THE ALMIGHTY SYSTEM IS JUST A LEWD GIRL-Chapter 33: Melchior Hezron is trouble.

The room was a wreck,the cocoon was gone, burned to ash and stink. Black liquid ran in lines down the cracked wall and pooled on the floor. My lungs hurt. My hands shook. Alma stood in the middle of it, blade of light fading from her grip until there was only her and the slow glow under her skin.

Rhea lowered her sword first. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stared at Alma like she was trying to decide if she was a miracle or a weapon. Vesper leaned on the doorframe, rings dim, breathing shallow. Selendra pushed herself up from where she had slammed into the far wardrobe. Her tail twitched once. Her eyes never left Alma.

No one spoke...Alma turned her head toward me. The look hit like a slap. Cold. Exact. Not relief. Not even anger yet. Judgment first.

"You’re alive," I said, because my brain had nothing better.

"I had to be," she said. "Your body was about to become a splatter on a cursed floor."

I swallowed. "Thank you."

She didn’t answer. Her eyes moved to Selendra.

Selendra smiled like a sinner at confession. "Hello, system. Welcome back."

Alma took one step toward her. The glow along her arms brightened a shade. "Don’t call me that."

"What should I call you," Selendra asked. "Mistress? Rival? You wear his chest like a home. I took a room."

Rhea moved between them at once. "Enough. We’re all hurt. We’re all tired. Not here."

Alma’s gaze slid to Rhea, then back to Selendra. "I don’t need a blade to deal with you. Touch him without consent again and I’ll tear the bond out of you strand by strand."

Selendra’s chin lifted. "You can try."

Vesper’s voice cut the room flat. "Stand down, both of you."

Alma flicked her fingers. The last of her light folded away under her skin. She looked tired now, but she held herself like nothing in the room could move her unless she wanted it to. Selendra stayed smiling, but she took two small steps to the side, out of Alma’s reach. Rhea let out a slow breath she thought we couldn’t hear. Vesper straightened and walked past them, checking the corners for anything left alive.

A chair creaked behind us.

We turned as one.

The prince sat there in the doorway like he had been born in that chair. Teal cloak draped clean. Boots without a speck of this room on them. His face was the same as in the market..sharp, young, amused..but the eyes were deeper when they settled on Alma.

"I don’t clap," he said. "But if I did, I’d do it quietly. That was clean work."

Rhea pointed her sword at his chest. "You watched us almost die."

"Tch," he said, lips quirking. "If you had died, I would have had to fish your bones out before the floor remembered how to eat. Time-consuming."

Vesper looked him up and down. "Prince Melchior Hezron."

He dipped his head by a fraction. "You listened the first time. Good."

Rhea didn’t lower her blade. "What do you want."

"To see if the rumor was true," he said, eyes on Alma again. "That a system could step out of a charm and walk."

No one corrected him. Even Selendra stayed quiet.

Melchior turned to me then. "You have an interesting talent for survival, Eight."

My stomach twisted at the old handle. I didn’t answer. The charm under my shirt was warm and heavy. Alma stood close enough that I could feel her heat. She didn’t look at me.

Melchior’s smile thinned. Not cruel. Focused. "This inn is done. The woman who bargained for it has nothing left to feed. The city will cut this street out and leave the building to rot or use it for bait. Either way, you can’t sleep here."

"No argument," Rhea said.

"More to the point," he went on, "you’ve made a mark. Not on the floor. On the air. On the people who notice things. There are eyes who felt that light and will want to touch it." His gaze flicked to Alma. "Some to bow. Some to break."

Alma’s mouth moved by a fraction. "Let them try."

"Not here," Rhea said again. "We need out."

Melchior rose without hurry. "I can walk you to a door that isn’t hungry. You can refuse, and do this the hard way. I don’t mind watching either."

Rhea weighed him. "Guide us. Nothing more."

He nodded. No offense taken. He looked past me at the wall where the cocoon had been. Something in his face shifted—like he had filed the sight away and moved on. "Downstairs, then. This floor won’t hold much longer."

We went. The stairs were worse going down, damp threads of rot dripping through the boards. On the landing, a smear of black moved under the wood and then stopped like it remembered the rules. The front room was empty the way a trap is empty when it has already been sprung. The lantern burned the same low, stubborn light.

I stopped at the counter. No jar. No ledger. No sign that a person had ever kept a business here, except for dents worn into the edge where a tired hand had rested for years.

Melchior watched me watch it. "She did live once," he said, softer than before. "She did pour drinks and make soup and call children off stairs. Don’t make the mistake of thinking monsters start as monsters."

"I can be angry for both things," I said.

"Then you’ll fit here," he said.

Alma shifted beside me. I could feel the warning without looking. I left the counter where it was and followed them out.

The night outside was worse than the inside. The street was half fog, half lamp smoke. People shaped like people moved through it with heads down. Someone sang in a language I didn’t know down the lane, voice too sweet for this hour. A stray dog with too many teeth watched us pass and didn’t bark.

Melchior walked ahead like he had drawn this route on the stone. Rhea kept pace with him, blade low but ready. Vesper limped. Selendra drifted to my other side, close enough to brush my sleeve. Alma cut her off with one look. Selendra pouted and let a hand drag against the brick as she walked.

"Why are you here," Rhea asked the prince without taking her eyes off the street.

"Because I can be," he said. "Because I knew the shape of this trap and wanted to see who sprung it. Because a charm like his woke up and that doesn’t happen without endings to follow."

"You knew this place," Vesper said.

"I know this city," he said. "It notices. It teaches. It punishes. It keeps old debts on hooks."

Alma’s voice was flat. "And what debt do you think we owe you."

"I don’t loan favors," he said. "I trade them." He glanced at me. "But tonight, no trade. Consider this simple curiosity." 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

We reached a corner where three alleys met and fed into a narrow lane. He raised a hand. "Stop."

A cart rolled past with no beast to pull it, wheels humming on stone. The man behind it had a band of cloth over his eyes and walked without touching the handle. After it passed, Melchior led us left, then right, then down a flight of steps that looked like a dead end until he pressed his palm to an iron plate. A seam opened in the wall just wide enough for one person at a time.

"Not hungry," he said. "You step through, you arrive on a street that still knows morning."

Rhea didn’t move. "Why help us at all."

He considered her for the first time like she was more than a threat. "Because there are only a handful of games worth playing in this city. Tonight you started one. I’d rather not have it end early because you picked the wrong door."

"She is not a game," I said, nodding at Alma.

His mouth quirked. "Then be glad someone is willing to keep fools off the board for a few turns."

Rhea went first. She vanished clean. Vesper followed, one ring pressed to her palm. Selendra waited, then stepped close to me.

Her voice was low. "She won’t forgive me."

"I won’t forgive you either," I said.

We left the cursed street the same way we came in..quiet, fast, not looking back.

The new quarter smelled cleaner,lamps burned steady instead of sputtering. The stones were even, the gutters dry. People kept to themselves. You could tell who had money here because they didn’t bother to hide it.

Rhea picked a narrow inn with iron bars on the windows and a single front lamp. The sign was a plain circle..no name. Safe enough. We paid for one room with two beds and a pallet. The keeper didn’t ask questions; he took coin, passed a key, and pointed up.

Inside, Rhea locked the door and checked the hinges. Vesper set three chips of bone on the sill and drew a clean line of chalk that glowed once and went dull. Selendra dropped on the pallet like she owned it. I leaned against the wall and pressed my palm over the charm even though I could have taken it off now. Habit. Anchor. Call it what you want.

Alma stood by the door like a guard. White hair, steady eyes, shoulders relaxed but ready. She hadn’t said a word since the fight. When I tried to say anything to her in my head, all I got was a closed door feeling. Not gone. Just locked.

"Rotate," Rhea said. "Two sleep, two watch. I’ll take first."

"I’ll take second," Vesper said.

Selendra stretched and looked straight at me. "I’ll take you."

Alma turned her head. She didn’t move her feet. "You’ll take the floor," she said.

Selendra made a face but slid the pallet two steps farther from my bed. She still made sure her tail could flick and brush my boot if I wasn’t careful. I moved my boot.

Vesper dimmed the lamp. We tried to sleep. I didn’t. It wasn’t fear this time. It was Alma standing and not looking at me, and the way that felt like I’d swallowed a stone.

When I woke, Rhea had changed watch with Vesper and the room was gray with almost-morning. Someone hammered a pan in the street below. I rolled to sit up. The charm sat cold against my ribs.

"Food," Rhea said. "We move in daylight. Crowds make a better shield."

We ate in the street..hot flatcakes with sour cream and a salty stew from a vendor who didn’t meet our eyes. It was good. It felt like it should be a normal morning if you didn’t know better.

Melchior found us at the corner where the lane bent toward a wide square. One moment the space was empty; the next he leaned on a post like he’d grown there.

"Good," he said. "You’re not dead. It would’ve ruined my walk."

Rhea didn’t slow. "We’re busy."

"You’re always busy," he said, falling in beside us with no effort. Cloak clean, hair annoyingly perfect for someone who had been up all night. "But you’re walking in circles...try left."

Rhea tried right out of spite. Right was a dead end with a locked gate and a dog sleeping under it. We went left.

He smiled without teeth. "See? Useful."

"You smell like trouble," Vesper said.

"I bathe in it," he said.

Alma kept walking...She hadn’t looked at him once. He didn’t push

his luck by stepping in front of her.