SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 212: The Stillness We Share

The fires had died down to a low, pulsing coals by the time anyone dared to break the silence. The embers smoldered softly, casting quivering light out onto the sand like the heartbeat of something wounded but not yet dead. Tendrils of thin, asymmetrical smoke rose and merged with the darkening dusk. The air was heavy with the scent of charred fur and blood.

The leopard’s body was exactly where it had fallen, a heap of muscle and wreckage now half-shrouded in a veil of ash and sand. Its jaws were open, tongue slack, eyes dead. There was something obscene in the stillness of it, as if we’d stumbled into a tableau that should not have played itself out so close to camp. Alexis had already begun dragging the carcass to the edge of the treeline, one hand clutching the hind leg, the other attached to a section of vine she’d knotted into a loop like a makeshift tether. Her expression was stoic—tight-lipped, eyes narrowed, muttering something under her breath. Terms like "rot" and "scavengers" were all that carried back to us, buried beneath the noise of wind rustling through the canopy.

Camille was the first to speak up. Her voice wasn’t bright anymore, the usual tease mellowed by fatigue and soot. She rubbed her hands along the hem of her soot-stained shirt, dark smears streaking across her cheeks like war paint. "You’re sure?" she said, glancing from me to the woods and back again. "A shelter?"

"I can’t be certain," I replied, my breath hitching. I could feel the soreness clawing at my ribs again, every word stoking a slow burn beneath the bandages. "But barbed wire doesn’t grow on trees. Someone made those wounds. Someone—or something—had to have kept it somewhere. And it got out."

A beat passed. Then another.

Evelyn, still crouched near me, let out a quiet breath through her nose. She picked up the stick she’d been sharpening before the attack, examining its jagged tip with a calculating expression. "I’ll reinforce the perimeter," she said finally. "Whatever camp we had before needs to be more than just a windbreak now. We’ll need barriers. Deterrents. Deadfall traps, if I can manage them. Maybe even pressure line triggers. Anything to slow down the next thing that decides we look like food."

Her tone was flat. Not panicked. Not frightened. Just prepared.

Alexis stood, brushing dirt and ash from her palms before walking to the others. Her gaze flicked over each of us, pausing on the darkening woods. "Camille and I will check the inland route," she said. "If there’s something man-made in that forest, we’ll find it. Shelter, station, wreckage—whatever it is."

"You’ll take rations," Evelyn said. "Two hours. No more. If you’re not back by then, we assume you’re compromised and we don’t send a second team."

Camille raised a brow. "Not even to rescue us?"

Evelyn gave her a look. "If you’re dead, there’s nothing to rescue. If you’re not, you’ll be smart enough to follow instructions."

"And if we get turned around?" Camille asked, folding her arms.

"Then you walk in one direction until you hit shoreline," Evelyn answered without hesitation. "This island has a perimeter. Follow it clockwise until you see firelight or smoke. Don’t cut back through the middle."

Camille nodded slowly, her usual sarcasm dimmed. "Got it."

"Also," Evelyn added without looking up, "don’t get eaten."

Camille offered a weak grin. "I’ll do my best."

"You won’t be alone," Alexis said, adjusting the strap of the small satchel now slung over her shoulder. "I’ll keep us on track."

Camille gave her a mock salute, but there was an edge of real respect in her posture.

That’s when I felt Sienna’s hand press lightly against my shoulder. The warmth of it grounded me more than I expected. But her voice—her voice left no room for debate.

"You’re staying here."

I turned toward her, my expression already tightening. "I can—"

"You can barely walk," she said, cutting me off. "And you’re still bleeding."

The words hit harder than they should have. Not because they were cruel—Sienna was never cruel—but because they were true. Her tone didn’t waver, but there was something in her eyes. Worry. Not pity. Not frustration. Just honest concern.

My protest withered on my tongue.

Around me, the others continued moving, gathering supplies, sharpening tools, redrawing maps in the sand with sticks and fingers. I watched them work—watched Alexis check the knife she had cleaned and tucked away, watched Camille refill the side pouches of her pack with a kind of tired rhythm, watched Evelyn reinforce the firepit’s edge with rocks now arranged into a shallow defensive crescent.

And I sat.

Not by choice. By necessity.

It gnawed at me more than I could admit aloud.

I wasn’t built for stillness. I wasn’t designed for observation. My whole life had been about doing—acting, reacting, solving. The System had turned that urgency into a weapon. But now? Now I was grounded. Not just physically, but existentially. Like a pilot strapped to a seat while the plane burned.

I watched Alexis and Camille disappear into the treeline, the foliage swallowing them whole.

Then I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly.

I didn’t like this. Not one bit.

I wasn’t used to being the one left behind. And worse—

I wasn’t sure I knew how to endure it.

By the time an hour had passed since Alexis and Camille disappeared into the trees, the sun was beginning its slow descent—but it hadn’t vanished yet. The jungle was bathed in that strange late-afternoon light: soft gold angled low through the canopy, casting long beams that flickered with the sway of the leaves. Shadows grew longer, but the heat still clung to the sand and stone in lazy patches. It was that in-between hour where the day had one hand on evening’s shoulder but refused to let go just yet.

The camp was quiet. Not in the tense, brittle way it had been after the leopard attack, but in a careful, listening sort of way. Like everything around us was holding its breath.

I lay back under the lean-to, resting against the woven mat of vines and blankets that still carried the smell of saltwater, smoke, and faint iodine. My side throbbed in slow waves, a steady pulse of pain in time with my heartbeat. Each breath came with a hitch. The adrenaline had long since drained from my system, leaving behind fatigue like wet concrete weighing down my limbs.

Sienna sat beside me, her back straight, her eyes focused on a roll of cloth she was slowly turning into usable strips. Maybe for splints. Maybe for binding. Or maybe she just needed something to do with her hands. Her brow was furrowed in quiet concentration, the kind of focus that came not from urgency but from routine—the kind of thing people do to stay steady when they’re trying not to spiral.

"You look like you’re thinking of trying to stand up again," she said, her voice gentle but pointed.

I didn’t deny it. "I am."

"You shouldn’t."

I let out a short breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. "It’s not about should. It’s about needing to. I hate just lying here while everyone else is doing something."

She didn’t look up. Just kept looping the cloth, knotting it tight and smooth.

"You’re not useless, you know," she said, after a long pause.

I didn’t respond. Not right away. The fire snapped nearby, a quiet, comforting sound. A few birds had returned to the edge of the treeline—nothing too close—but their chirps broke the silence in soft, sporadic bursts.

She turned toward me then. Her expression was unreadable at first, but her voice carried the weight of something well-rehearsed.

"You think I don’t get it. But I do. More than you realize."

Her words sank into me slowly, like cold water.

"When you were stuck on Mars—" she began.

My jaw clenched. I turned my head away, the memory still raw beneath the scar tissue.

"Reynard, I watched everything," she said, and her voice cracked just a little. "Every emergency broadcast. Every scrambled status report. Every corrupted message that got filtered back through the system. I sat on my couch until the cushions collapsed, staring at the same thirty seconds of footage on loop. The crash. The flames. The static. Again and again. I didn’t sleep right for weeks."

I closed my eyes, but the images were already there—just like they always were.

"I was still B-Rank back then," she continued. "Just a construction worker with reinforced joints and a welding torch. I thought I mattered. I thought my job was enough. But when you disappeared, I realized I had no way of reaching you. No tools to help. Nothing to offer except watching you burn over and over again from a screen I couldn’t touch."

Her voice dipped low, nearly a whisper. "So I threw myself into my work. I rebuilt school foundations. Fused breach seals for domes I knew you’d never step foot in. I stayed up through shifts, collapsed on site, lifted more than I should’ve—all because I thought... maybe if I pushed hard enough, it would count for something. That if I got strong enough, fast enough, important enough, I could matter next time."

I opened my eyes and turned to her, my chest tight.

"I know," I said softly. "Camille told me. About the hours. The sleepless nights. How you didn’t stop until you hit A-Rank."

Her hands trembled slightly as she tied another knot.

"But even then," she whispered, "it didn’t change a damn thing. You were still gone. And I was still powerless."

She looked up at me, eyes shimmering but not breaking. "So no—you’re not the only one who’s ever felt useless. And that’s why I’m not letting you carry this weight alone. Not now. Not ever."

We sat there for a long time in silence, wrapped in the gentle hush of the jungle and the crackling of the fire. The branches overhead swayed, casting light and shadow like passing thoughts across our faces.

"Two years," I murmured at last.

She tilted her head slightly, prompting me.

"Two years since you joined me," I said. "Since you saw some washed-up F-Rank idiot and decided to treat him with kindness since you were his coworker."

"I still think you’re mad," she said with a small, tired smile.

"Probably."

"But you’re my kind of mad. The kind that never gives up. The kind that screams into the void and still manages to get something done. The kind that survives Mars and comes back with a limp and a plan."

I chuckled, though it hurt. It was a fragile, breathless sound, but real.

She shifted closer, pulling a spare blanket up around us both. Her shoulder bumped against mine, and I didn’t resist the contact. It was grounding—an anchor in the shifting tide of doubt still curling at the edges of my thoughts.

"I missed this," I said.

"What?" she asked, her voice quiet.

"This. Peace. Stillness. The kind of moment where the world doesn’t feel like it’s ending. Where the only thing that matters is who’s next to you and whether the fire needs feeding."

She leaned her head against my shoulder, her hair brushing against my jaw. "Then take it," she said. "Take it without guilt. You don’t have to earn this moment. You’ve already earned more than your share."

The breeze picked up, threading through the camp and brushing gently through the canopy above. The air smelled of moss and smoke and salt—somehow all comforting now. Familiar. Alive.

I glanced toward the edge of my vision, where the System interface would normally flicker.

Still dark.

Still locked.

But I didn’t check again. Not obsessively. Not with a timer running in my head. For the first time since the crash, I let that impulse go.

Maybe it was okay to stop counting for now.

Maybe strength wasn’t always movement.

Maybe it was knowing when to be still—and who you could be still with.

I closed my eyes as Sienna curled into my side, her breath hot against my neck. She fit into me like she belonged, like we’d always meant to come full circle to this place. Her heartbeat hummed softly through our shared warmth, and I felt my own breathing become a match for hers—slow, steady, real.

And for the first time since I collapsed on that raft, I didn’t feel like a burden.

I felt held.

Foll𝑜w current novℯls on fre𝒆web(n)ovel.co(m)