My SSS-Rank Grim Reaper System

Chapter 108: Just One Day Until Fragment 4 (2)

[Maya’s Room — 10:45 PM]

Alex knocked before entering.

Maya opened the door.

She had the Catacombs map in her hand. Which meant she hadn’t been able to sleep either.

He went in without either of them saying it formally.

They sat—Maya in her usual chair, Alex on the edge of the bed. The map between them on the table.

They looked at it in silence.

Level one. Level two. Level three with the runes. Level four with the Heralds. Level five with no real information.

Akari, asleep in Maya’s lap, woke up, assessed the situation, and with the clear decision of someone who had picked a side, climbed off Maya’s lap and onto Alex’s.

Maya looked at her.

"Traitor."

Alex tried not to smile.

He didn’t quite manage it.

Maya looked at the map.

"Are you afraid?" she said.

"Yes."

"Good."

Silence.

"You?" Alex asked.

Maya didn’t answer immediately.

"Yes. But the kind of fear that makes you think faster." Her eyes on level five of the map. "Not the kind that paralyzes."

"The useful kind."

"The useful kind."

Akari, on Alex’s lap, extended one tail and rested it on Maya’s lap. The two of them connected by the fox in the middle.

Maya looked at her.

Then she looked at Alex.

"I’m very weird, aren’t I?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because even though I’m older than you, I act like a nervous little girl who doesn’t know how to express what she feels." A pause. "Nothing like the Maya you met at the beginning."

Alex looked at her.

"I’ve never thought that about you." He said it without pause because it was true and didn’t require preparation. "From Fallen Citadel until now, I’ve always seen you as someone brave and strong."

Maya lowered her eyes to the map.

"But that’s not how I act now. I don’t understand why, but every time I see you or think about you, I get nervous and everything trembles."

She didn’t say it as a complaint. As an observation—the same way Maya reported any other variable she didn’t fully understand.

Alex looked at her.

That soft expression she made when she let her guard down without realizing it—the Maya who existed when she wasn’t coordinating escape routes or calculating percentages.

He kissed her.

Without warning.

Maya went completely still for a second.

Then she didn’t pull away.

Her hands on Alex’s chest first—not pushing, just there. Then one moving up to his neck. Returning it with an honesty that lacked the filter of any of the things Maya usually filtered.

When Alex pulled back, Maya’s breathing was different.

Her eyes slightly unfocused. Her lips parted.

"Why did you do that?" she said.

"Sorry. That soft expression you made—it provoked me."

Maya looked at him.

She punched his shoulder.

Not hard. But real.

"Idiot."

"Yeah."

Maya touched her lips briefly. Then lowered her hand.

"But that was to show you that I feel the same way." Alex looked at the map—the levels, the routes, everything Maya had calculated for weeks. "With all of you. I never expected to be in this situation. It’s so fast—everything that’s happened from the day of Grim’s summoning until now." A pause. "Still, I try to be brave and strong for you. Because even though I am, you motivate me to give more of myself. Even to sacrifice myself."

Maya looked directly at him.

"Just don’t do it again."

"The kiss?"

"Not that." A brief pause. "You can do that whenever you want." Her eyes fixed on him. "I mean sacrificing yourself."

Alex didn’t answer immediately.

"Thank you," he said finally.

"For what?"

"For showing up at the Crystalines."

Maya frowned slightly.

"But I didn’t do anything. I just observed."

"You went all the way there because you hadn’t heard from us." Alex looked at her. "You were keeping watch in case something happened to me."

Maya looked at the map.

She didn’t answer.

But Akari purred.

Which in nine-tailed fox vocabulary meant enough.

---

[POV — Void Catacombs — Level 4 — Same night]

The chamber was silent.

The Heralds were sleeping or standing guard on the upper levels. The ritual in a waiting state—charged, ready, awaiting the right conditions.

The Veil was alone.

No mask.

Sixteen years old. Eyes completely violet, no white. Hands in front of him in the darkness of the chamber illuminated by the violet light of the symbol on the floor.

He was looking at them.

He had carried the Fragment since he was nine. Before that—something. Someone. A name that the Heralds told him wasn’t relevant because those who have names have history, and histories are attachments.

But there was something.

An image that appeared sometimes, without context. A voice. Someone smaller than him crying. Someone older putting a hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t know if it was a real memory or something the Fragment had shown him from another bearer.

Fragment 4 spoke.

The Core is coming. The text predicted it.

"I know," the Veil said quietly.

The ritual needs him close. You need him close.

"I know."

Then why do you hesitate.

The Veil closed his hands.

It wasn’t exactly hesitation. It was something different—a question he didn’t know how to formulate because he didn’t have the right words. He had been the Veil for seven years. He had no vocabulary for what existed before that.

He looked north.

Veltharr in that direction. The Fragment 1 bearer’s team in Veltharr.

The souls of the reconnaissance team Heralds who had been eliminated reached level four two days ago. He had felt them—the abrupt end of presences he knew.

Fragment 1 had reaped them.

The Fragment 1 bearer had eliminated five trained Heralds in under two minutes, according to the report he’d received.

And yet Fragment 4 told him he needed them close.

The ritual needs them. The anchor needs them. You need them.

"Why do I need them?"

The Fragment didn’t answer that question.

The Veil put on the mask.

The violet light glowed along its edges.

But before the image of his eyes was completely covered—before the Veil closed the mask’s mechanism over his face—something happened in those eyes that wasn’t the usual emptiness.

It was a question.

The same one the Fragment hadn’t answered.

Then the mask closed.

And the Veil went back to being the Veil.

---

[Alex’s Room — 11:50 PM]

The device vibrated.

Alex looked at it from the bed where he’d tried to sleep with little success.

Unknown number. No identification.

He opened the message.

Just coordinates. And text:

"North entrance. The main route has a collapse trap in the first thirty meters. Your maps don’t show it. North entrance avoids it.

—S"

Raven was awake. From the chair by the window where she’d sat down when she came back from leaving Alex with her knife, with no apparent intention of leaving.

"Seraph?" she said.

"Yes."

Raven processed that.

"Do we trust it?"

Alex looked at the message.

Grim from the corner: "The information can be true even if the person isn’t trustworthy." A pause. "Both things can be true."

Raven looked at the skeleton.

Then at the message.

"Do we verify it before entering?"

"Kira can verify on the ground," Alex said. "In the moment."

"And if there’s no time to verify?"

Alex put the device away.

"Then we take it into account and take the north entrance."

Raven nodded.

She leaned back in the chair.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

The device still on the table.

The Catacombs two days’ travel away.

The night passing.