Chapter 184: To Wither and Rot
Each step sank a little deeper than the last. Elias didn’t lift his boots so much as drag them forward, toes kicking through the grit as the sand shifted underfoot. It clung to the blood soaking through the side of his thigh—warm at first, now sticky, heavy. The fabric of his sleepwear tore a little more with every movement. His leg burned where the spear had passed too close, shallow enough to miss anything vital, deep enough to leave him limping.
The heat was old and dry, baked into the stone. Smoke still lingered from earlier fights—metal scorched, plasma-burnt. It stung in the back of his throat when he breathed too hard. The torches lining the arena walls spat flame at uneven intervals, and each one stretched his shadow across the sand, twisting with the rise and fall of his chest. The sky overhead looked like ash: flat, gray, low enough to touch. Like it might crush them if the match dragged on.
He kept moving.
Across the pit, Kikaru stood still. Twenty paces. Maybe less. Her silhouette was cast in red from the monitors overhead—sharp lines, burned edges. Her Ikona flared behind her in hard, uneven pulses, not just angry but strained. She hadn’t moved either. Not since the last exchange.
Her plasma spear hummed at her side, tip glowing white. Not steady. Flickering. The kind of heat that didn’t hold shape long. She was breathing harder than he remembered. Her mouth opened, but it took her a second to speak.
"You think you can wait me out?" Her voice cracked at the edges. "After what you did, Elias? You left us to rot."
Her Ikona surged. Gold traced up her arms in quick, branching veins, so bright it made the glass beneath her boots ripple. He watched her feet shift once—just enough to realign her stance. She wasn’t trying to intimidate him. She was bracing for a second throw.
And the only reason she hadn’t done it yet... was because part of her still didn’t believe he’d get back up.
Why did her words still cut like that? Elias ducked as her spear arced, the beam searing the air above his head, sand crackling where it struck. "Dot—lattice!" he grunted, voice strained. Dot’s blue form flickered at his side, her hum sharp as a steel spring lattice snapped into place beneath the sand. The construct twisted, warped by the arena’s glass veins pulsing faintly below, their energy tugging at his shard like a hook in his chest.