Chapter 198: Broken Glass

Chapter 198: Broken Glass"So this is how I got notified about this place," the figure said, voice low, almost amused.

He twirled the shard once, studying the fracture as though appraising a clever sculpture, claws flexing against Dot until her light dimmed another shade.

"Someone managed to rip a shard in half. Wondrous, I’d say."

Each syllable carried an odd reverence—like praise for a clever experiment—yet the pressure in the air suggested he could end the experiment at a whim.

His gaze slid to Kikaru, unreadable eyes narrowing by a fraction.

The red lining of his cloak caught the torchlight and sent it skipping across his stark silhouette, painting a brief smear of color that vanished when he tilted his head, a faint smile touching the corner of his mouth.

On the arena’s edge, the Announcer swiped a trembling hand through the interface only he could see, lenses strobing between error codes and unknown‑entity alerts.

"Protect that shard’s half, Kikaru," he barked, the order cracking like a whip.

The forced cheer of minutes earlier was gone; what remained was stripped to stressed consonants and short breath.

Sweat ran beneath his collar, dark lines staining the silk where prestige had lived a moment ago.

He planted one glossy shoe behind the other, settling into a stance more suited to flight than negotiation, yet his voice tried to hold authority together with spit and static.



"Tomorrow, you’ll be talking with the Doctor," he warned the intruder, throat bobbing as he swallowed.

It sounded less like a threat and more like someone requesting a stay of execution.

The man responded only by tightening his claws.

Dot let out a stuttering whine, blue light sputtering like a dying filament.

The half‑shard in his palm resonated—two steady pulses, then three quick flares—each beat mirrored by the fragments still clutched in Kikaru’s bleeding grip.

She felt it, a tug behind her sternum, a desperate call-and‑answer across the gap between them.

"Let her go," Kikaru said, finding a voice she hadn’t known was still inside her.

Her knees shook, but she stood, shards pressed together until pain streaked up both arms.

"Trade me, if that’s what you want."

The figure’s pale eyebrows lifted the barest millimeter—curiosity, not refusal—and in that pause the air itself seemed to hold its breath.

The Announcer slashed his hand again.

Silver circuits flared to life across the floor, forming a sigil that hummed with evacuation energy.

Kikaru’s bones vibrated as gravity reversed direction; the plane beneath her rippled like water struck by wind.

"No time for bargains," he snapped, coat whipping around thin legs as the realm’s failsafes finally obeyed.



The sigil’s light wrapped around Kikaru in spiraling bands, tugging at her marrow, yanking her backward through unseen corridors of system code.

She locked eyes with Dot one last time—tiny form still trapped, glow fading but unbroken resolve shining through the flicker.

She tried to memorize that image, tried to promise rescue with a look, before the realm tore itself away.

The liminal space collapsed in on itself.

Kikaru vanished, shards still clutched in her hands, Dot’s scream echoing after her like an aftershock.

The last thing she saw was the figure’s faint smile widening, as though her removal solved a minor inconvenience.

The last thing she heard was the crackle of the portal sealing shut—followed by the Announcer’s microphone shorting out in a burst of static that sounded disturbingly like a gasp.

Cold stone met her knees when sensation returned.

She was kneeling in a dim chamber lined with diagnostic glass and humming servo arms—one of the system’s back‑end prep rooms.

Monitors blinked crimson error bars across every surface, protesting her unscheduled arrival.

The half‑shard pieces in her grip pulsed, answering some signal she could no longer hear, and blood trickled over the facets, turning each groove slick.

Somewhere beyond the bulkhead, alarms rang, doors slammed, and panicked staff shouted about containment breaches.

Kikaru drew one ragged breath, pressed the shards to her heart, and forced herself upright.

Dot was still out there.

Elias’s trust still burned in her palms and from it Dot’s had emerged as confusion painted over her face.



-Meanwhile-

The liminal realm’s air hung heavy, the scent of ionized blood and ash lingering like a stain, the green‑black portal still crackling faintly at the arena’s edge, its static hum a low growl that seemed to chew at the silence.

A brittle chill seeped outward with every pulse of that vortex, leaving tiny crystalline halos around the nearest torch‑flames before they melted into nothing.

The glass‑smooth plane stretched endless beneath the Announcer’s polished shoes, its surface unmarred save for the faint fractures spider‑webbing where the tall figure stood, their edges sealing over as if afraid to mark his presence.

Each time a hairline sealed, a thread of pale light zipped across the floor, sparked, then vanished—like a dying synapse misfiring in some vast, invisible mind.

The torches above flickered, their flames shrinking, casting jagged shadows that danced across the figure’s deep cloak, the red lining blazing against the midnight black that swallowed every stray photon around him.

Those shadows twisted back toward their owner, stretching long and thin before snapping tight again, unwilling—or unable—to detach from his silhouette.

The Announcer stood rigid, his lenses flashing red and blue, the micro‑servos inside whining as they struggled to focus, error codes blinking across his vision like a failing heartbeat monitor.

Subroutines pinged him for commands while streams of telemetry returned blank, leaving him functionally blind behind optics designed to catalogue everything.

Sweat glistened on his brow, rolled down his sides in thin trails, and stained the silk of his blazer where it clung to his frame, the once‑pristine fabric now rumpled—a public confession of fear he could no longer script away.


The tall figure stood at the arena’s center, his white hair cascading over his shoulders, the pale blue‑white of his skin glowing faintly in the torchlight, his unreadable eyes fixed on the small form trapped between his clawed fingers.

A hush threaded outward from him, swallowing even the portal’s static until the only sound was the faint hiss of energy bleeding from the shard in his opposite hand.