted landscapes of failed shard systems, some still burning, others already silent. The air hung heavy, thin but weighted, soaked in ozone and something fouler, something decayed.

The spires welcomed him.

Long, jagged columns of crystal bone rose from the broken field, some no taller than his waist, others stretching far into the void overhead. Soul energy danced faintly within them—threads of pale blue flickering through fossilized marrow. The hum they emitted wasn’t sound. It was feeling. A background pressure that pressed against the back of his skull, light but constant. Regret. Hunger. Failure.

They remembered what had died here. So did he.

He stopped near the center of the field.

His form stood tall, lean but corded with tension. The blue-white of his skin caught the fractured light, and beneath it, the slow pulse of red veins glowed like filament—spirit energy, stolen long ago and carried ever since. His fingers flexed, claws catching the reflection from the nearby spires, and his white hair shifted in the still air, loose strands drifting like smoke.

His cloak hung open, heavy. Black on the outside. Lined in deep red. It moved with him, not as fabric did, but like it had memory. The hem brushed against the tiles, drinking in their dim light.

He looked upward. Silver eyes reflected the sky—not awe, not fear. Calculation.

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