Chapter 74: The Days Before Everything Broke

After the verification, Apex Guild moved quickly.

Kassia received an official call confirming her placement. She was introduced to her assigned team members, given clearance schedules, and folded into regular dungeon operations with almost no delay.

One week she was still taking scattered party jobs. The next, she was walking through Apex’s halls with a guild badge on her chest and a stable route of C-Rank and mid-level clearances waiting for her.

It should have felt triumphant.

Most days, it almost did.

She healed. She supported. She learned the rhythm of a formal team instead of temporary parties that changed every week. The money came on time.

The work was demanding, but clean. For the first time in a long while, she could look at their monthly expenses without quiet panic sitting in the back of her mind.

And through all of it, she kept one date locked in her heart.

Their third anniversary.

That was the day she planned to tell Daemon everything.

The awakening.

The guild offer.

The recommendation clause.

The future she believed she was building for both of them.

She imagined his face when he heard it. Surprise first. Then relief. Then that soft smile he only ever gave her when the world briefly felt manageable.

She wanted that moment to be perfect.

So she waited.

But waiting was not easy.

Every evening, Daemon came home carrying more injuries than he admitted.

Sometimes it was a bruised shoulder.

Sometimes a cut along his arm.

Sometimes a limp he tried to hide the second he saw her watching.

When the wounds were visible, she healed him openly, scolding him under her breath while her hands glowed with recovery light.

When he pretended nothing was wrong, she waited until he fell asleep and healed him quietly in the dark, fingertips careful over skin he thought she had not noticed.

She hated that part most.

Not the healing.

The fact that he thought he needed to protect her from his pain.

She understood why. He was still E-Rank. Regular gates were hard to get. Parties used him when they needed another body and discarded the risk when they did not.

He pushed himself because he refused to become dead weight in the life they were trying to build.

Still, every new bruise made her chest tighten.

If this continued, she would have to tell him to switch.

Maybe leave the gate circuit for a while.

Maybe take office work through Apex once she had enough standing to pull him inside safely.

She told herself she would raise that too on their anniversary.

She only hoped he would not feel disappointed.

She hoped he would understand that wanting him alive was not the same as doubting him.

Then, slowly, their life began to soften.

The first real guild payment changed more than the numbers in their account.

They stopped calculating every meal like a negotiation. Daemon no longer forced himself into every possible low-rank run just to keep the week afloat. Some nights he came home earlier.

Some mornings he lingered in the kitchen longer, stealing bites from whatever she was cooking and pretending he was only "quality checking."

One evening, he came back with cheap flowers wrapped in rough paper.

Kassia stared at them.

"You spent money on this?"

Daemon shrugged, a little embarrassed.

"They were outside the station. Looked like they were about to be thrown away. I negotiated."

"You negotiated with dying flowers?"

"Successfully," he said.

She laughed despite herself and put them in a glass by the window. By the next morning half the petals had fallen, but neither of them moved the glass.

It stayed there like proof that even imperfect things could still make a room warmer.

On another night, rain trapped them indoors. The power flickered once, then steadied.

They sat on the floor with takeout containers between them and talked about nothing important noisy neighbors, a hunter who panicked over a slime, whether the landlord would ever fix the hallway light.

Ordinary words. Safe words. The kind of conversation people only had when they believed tomorrow would still belong to them.

Kassia watched him across the dim light and felt something quiet and full settle in her chest.

This was what she wanted to protect.

Not rank.

Not status.

This.

One weekend, they walked through a market without checking prices every ten seconds. Daemon bought her a hairpin she only glanced at.

She bought him a pair of gloves because his old ones were torn at the seams. They argued lightly over who had spent more, then both lost track of the argument when a street musician started playing near the fountain.

For a little while, they looked like any young couple with a future still open in front of them.

At home, she sometimes caught Daemon watching her with a soft, unguarded expression when he thought she was busy. In those moments she nearly broke and told him everything early.

The words rose to her tongue more than once.

I awakened.

I joined Apex.

I did it for us.

But each time she held them back.

Anniversary, she reminded herself.

Make it a real surprise.

Make it a beginning he would never forget.

So the days passed in a fragile kind of happiness better than before, still not perfect, but bright enough that she let herself believe the hardest part was already behind them.

She did not know disaster was already walking toward her under a friendly name.

Then the call came.

Kassia was leaving a clearance site when her communicator rang. The number was marked under Apex internal contacts, but not through her team leader.

Dr. Adrian.

She frowned slightly and answered.

"Yes?"

There was a pause on the line. Not long. Just long enough to feel wrong.

"Kassia," Adrian said. His voice was polite as always, but tighter than before. "Are you free this evening?"

"I just finished a gate. Why?"

"I need to meet you."

Her steps slowed.

"At the research wing?"

"No." Another short pause. "Outside the guild. Somewhere quieter."

That made her stop completely.

Adrian had always spoken with professional calm. Today, something under his words sounded strained.

Not panicked. Controlled in the way people became when they were forcing steadiness into their voice.

"Is something wrong with my results?" she asked.

"It would be better if we spoke in person."

Kassia’s grip on the communicator tightened.

Every instinct told her this was irregular. Official researchers did not ask newly recruited healers to meet off-site without clear reason. Not after hours. Not with nerves leaking through formal tone.

She almost refused.

Almost.

Then she thought of the payments, the recommendation clause, the anniversary still waiting ahead, and the future she had already begun constructing in her mind brick by careful brick.

If something was wrong, she needed to know before it reached Daemon.

"...Where?" she finally asked.

Adrian gave her a location far from Apex’s main tower.

"Come alone," he added. Then, more quickly, as if regretting how that sounded, "Only for privacy. There are details I cannot discuss inside guild walls."

The line went dead.

Kassia stood in the cooling evening air with the communicator still raised, city lights beginning to brighten around her.

Behind her, a completed dungeon gate shimmered as its temporary markers shut down.

Ahead of her, an off-site meeting waited with a man who no longer sounded as friendly as before.

She did not know it yet, but this was the last ordinary evening she would have for a long time.