Chapter 188: Calling Pains
She roared. Plasma flared off her spine—but it didn’t shoot straight. The mirrored plates on the harness caught the energy mid-formation, redirecting the heat loops inward.
Her Ikona’s radiant field stuttered like a jammed conduit.
The bands of light that had been orbiting her seconds ago collapsed inward, some cracking mid-air, others fragmenting against the containment angles.
Refraction Control shattered next.
No fade. No glitch. Just gone.
Her duplicated silhouettes snapped back into one solid form—no blur, no distortion. The system couldn’t even render the illusion anymore. Her body was too unstable.
"What—" she managed, voice already rising.
Then the field pulsed.
The induction mesh activated fully—copper tracers firing static feedback through the radiant pathways layered under her skin. Her Ikona’s glow stammered. Plasma gathered in her palms, but couldn’t hold shape. The mirror-strips bent it off-course again, forcing the light into opposing arcs. Her own output buckled under resistance.
She screamed and swung an elbow back toward Elias—more reflex than strategy.
He ducked, breath shallow, body screaming from effort. Her arm grazed his shoulder but didn’t land clean. He caught himself low to the ground, one knee half-buried in the hot sand. His chest heaved once.