My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 222: To the Colder Heat

Her grip tightened—then twisted—until something gave way with a violent snap. A sharp crack echoed off the stone walls, cutting clean through the hum of the spirit energy, the runes flaring in response.

"GAHHHHH—NOT AGAIN!" Gavric howled, his voice bouncing up into the rafters, a deep, warbled screech that sounded entirely unbecoming of a warlord. His knees buckled as his hand went limp in hers, the bones inside crushed, his knuckles bending the wrong way.

"Ow, ow, ow, OW!" he bellowed, flailing with his free arm as if the pain might fly off him, his face contorting in something between agony and disbelief. The sweat-streaked strands of his blond hair fell into his eyes. He tried blinking them away. Failed. The blood from the boar carcass smeared across Seraphine’s palm as their hands locked, the red streak cutting across her knuckles and staining her wedding ring.

"I warned you what would happen if you came in smiling again!" she snapped between ragged breaths, her back arching as another contraction struck. The green glow radiating from her skin pulsed violently, casting bright flashes across the runes etched into the wooden beams above. The warding magic flared once—then dimmed—absorbing the outburst like a dam holding just barely.

The scent in the room shifted again—sweat, lavender, blood, iron—twisting together into something pungent and alive. The air thickened. The stone floor beneath the birthing bed began to hum.

At that moment, the door creaked open again.

A short woman darted inside, arms full of fresh linens, her face twisted in frustration. Her voice sliced through the tension with surgical precision.

"You damn brute! We just cleaned this room!" she snapped, her steps clipped and urgent, a sapphire gem in her wrist pulsing a soft blue as she moved. The spirit energy around her shimmered like static heat, flickering each time her boot hit the tile.

She stopped just short of the spreading blood trail, eyeing the crushed boar head with open disgust.

"Leave your battlefield trophies outside the birthing wing, Grand!Lord. For the gods’ sake, this is a delivery, not a campaign."

"I wasn’t—"

"Don’t. Even. Try." she said, dropping the bundle of linens near Lira and immediately beginning to mop the excess blood with the skill of someone who’d done this far too many times. "And that hand is going to swell like a bloated sea-fruit. Good luck gripping a blade this week."

Gavric groaned and held his broken fingers to his chest like a scolded child, grimacing as the blue glow from the maid’s gem flickered once toward him.

Just then, the day outside darkened.

Not with clouds or shadow, but as if something older than time had brushed its hand across the sky and told the sun to dim. The narrow window above the birthing bed no longer filtered warm light—only cold, diffused gray that made the lavender smoke curling from the incense bowls look like ghosts escaping the air.

Gavric stilled.

His green eyes shifted to the high window. A streak of blue carved across the sky like a blade—no sound, no warning, just a sudden, burning line that left afterimages in his vision and a deep, tremulous hum vibrating in his chest.

He blinked once. Then again.

The glow from the birthing runes trembled. His sword—strapped to his back, never unslung—thrummed like a struck bell. Every rune on its hilt pulsed in silence, one after another in rapid succession, casting flickers of silver against the polished stone floor.

Something passed over him. Not wind. Not pressure. A ripple. A flicker of being. Like another version of himself brushing shoulders as it crossed in a different layer of reality.

He pressed a palm to the pommel of his sword, his voice low. "...Did you feel that?"

No one answered. Lira was focused on Seraphine. The blue-gemmed maid was muttering about sterilization cloths. Seraphine herself grunted and sobbed and cursed and probably would’ve crushed his other hand if he said another word.

But still, he stared at that window.

And far to the north, in the heart of the high capital of Ysmera—

The marble spires watched.

There, in a city of crystal roofs and endless terraces, where the sky was always mirrored on the surface of elevated walkways and the scent of orchards drifted from wall-grown gardens, a man stood without speaking.

A gust moved his crimson cloak as he leaned forward, both hands gripping the balcony’s edge. White marble walls curved around him like a crown, rune-etched and gold-inlaid, humming softly with stored spirit energy drawn from the oldest of relics buried beneath the capital’s foundations.The city of Ysmera sprawled below in tiers of white stone and pale bonewood, a shining lattice of bridges, towers, and cascading gardens woven around the cliffs like a tapestry too old to name. At this hour, it pulsed with life. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

The Banquet of the Twin Moons was nearly upon them.

From Alaric’s high perch, the sound reached him softly—muffled chatter, the ring of preparation bells, clattering hooves against marble, the occasional burst of laughter from a lower plaza. Fires had already been lit in the grand market square, their golden light flickering against the gem-embedded archways that ringed the inner sanctum. Thin ribbons of smoke twisted through the air, laced with the scent of spiced meats, fire-grilled fruit, and casks of mead uncorked too early. The spirit gems woven into the city’s foundations hummed faintly, a lattice of protection that ran beneath every cobble, pulsing in rhythm with the sky above.

His gaze drifted to the western horizon.

The Vorak Mountains rose like a jagged crown, their dark slopes speckled with bonewood groves. The skeletal trees swayed gently, their pale branches casting long shadows across the valley floor, whispers of dormant spells clinging to the wind as if the peaks themselves remembered wars long buried beneath their ridges.

The air shifted.

Not wind. Not temperature. Something subtler.

Alaric’s fingers tightened around the balcony’s edge.

The sun vanished without warning.

Not a fade, but a sudden quieting—light withdrawn like a held breath. The stars above, a scattered field just moments ago, blinked into clarity with unnatural precision, each one like an eye opening.

Then—

A searing line split the sky.

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