My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 180: Kikaru’s Cry

"Kikaru’s out for blood," Asurik added, tilting his head just slightly, as if judging distance, weight, force. "She might just burn him to ash."

His smirk deepened, one corner lifting higher.

"Wouldn’t that be a sight."

Above them, the monitors pulsed once more, casting long red shadows across the arena floor, as if the blood they were waiting for had already begun to spill.

On one of the highest platforms, Silas leaned forward, elbows resting lightly against the cold railing.

The glow from the monitors above caught the edge of his glasses, lighting the lenses with a thin, mechanical red sheen. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

His fingers brushed the frame once — a small, deliberate adjustment — as if tuning the world itself into sharper focus.

"Radiant Ascendance at level two," Silas murmured, his voice barely a ripple against the oppressive hum of the arena.

The words weren’t admiration.

They were observation.

"Impressive control," he added, almost to himself. "Luminous Constructs... Refraction Control..."

His gaze flickered across the battlefield, tracing the golden distortions starting to shimmer around Kikaru’s poised form.

"She’s refined her light manipulation beyond basic plasma stability," he mused, eyes narrowing. "And him—"

His gaze shifted slightly, settling on Elias, who still stood rigid under the weight of the watchers’ stares.

"Creationist tree," Silas continued clinically. "Conjure Object. Construct Stability. Both at level two."

His voice stayed dry, clinical, detached — the tone of a man assessing the progress of a lab rat navigating a maze.

"Offers versatility."

A faint hum vibrated in the air around him, almost too soft to hear — the pulse of his own shard reacting with distant, mechanical curiosity.

"This will be... educational."

He didn’t smile.

He didn’t frown.

He simply watched, a scientist waiting for variables to collide.

Not far from him, on a platform lower and to the right, Vincent stood with arms crossed, his silhouette sharp against the blood-washed monitors.

The cold shimmer of his ice Ikona drifted around him like a living mist, curling over his boots, tendrils of frost hissing softly against the heated gravel platform.

Where Silas studied, Vincent hungered.

"Blood’s blood," Vincent said, his voice a low growl wrapped in lazy confidence.

The words barely broke the oppressive hum, but Elias felt them scrape along the edge of his awareness anyway, sharp and invasive.

Vincent’s eyes gleamed under the torchlight — not with curiosity, but with hunger.

Real, dangerous hunger.

"Let’s see who spills first," Vincent murmured, a faint smirk cutting across his face.

The mist at his feet thickened, swirling tighter around his boots as if responding to his anticipation.

"My bet’s on the girl," he added, tilting his head slightly, studying Kikaru with a predator’s relaxed patience. "She’s got the fire for it."

He said it almost with admiration — but it was the admiration of one wolf sizing up another before the kill.

The arena lights pulsed again, a low, heavy beat.

The air between Elias and Kikaru shimmered hotter.

The match hadn’t even started, and already the world smelled of blood.

Near the center of the ring of platforms, Elara stood rigid, her posture as sharp and unyielding as the icicles forming beneath her boots.

The pale flicker of her Ikona — Glacial Sovereign — hovered close to her side, a barely visible shimmer of frost twisting slowly in the stagnant air.

The temperature around her platform dipped noticeably, tendrils of mist curling along the rails, frosting the seams of the floor under her feet.

Her gaze — flat, icy, unreadable — stayed locked on the center of the arena, where Elias and Kikaru stood facing each other across the crackling gold seam of the activated battlefield.

"He’s fighting her," Elara murmured, her voice barely audible even to herself, a breath carried more by the mist than by sound.

"After everything."

The words weren’t judgment.

They weren’t anger.

They were something else.

Something heavier.

A flicker of regret — the kind that froze deeper than anger ever could — crossed her stoic features before vanishing under another tightening of her jaw.

At her sides, her hands clenched slowly, the frost around her thickening, spreading in delicate, spiderweb patterns across the railings and the floor.

A silent storm brewing in her silence.

To Elias’s right, closer to the center, Faye stood clutching her arms tight across her chest.

Her small frame trembled against the rising pulse of the arena, her bird Ikona flitting weakly at her shoulder.

The usually vibrant notes that followed it — musical, bright — faltered into a soft, broken hum that barely reached past her own body.

"Kikaru," Faye whispered, voice cracking, her fear naked and small against the arena’s brutal expectations.

"Don’t do this."

The plea was hopeless even as it left her lips, swallowed almost immediately by the arena’s thick, waiting air.

Beside her, Tidwell stood, his weight leaning heavily against the platform’s railing, his breath uneven.

The wounds he had carried from Cube X had not fully healed — his side was still wrapped, his skin still gray with lingering blood loss — but he watched with a stubborn, bitter focus that pain hadn’t dulled.

His cloud Ikona drifted limply beside him, its usual restless swirling dimmed into a heavy, stagnant mass.

"She’s got every right," Tidwell growled, his voice low, roughened by more than just injury. "Elias screwed us over."

No ceremony.

No forgiveness.

Just the hard math of survival in a world that didn’t care about good intentions.

Paul, standing slightly apart, shifted his weight carefully, eyes narrowed, scanning the data flashing across the monitors with detached precision.

His voice — when it came — was low, almost mechanical.

"Her constructs are stronger now," he murmured, barely moving his lips, as if speaking too loudly might change the outcome already spiraling into place.

He tilted his head slightly, studying the subtle shifts in the energy signatures flaring between Kikaru and Elias.

"But Elias’s perception might turn it," Paul added, voice thoughtful, clinical. "He’s always been sharper than he looks."

On a platform across the ring, Wes stood still.

Hands behind his back. Shoulders relaxed. Expression unreadable.

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