My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 215: Squared away

"What would be the point of rebellion if it was only silence?"

His voice curled around the edges of the air.

"There’s no pleasure in eternity if nothing fills it. I built this tower to house work. Records. People. And her..."

He gestured toward Emma, who had returned to the side console, adjusting something silently with a slow precision.

"...she didn’t start here. She was meant to die."

The smile faded.

"Targeted by a Zeionsit cult on her homeworld," he said.

"They wanted to see if her soul type could adapt to planetary manipulation—if it could influence evolution on a scale they could weaponize."

His gaze darkened slightly, the red glow beneath his skin brightening by a shade.

"The Cube maker worked with them. Briefly. That version of him needed test subjects. And they fed her—alive—into a shard designed to simulate a monster world. They wanted to clone the soul type. Turn it into food. Into coding. Into a tool."

He looked back at Elias.

"She survived."

He didn’t smile this time.

"She’s been with me since."

Elias’s glow pulsed faintly, his voice low and uncertain as he watched the woman disappear through the heavy double doors. "So... you saved her," he said. "Stopped that experiment from happening in the first place."

The glow at his core flickered again—part hope, part exhaustion. The weight of Kikaru’s absence hadn’t lessened. Nor had the image of Dot trapped in that orb. But something about Emma—her calmness, her presence in this impossible space—had made him believe in the possibility of safety again, even if just for a moment.

The godless crucifix tilted his head, his silver eyes narrowing, the faint smile curling back to the corners of his mouth as he studied Elias’s soul.

"Saved is a generous word," he said.

His voice moved like pressure—felt before it was heard, bending the air inside the tower. The crimson mist swirled higher at his feet, then drifted off like steam chased from a surface it couldn’t cling to.

"I redirected her path," he continued. "She still carries the same soul that would have died in that lab. But she was offered a new structure, a different system. Not freedom, exactly... but something closer."

Elias didn’t answer.

The crucifix turned his gaze toward the doors Emma had exited through, his tone shifting—just enough to feel weight, not regret.

"But that’s for another time... right, Emma?"

From the hallway, her voice carried cleanly.

"If we don’t go now, all my paperwork gets voided, and I’m not recalculating soul vector angles twice in one cycle."

There was a mechanical hum, a sharp sweep of light past the door frame. The echo of her heels faded into the corridor’s spiral.

The doors groaned shut behind her with a deep metallic growl, sealing the chamber once again in silence.

"Well, we best get to it now," the godless crucifix said, his resonant voice cutting cleanly through the stillness. The crystalline bone walls around them pulsed faintly, veins of dark red contracting like muscle beneath stone, the crimson mist at his feet swirling in lazy arcs as it caught flickers of fractured starlight from the tower ceiling above.

Elias’s glow dimmed slightly, a faint pulse of blue flickering from within the crucifix’s clawed grip. The weight of Kikaru’s absence still clung to him like residue—Dot’s capture, the deal he’d made, the new world that waited. Each thread twisted through his fading form. He didn’t feel ready. But he asked anyway.

"How will I know what this gem looks like when I find it?"

His voice came soft, strained. It floated through the quiet like dust through a slant of light. Outside, the low hum of the spires murmured—faint echoes of souls still trapped in the Expanse.

The crucifix tilted his head slightly.

His silver eyes glinted—less with malice, more with the weight of someone accustomed to watching others fail. The red veins beneath his pale skin pulsed, the light inside them threading upward into his neck and jaw.

"It will be large," he said. "You’ll know when you see it."

He lifted the orb slightly, adjusting his grip as Dot stirred faintly within. Her glow remained steady—dim, but alive.

"Multicolored. Unstable. Sentient. And if it rejects you..." He paused, the barest flicker of amusement passing behind his eyes. "It will turn your body to ash. As it has done to others."

Elias didn’t flinch. Not outwardly. But his pulse staggered in the crucifix’s grip, the blue light inside him flickering with a new tightness.

"There’s a chance no one on that planet knows it even exists," the crucifix added, his voice calm, final. "And if they do... what they know is likely just a splinter. A rumor. A fragment buried beneath layers of survival and greed. That’s what you’re walking into."

Elias’s glow flickered, his voice trembling with uncertainty as the godless crucifix began to walk. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

His boots made no sound against the cracked stone floor, the surface uneven beneath a steady procession of worn steps. The crimson mist trailed behind him like a coiled thread, silent but constant, drifting through the corridor with a presence all its own.

Emma moved ahead of them, calm and unreadable, her auburn braid swaying slightly with each step. The faint light of the runes carved into the walls caught the edge of her glasses, throwing fragmented reflections across her lenses.

They passed through a tight bend, the ceiling dropping lower overhead, the carved symbols shifting into a sharper script—more angular, more aggressive. Elias had no idea what they meant.

His voice came softly behind them, trailing close behind the sound of their steps.

"Why not send Emma... or someone else you have here?"

The question wasn’t meant to be bold. But it echoed louder than he’d intended, a whisper cast forward into something sacred.

"You’ve clearly got resources," he added, his glow dimming slightly. "Do you just... do nothing?"

The crucifix didn’t slow. But his gaze slid sideways, eyes catching Elias in their silver burn. No anger. Just a glint of something colder.

"Time is irrelevant," he replied, tone steady. "It doesn’t move me."

His voice seemed to stretch between the runes, bending them slightly with every syllable. The pale blue carvings rippled—just faintly—like the corridor itself responded to his breath. The air thickened, the ozone sharper. And beneath it, decay. Clean and ancient, like something sealed away too long.

"I wait for the right opportunity."

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