My SSS-Rank Grim Reaper System-Chapter 88: WATERS HEAL

The steam was visible from afar.

White columns rising among the mountain rocks, slow, constant, like breathing.

Kira hadn’t exaggerated about the distance. Half a day from Khar’Seth, but uphill terrain the whole time. The path wasn’t marked on any map Alex knew. It only existed because Kira knew where her feet were.

"Why isn’t it on the guild maps?" asked Raven.

"Ishi doesn’t want uninvited visitors." Kira sidestepped a root without looking at it. "Maps show what maps decide to show."

"And she decides that?"

"She and the terrain. The routes that lead here shift. Literally. If you don’t know the real path, you end up circling the same kilometer without understanding why."

Emily looked back at the path they had taken.

"Did that happen to us?"

"Three times in the last two kilometers." Kira kept walking. "I was going to tell you, but we made it anyway."

---

[Ishi Hot Springs, Crystal Mountains — Afternoon]

The hot springs appeared without prior announcement.

A turn in the path, a formation of tall rocks, and suddenly the terrain opened into a small valley completely different from everything around it.

Deep green where outside there was dry stone.

Five steaming pools at different heights, connected by natural channels.

Three cabins of dark wood built against the rock, simple, functional.

And silence.

As if the place had enough of its own and didn’t need noise to prove it.

"There are no animals," Alex noticed.

"Mountain beasts don’t come near." Kira dropped her pack on the ground. "The energy of this place repels them. Not with aggression. Just with something their instincts recognize as too pure to enter."

Grim raised his head.

His eye sockets scanning the valley.

"Old." A pause. "This place is very old."

"Older than the Temple," said Kira. "Older than most cities."

---

The old woman came out of the central cabin.

A meter and a half. Silver hair that reached the ground, trailing slightly on the grass without tangling, as if the hair had its own instructions. Simple white clothing, no ornaments. Bare feet on the damp stone.

Eyes the color of deep water.

She looked at them all in order.

Emily. Raven. Kira, with a small nod of mutual recognition. Grim, where she paused a second longer.

Then Alex.

"Ah," she said.

Just that, at first.

She walked toward him with short, sure steps. Stopped a meter away. Looked him up and down with the expression of someone reading small print.

"You’re carrying a heavy guest, boy."

"I know."

"No, you don’t know." Her voice was soft but not kind in the ordinary sense. It was precise. "You know you’re carrying it. You don’t know how much it still weighs." She tilted her head. "You will."

She turned without further explanation.

"Come in. The cabins at the ends are ready. The waters have schedules I’ll explain. Don’t touch the central pool without asking me first."

She started walking back.

"My name is Ishi. You don’t need to thank anything yet. Thank when you leave, if you want."

---

[Later — cabins]

The cabins were small but sufficient.

Two beds each, a table, a window facing the pools. No luxuries. Everything necessary.

Ishi explained the schedules at the door of the central cabin.

Mornings: the north pool for those needing physical healing.

Afternoons: the east pool for magical energy and MP recovery.

Nights: the south pool, the hottest, free use.

The central pool, no assigned time, only with permission.

"What’s the central one for?" asked Emily.

"For problems the other four don’t reach." The deep-water eyes glanced briefly toward Alex. "We’ll see if it’s necessary."

---

[Next day — Morning]

Alex entered the north pool alone.

The water was hotter than he expected. Not uncomfortable, but definitely hotter. Cloudy with minerals, slightly bluish, with a smell hard to describe. Clean, but ancient. Like the first day of rain after months of drought.

He submerged to his shoulders.

The Fragment reacted immediately.

Not with resistance. With something closer to discomfort, like an infected wound encountering antiseptic. A pressure inward, a forced adjustment.

Alex waited.

He breathed.

The water did something he couldn’t quite name. It didn’t eliminate the Fragment’s noise. It didn’t cut the connection. But it pushed it back. It gave him space between Alex’s thoughts and the Fragment’s that normally occupied the same place.

Like separating two fabrics that had stuck together.

Not perfect.

But more than he’d had in weeks.

[Corruption: 82% → 81.3%]

Slow.

Ishi had said it would take time.

She was right.

---

It was Ishi who found Grim.

Or Grim who found Ishi. Hard to determine. The fact was that when Alex came out of the pool, Grim and the old woman were sitting on a flat rock near the central channel, half a meter apart, looking at the water.

Not speaking.

Alex stopped at a distance.

Ishi spoke first, without turning her head.

"The Core. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of yours."

Grim looked at her.

"You know me?"

"I know what you were." Ishi kept looking at the water. "You are not the Reaper. You are his heart, separated. What remained when the gods dismantled you." A pause. "The difference matters."

"Why?"

"Because the Reaper was what it did. You are what it was before doing." Ishi tilted her head slightly. "That has more possibilities."

Grim didn’t answer immediately.

His eye sockets looked at the water too.

"I don’t remember well what I was."

"I know. Fragments don’t remember everything for no reason. They remember in pieces that have no order." Ishi stood with the ease of someone weightless. "But they remember. That’s enough for now."

She went toward the central cabin.

Grim kept looking at the water.

Alex didn’t interrupt.

---

That night, with the group settled and the mountain completely still, Alex and Grim sat outside the cabin.

The stars, with no city nearby to compete, were more than Alex remembered ever seeing.

"What did she really say to you?" Alex asked.

"What she already said." Pause. "And that the memory fragments I have now aren’t dangerous. They’re just... background noise of what I was."

"Background noise... does it bother you?"

"It’s confusing." Grim considered. "Can I show you?"

Alex hadn’t expected that.

"Can you do that?"

"Since the Manifestation. I don’t know how exactly. But I think so."

Alex nodded.

---

[Alex’s Mind]

He didn’t know how to describe it.

It wasn’t clear visions.

It was more like memories of his own that weren’t his. Sensations without context. Images without frame.

A field that extended infinitely in all directions, no visible horizon.

Millions of small lights moving slowly, like plankton in dark water. Souls. Alex knew it without anyone explaining.

A hand harvesting them. Without violence. Without choosing which ones and which not. All of them, eventually.

The feeling of being the oldest thing anywhere you arrived.

And then, more recent, more blurred, the feeling of being divided. Not destroyed. Divided. Seven times. In seven different directions.

And silence.

A very long silence.

And then a ceremony. A nervous student. A companion that materialized amid laughter.

And a name.

Grim.

---

Alex came out of the memory with his eyes open.

Grim was looking at him.

"Confusing," he said. "Yes?"

"Yeah." Alex processed. "The small lights, were they souls?"

"I think so."

"You harvested them all? Without distinction?"

"Without distinction." A long pause. "It wasn’t cruelty. It was function. Like breathing."

"And now?"

Grim took time to answer.

"Now I know who I don’t want to harvest." His eye sockets looked toward the cabins where the rest of the team slept. "That is different."

Alex looked at the stars.

The Fragment murmured softly. Softer than in days.

The waters were doing their work slowly.

[Corruption: 81.3% → 80.5%] (first full night)

"Grim."

"Yes?"

"Thank you for showing me that."

Grim didn’t answer with words.

He just settled a little closer on the rock.

Enough.