My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy-Chapter 249: Reverse Strike

Elias felt his stomach drop.

His balance wavered.

He grabbed for a support rail as wind howled through the open hold, threatening to suck everything not bolted down into the sky.

Somewhere inside that roar, the crucifix’s voice stirred again—faint, steady.

Survive.

The sky ripped open around them.

Elias’s body hurled backward as the explosion tore through the dropship’s hull. The detonation wasn’t a burst of fire—it was force, pure and clean, the kind that snapped bones and buckled steel. Shards of glowing alloy scattered into the upper atmosphere, spinning past him like blades. He twisted mid-air, limbs flailing against the sudden shift in pressure, the roar of ruptured air drowning out even his own breath. The red glow of the ship’s interior smeared into streaks behind him, vanishing as the violent updraft swallowed him whole.

His muscles seized under the strain. Cold wind slammed into his body, flattening the coarse jumpsuit against his skin and drying the sweat in an instant. For a blink, he could only see white—clouds shredding past his face as he tumbled—and then the world cleared.

Below him, the planet opened wide: green ravines split through craggy terrain, rivers curled like veins over the earth, and somewhere in the distance, a scarred valley glinted like shattered glass. Grassland sprawled into the horizon, dotted with the skeletal remains of buildings.

Elias barely had time to brace.

A cord slapped against his shoulder, flapping wildly. He yanked it instinctively, his fingers aching from the cold, and a second later the parachute deployed. It cracked open with a thunderclap, jerking his body upward in a whip-like snap. His spine screamed. His vision pulsed.

The wind clawed at the open chute, dragging him through the air like a hooked fish. The ground rushed toward him, the landscape growing clearer with every second—burned trees, cratered soil, the jagged outline of a ruined military compound coming into view.

He hit the earth hard.

His boots caught first, jolting him into a forward sprint that didn’t last more than two steps. His knees buckled. He collapsed into a roll, dirt flying up in thick sprays around him, the chute collapsing behind like a dying bird. He skidded on his shoulder and came to a halt near a broken slab of concrete half-buried in the soil.

Pain spiked through his ribs. He lay still for a breath, eyes wide, heart racing. Then the smell hit.

It wasn’t the metallic tang of scorched metal.

It was blood.

Dried, old blood. Thick in the air. Baked into the dirt. His stomach twisted. He shoved a hand up to his face, trying to block the stench, the other hand rubbing at his eyes as they stung from dust and sweat. He forced himself upright, his boots dragging against the ground as he looked around.

"Marcus?" he called out, his voice ragged.

Elias squinted as the sun slammed down on his face, the heat pressing in through the haze still clinging to his skin. He dragged in a slow breath, every inhale still tasting faintly of scorched circuitry and copper. His head throbbed from the chute’s jarring tug.

He turned to the right, blinking through the glare. Marcus was there—half upright, slumped awkwardly against a cobbled wall cracked straight through the center. The bricks jutted like broken teeth.

Then Elias saw it.

A Federation soldier’s corpse was hanging over the ledge. Split in half. One arm dangled loose, the torso twisted backward, charred at the edges like he’d been cut by something more than plasma.

Elias froze.

"...Ah, fuck," he muttered, voice low, jaw tightening. "This must be the outpost Roacheline and the others destroyed..."

He hadn’t imagined it would be this bad.

He took a step back, breath catching as the scent hit him—thick and sharp, dried blood layered over something rotten. The air was heavy with it. He coughed, hand flying to his face as he rubbed his eyes and tried not to gag.

When he reached Marcus, the younger man was just pushing himself up, bracing with one arm against the ruined wall. His other hand was smeared with bile.

"You alright?" Elias asked, voice rasping. "They really just dropped us here of all places, huh?"

Marcus groaned, one hand covering his mouth as he wiped away the last of the vomit on his sleeve. "Ugh... yeah. I’m... peachy." He leaned away from the body like it might fall on him. "What are we doing exactly again?" His voice was strained, his face pale as chalk.

Elias didn’t answer right away. He stepped beside him, scanning the compound—blast marks across the far bunkers, one tower caved in on itself, scorch trails like spiderwebs across the cracked concrete.

"Between just me and you," Elias said quietly, "I want to see the other side’s perspective. And maybe have some protection... when I don’t have access to my body."

Marcus stared at him. Hard.

"...You expect me to have any idea what that means?" he asked, eyes wide, still pale. His hands were shaking now—not from fear, Elias thought, but from everything crashing down at once. The death. The betrayal. The drop.

Elias looked down. He reached over his shoulder, unclipped the bulky, air-compressed bag strapped to his back, and let it fall to the dirt with a dull thud.

"I’ll fill you in," he said, kneeling. "While we figure out what to actually do from here."

He ran his fingers along the orange polymer seam and pulled. The bag hissed as it opened, decompression releasing a wave of sterilized scent and cold plastic.

"Let’s see what we ’stole’ from the Federation."

Marcus scoffed, stepping back from the bloodstained wall with a weak chuckle. "I’m sure this’ll be great," he muttered sarcastically, dragging a hand down his face. "Totally what I trained four years for."

Elias knelt over the orange bag, fingers searching for the hidden latches buried along its seam. The material was stiff, hardened by transport pressure, and it took him a full minute to unclasp them all. One by one, the magnetic seals disengaged with sharp clicks.

The bag suddenly hissed, expanding outward in a slow unfurling. The compressed frame inflated to nearly six times its original size, snapping into a large flat case with compartmentalized layers.

"Perfect," Elias said under his breath, already reaching inside.

He pulled out two suits—thin, dark, almost matte black in the sunlight, but with a subtle glint where the material curved. Each one was covered in a mesh of micro-prickle points, like pressure sensors or dynamic-response fibers, designed to sync with the wearer’s movements and the shard’s output.

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