Her hands clenched at her sides. The tightness in her chest pulled taut. She looked toward Neuril — standing quiet at the edge, amber eyes uncertain, not pushing, just watching. Eighteen years old and about to miss her enrollnt window because her older sister was standing frozen in front of a stove.
Lira exhaled through her nose.
"Fine."
She tied her apron and moved to the counter, hands finding work out of muscle mory. Her mind, though, was turning sothing over that had no clean answer.
’Why is he here?’
Fifteen minutes. Every al prepped, plated, carried.
Lira and Neuril both moved through the dining floor distributing bowls. Two of the bodyguards near the kitchen door stepped forward with a bow and offered help — Lira gave a single nod and let them.
Nearly every seat was handled. Nearly.
One remained.
Lira paused, holding the last bowl. The guards were occupied. The floor was moving. No one stepped in to bridge the gap for her, and the empty seat with its waiting order sat directly in her eyeline like sothing that had always been there and always would be.
"Big sis," Neuril said, appearing at her elbow, reaching for the bowl with easy confidence, "give it here — I’ll bring it to him—"
"Stop." Lira’s grip tightened. Her voice ca out louder than she intended.
The room went quiet.
Heads turned. Including his.
Their eyes t across the narrow space — Cruxius’s gaze landing on her with the flat, unhurried weight of sothing that didn’t need to announce itself. Lira’s jaw pulled tight. Her lips pressed thin. Her hand was trembling and she knew it and she walked forward anyway, crossing the floor, setting the bowl down in front of him with the controlled precision of soone doing the one thing they had decided they would not do.
"...Here. Your order."
She turned to leave.
"Lira."
His voice. Quiet. Firm enough.
"Do you rember ?"
’’!?!’’
Her foot caught. Just barely. Enough that the ladle at her waist jingled once against her apron string.
Her breath hitched. She did not turn.
The silence stretched itself out between them.
"I..." Her lips parted. Closed. Parted again. "I-I d-don’t..." The syllables broke before they finished, tumbling out frayed and unsteady. "I d-don’t kn-know y-you..."
Cruxius’s eyes narrowed.
He watched the way her shoulders drew inward. How her hands gripped the apron fabric and twisted it. How her words ca apart at the joints — breaking in the exact way they always broke when she was overwheld, when fear and anger ran into each other and jamd everything coming out of her throat.
’So she kept the mories.’ He closed his eyes, briefly.
He already knew, but having it confird landed differently.
He stretched one hand across the table.
"I ant — you’ve likely seen on the news, Miss Lira," he said, voice asured, neutral, carrying nothing that could be caught. "I’m the heir of Blac Corporations."
"I-I will bring another bowl—"
She was already moving. Halfway across the floor. Back to the kitchen, steps quick, not quite running but not far from it, never once looking back.
’’...System,’’ he called silently, eyes tracking the space where she’d been.
’First Sugar. Now her.’
What was waking their mories?
With Sugar, he’d initially assud so dormant regression ability — sothing similar to his own. But Lira had never shown signs of anything like that. She wasn’t even a potential superhero by any asure he knew.
Sothing else was at play.
Ding.
A window opened in front of him, quiet and precise.
[Status Window: Lira]
Rank: Unspecified
Role: Owner of this curry shop
Ability: [Hearts Over Heaven] – Rank: SSS
’If any individual harbors a greater love for the User than the User does in return, all abilities of equal or higher rank possessed by the User are copied and bestowed upon them, including this ability.’
’- This effect transcends ti, life, and death.’
’- The only qualifier is the depth of love surpassing the User’s own.’
’- Activation is automatic and cannot be resisted by either party.’
’- Even if love diminishes montarily, the ability weighs the full history of love between both parties and activates accordingly.’
Core Stats:
Strength: D | Agility: D | Endurance: C | Intellect: B | Charisma: A | Libido: C
’
’’!?!’’
’Shit.’
He stared at it. His entire past life played back in a flash — every decision, every sacrifice, every na he’d made himself forget. The world that was supposed to be his second chance had just dropped a teor into his lap.
Lira’s ability far exceeded anything he’d encountered. Except, once, his own.
’’...System. Why does this read like Heart Sync?’’
He already had a theory. He asked anyway.
[Affirmative. It is similar to a significant extent. However, Heart Sync is an optimized, upgraded version — synthesized specifically for the Host.]
’’Upgraded from what, exactly?’’ His patience thinned at the edges.
The system had been sitting on this.
The description was clear enough once he parsed it. Lira’s ability functioned like a transfer chanism — driven by love’s depth, just like his, but without his version’s guardrails. No minimum threshold requirents. No rank-scaling. No exclusivity. No manual control. Completely automatic.
Anyone who loved her more than she loved them could inherit Hearts Over Heaven. Including the SSS rank itself.
What struck hardest was the persistence — through ti, through death. Like his. Her inherited abilities didn’t dissolve when a life ended. They carried forward.
That’s what happened to Sugar. To Lira herself.
When he had revealed to Lira that he had killed her sister — her love had fractured, dropped below his for a mont. That imbalance triggered the transfer. Her ability had moved to him. Then, when her love recovered and exceeded his again, she’d taken it back — and absorbed his temporarily boosted version alongside it.
A closed cycle. Like malware that rewrites itself every pass.
Every woman who had loved him more than he could return — each one would have gained the ability. And even in lives ended by his own hand, even in circumstances that forced him to sacrifice them — the activation had already occurred. His SSS boosted Black Loop had transferred. They had retained their future mories.
He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known about Lira’s ability at all.
’And that was a very big mistake.’
[Heart Sync is the upgraded version of the SSS-rank ability. The system evolved it after sustained observation of conditions t across multiple cycles.]
’’So you were with the entire ti,’’ he thought.
Waiting. Watching for the mont the conditions aligned — when Lira’s transferable ability had finally passed to him — before awakening and upgrading itself from it.
He began to wonder, not for the first ti, whether the system was helping him or simply using him as a vehicle.
[Confird. Ownership of the system has been transferred to Cruxius Blac from his mother, ’ ’.]
’’Urgh—’’
It hit like a spike through the skull — not noise, not pain exactly, but sothing seizing, clamping down inside his mind the mont it reached that na. Stopping him. Cutting it off.
’Again.’
"Master?" Darithi’s voice, close. He caught the way her eyes moved — to his hand, to his thumb rubbing against itself. She recognized the tell. "Are you alright?"
She knew. As she always did. The slight frown, the thumb — the symptoms of him reaching for a na that everyone else in the world could say freely, everyone except him. Whatever lived in that blank space in his mory, it didn’t flinch from him. It burned.
He exhaled slowly. Let it go.
For now.
User Comments
0 comments from readers