Chapter 185: Mounting the Counter
She advanced with each word, her form splitting around the edges as Refraction Control blurred her image into three, then five. It wasn’t perfect—shadows flickered at the wrong angles—but it was enough to throw him off. He shifted his weight slightly, trying to track her real position, but the pull from the veins under the arena floor dragged at his balance again.
The hum was louder now. Less like background noise. More like something alive. Something pressing against him.
His shard stuttered behind his ribs.
He blinked. The edges of his vision dragged slightly behind his movement. Focus stuttered, then snapped back. The plasma dancing across her spear had started to split again—unstable, flickering like a frayed circuit. He caught the way it curved mid-swing, how the heat wasn’t holding a straight path anymore.
It wasn’t just her power shifting.
Her rage was breaking it apart.
The shard flared, and the world dulled around him.
Color bled from the air in an instant. The haze vanished. Sound dropped into a low hum. Elias blinked once as the grayscale world settled into place—sharp lines, flattened shadows, everything still except the glow. Red dots flared across Kikaru’s frame like pulse points. Wrists. Knees. A faint one at her shoulder.
His breath steadied on instinct. Everything slowed.
"Dot—springs," he murmured.
She moved before the command finished. Steel coiled up from the sand, twisting against the arena’s energy pull. Their shape held, barely. Kikaru’s movement blurred into a streak—fast, but not clean. One spring clipped her ankle mid-air. Not enough to stop her, but just enough to stagger the landing.