Guide to Surviving SSS-Class Yanderes

There was no light.

There was no visible floor, no ceiling, no walls. Only a uniform darkness that was not threatening, merely empty.

Somehow, Ophélia was standing in that space.

She clearly remembered what had happened before arriving here.

She had left school alone, since the route was short and nothing had happened for several days. She had thought that doing it once would not change anything.

Three people had intercepted her two blocks from the sanctuary. They had given her no time to react. One of them had applied something directly to her neck before she could do anything, and the world had disappeared immediately afterward.

'I went alone once.'

She remained still in the void for a length of time she could not measure.

There was no way to know how much time had passed since the ambush, whether anyone knew where she was, whether the sanctuary priest had warned anyone, or whether that warning had reached the right people in time.

She thought of Takeshi.

He probably already knew what had happened. He had promised to protect her.

'Why didn't I wait for him?'

It had been a mistake with no valid excuse.

Ophélia opened her eyes into the darkness.

The problem was not only that mistake. How many times had Takeshi had to rearrange his plans? How many times had Aoi or Nyx adjusted their own activities to accompany her on routes she should have been able to walk alone?

She was a priestess of Tot. She had grown up studying texts about a goddess who had stopped wars, structured the entire world's magical system, and yet she had not been able to walk two blocks without being captured.

'I'm a burden.'

The conclusion came without drama. It was a direct assessment of the available facts.

Everyone had things that mattered, yet all of them had devoted time and energy to protecting someone who had just demonstrated that she could undo that protection with a single careless decision.

'It would be best if they didn't rescue me.'

Not because she wanted to stay in this place. But because the cost of rescuing her would always be greater than the benefit of having her safe. If they managed to get her out this time, there would be a next time, and another after that.

She sat down on the floor that did not exist and waited.

The footsteps Takeshi had heard in the hallway belonged to a figure standing in the doorway of the room.

It was Sable.

Takeshi rose from where he had been kneeling beside Ophélia and automatically positioned himself between the door and the cell.

Sable stopped in the doorway.

There was no dagger in her hand.

Behind Sable, Aoi and Nyx appeared.

Aoi had Eclipse sheathed. Nyx's uniform was damp, and she had an improvised bandage wrapped around her left palm. Both of them were unharmed.

Takeshi lowered his defensive stance.

"What happened to the kitsune?"

he asked.

"Out of commission,"

Nyx said.

"And the other temple guards?"

"Under control."

Aoi replied in her neutral voice.

Takeshi looked at Sable.

"Why are you with them?"

Sable looked at Ophélia lying on the floor of the cell before answering.

"Merwyn contacted my clan's leadership while I was fighting Aoi."

She paused.

"I don't know how he did it or what he told them, but they broke the contract with the temple and informed me in the middle of the fight."

"And you decided to help?"

"I decided that the contract was the only reason I was here."

Sable looked directly at him.

"Without a contract, I have no reason to attack anyone in this temple."

Aoi and Nyx made no comment on that.

Takeshi looked at Ophélia.

"She's not waking up,"

he said.

"I disabled the cell's seals, but she's still the same."

Sable entered the room and approached the cell. She knelt beside Ophélia and examined her neck, her hands, the places where the seals had been active. Then she stood.

"The containment seals were only the first level."

"What does that mean?"

"The temple applied a second barrier. A deeper one."

Sable looked at Takeshi.

"They left her mind inside a dream space. The physical seals of the cell kept her here, but her consciousness is somewhere else."

"How do we get her out?"

Takeshi said.

"Someone has to enter the dream space where she is and bring her out from the inside."

Sable crossed her arms.

"It isn't a physical process. You have to reach her inside that space."

"How do you enter?"

Sable did not answer immediately. She looked down the hallway she had come from, then back at Takeshi.

"This temple is dedicated to a god of fortune, but the dream space they built uses an older structure. One that predates their god."

She paused.

"It uses the same structure as the spaces associated with Tot."

Nyx spoke from the doorway.

"Can Tot open it?"

"Tot can open it and close it,"

Sable replied.

"But first, she has to be convinced. It isn't an automatic process."

She looked at Takeshi.

"You have to ask her directly."

Aoi moved toward the hallway.

"Where?"

"In the center of the temple,"

Sable said.

"There's a statue of Tot. The builders of the temple put it there because the original structure of the building was a sanctuary of Tot before this group took it over. The statue is still active."

Takeshi carefully lifted Ophélia from the floor. She was lighter than he had expected. He held her with one arm beneath her back and the other beneath her knees.

They followed Sable down the hallway, back toward the staircase, and then through a different corridor from the one Takeshi had used to get there. This one led toward the center of the building.

The central chamber was circular, with a domed ceiling. The walls were covered in engravings that were not the same style as the containment seals in the cell. They were older. Simpler in form, yet denser in the amount of detail per inch.

At the center of the chamber stood a statue.

It was four meters tall. Made of solid gold, or something that imitated it closely enough that the difference was irrelevant. The figure was not entirely human. Its torso and limbs had human proportions, but its head possessed something that never fully resolved from any specific angle. The statue's eyes were two dark stones without reflection.

Takeshi set Ophélia down on the floor in front of the statue. He left her reclining with her back resting against the stone base of the circular structure surrounding the figure.

He stood and looked at Sable.

"Why are you really helping us?"

he asked.

Sable looked at him for a moment.

"Merwyn broke the contract..."

she said.

"That's the official reason."

"And the other one?"

A brief pause.

"The people who hired my clan for this used false information to secure the contract. They told me the target was an active threat to regional stability."

She looked at Ophélia on the floor.

"A priestess of Tot who studies historical texts is not an active threat to anyone."

She added nothing more.

Takeshi did not press further.

Nyx stood beside the left wall of the chamber with her eyes on the statue. Aoi stood on the opposite side, back straight, saying nothing.

"How does it work?"

Takeshi said, looking at the statue.

"You stand in front of it,"

Sable indicated.

"And ask to enter. If Tot accepts, you'll enter the dream space where Ophélia is."

She stopped.

"If she doesn't accept, nothing happens and Ophélia stays where she is."

"What determines whether she accepts or not?"

"I don't know exactly. My clan has partial records of this process, but they aren't complete."

Sable looked directly at him.

"What the records say is that Tot does not respond to just anyone. She responds to someone whose reason she considers valid."

Takeshi looked at the statue for a moment. Then he looked at Aoi and Nyx.

Neither said anything. Aoi gave a brief nod.

Nyx kept her gaze on the statue.

Takeshi walked until he was standing directly before it.

The dark stone eyes held no reflection, but neither were they completely inert. There was something on their surface that shifted subtly depending on the angle from which they were viewed, even though the chamber's torches were not moving.

Takeshi did not know what words to use. There was no protocol he knew for this. Ophélia would have known. She had grown up with the sanctuary's texts and knew the proper ways to address Tot.

He had none of that.

He only had what he had.

He extended a hand toward the statue without touching it and said aloud, plainly and without preamble:

"I need to go where Ophélia is. I need to bring her back."

The silence of the chamber lasted three seconds.

Then the statue's dark stone eyes changed.

It was not a physical movement. There was no light, no sound. It was a change in the quality of whatever existed on that surface, as though something that had been dormant recognized the presence before it and chose to respond.

The floor beneath Takeshi's feet disappeared.

It was not a fall. It was a transition. The stone floor of the temple's central chamber ceased to exist beneath him, and what came afterward was not another floor but an entirely different space.

Without a defined temperature. Without points of reference. Without sound.

Uniform darkness in every direction.

Takeshi remained still within that space and waited for his eyes to adjust, even though there was nothing for them to adjust to.

Then he saw something.

At the center of that space was a figure seated on the floor that did not exist, pale hair draped over her shoulders, her head slightly bowed forward.

And beside her was another figure.

This was not Ophélia.

It was taller. Light that should not have existed in that sourceless space illuminated its silhouette from within. In some respects its proportions were human, and in others they never fully resolved from any angle.

The figure turned its head toward Takeshi.

Its eyes were dark, without reflection, exactly like those of the golden statue in the temple chamber.

Takeshi did not move.

Tot was looking at him.