Chapter 153: Hack Saw
Her words carried a heavy undertone, sharpened by Asurik’s warnings, the lessons etched in blood from the chaos she’d witnessed in the last bloodbath. Distrust lived there now — a blade she carried whether she wanted to or not.
Elias nodded once, his hands tightening around the edge of his sleeves, knuckles whitening. The pod’s hum pressed against his ears, steady and low, matching the beat of his own pulse.
"Yeah," he said, his voice firm, "but shard users stop shard users."
The thought pulled hard against him, dragging forward the memory of Yui’s unchecked dominance, the devastation the Epics had left behind in their wake — laughing while entire bases crumbled just for sport.
"They took down a base for fun," Elias said, the words rough. "If we can do something — anything — we should try."
His shard throbbed once under his ribs, a pulse that wasn’t fear or doubt but something harder, something that Dot’s steady blue glow at his side echoed in quiet support.
Across the hallway, Paul shifted, rubbing at his face as he leaned back against his pod, his Ikona flickering faintly at his side like a dying spark.
"I heard they’re ramping up activity," Paul said, voice low, roughened by exhaustion. "But that’s a talk for later."
Kikaru dragged her hand down her face with a rough exhale, her golden Ikona pulsing weaker against her chest. The frustration bled through her movements, sharp and unfiltered.
"And how exactly do we get out?" she snapped, swinging her arm toward the sealed door.
Her voice cracked under the weight of it, brittle enough to leave an echo bouncing between the steel walls. The bolt-locks clanked again as if mocking the question, the thick layers of reinforced metal standing silent and immovable — a fortress built to hold them as much as anything else.