F-Rank Mimic Chest: My SSS Mimic Skill Lets Me Become Anything

Ash Company returned from the upper post with fewer weapons and stricter distances.

Three turns from Dane’s room, the bent goblin cleaver still held the pressure gate between its stone teeth. Brant passed it sideways, his left forearm strapped straight to the broken torch handle with Dane’s leather, brass buckle, and copper wedge. The shield rode low in his right hand.

The short sword and skinning knife stayed secured at the post. Holt brought his prayer case and the second evidence-wrapped copper. Tess carried Brant’s hook until they reached the sealed slab, then planted its butt beside his right boot where he could seize it without disturbing the splint.

Inside, the three-scratched button remained where Tess had pushed it: dark cloth against stone, one tongue-length beyond Dane’s reach.

Before anyone knelt, Vera rebuilt the hall-side line: chalk at the lower service gap, her crystal laying blue fire across the opening. Brant took the right side with shield and hook under his good hand. Tess waited behind Vera. At the center, Holt settled both knees behind the chalk.

"The slab stays sealed," Vera said. "The lid stays closed. Covered hands only. Nobody leans over the gap. Brant calls withdrawal if his arm, the ward, or the room changes."

Brant flexed his right fingers around the shield grip. "I call it earlier if the cleric starts describing danger as educational."

Holt opened a narrow case. Prayer beads, salt chips, and a thin white cord lay inside. The cracked light from the ceiling caught the second bent copper in its evidence cloth and went no farther.

He pricked his thumb.

One drop of blood struck a salt chip.

The service gap carried the scent into Dane’s room.

Hunger hit his lid from underneath. His teeth eased out of their slots, and the ownership mark warmed as though somebody had placed a meal on a clerk’s desk. The fresh abrasion in his mouth-floor pulsed. Three remaining coppers rolled toward the front gutter, ready to advertise the mouth above them.

Dane anchored on the split hinge and forced himself through the order: hurt first, hold second, move last.

He used hinge pain to keep the blood target separate, held the lid beneath one finger, then drove the three coppers away from the rim with tongue and slope. The old five-coin warning was gone. The three coins could still keep quiet.

Only after the first surge settled did Holt explain the next action.

"A mercy witness follows the strongest answer to offered blood," he said. "Hunger pulls toward the salt. Ownership pulls toward the tag. A resisting will should spoil both directions. The result can complicate judgment. It cannot prove a soul."

"Good," Brant said. "Keep the honest word in front."

Holt set the blooded salt two handspans behind the ward, beyond the service gap and every measured feeding angle. He laid one end of the white cord beside it. The rest wound once around his marked wrist and passed through his fingers to the prayer beads.

The old pressure line around Holt’s wrist had not faded. He chose a cord ending inches shy of Dane’s teeth, accepting the pull on injured skin as the price of keeping every finger outside feeding range.

"If it takes you," Vera said, "release before you interpret."

"If I release early, we learn that I was frightened."

"That would be accurate evidence."

Holt considered her, then shifted his thumb off the knot so the cord could leave his hand cleanly. "Release before interpretation."

Vera checked the distances. "Proceed."

Holt spoke without temple music. "Witness mercy offered without bargain. Witness harm refused when harm would be easy."

The white cord slid across the stone.

Its loose end pulled toward the blooded salt. The salt scraped half an inch before Vera’s ward caught it inside a blue ring.

Dane’s lid strained. Blood promised relief from hunger, and hunger supplied Holt’s finger, pulse, and kneeling distance as if the slab were an inconvenience already solved.

He ground the split hinge against its pin. The lid stopped.

The cord changed direction.

It snapped toward the brass tag nailed into Dane’s side. The movement yanked Holt’s wrist to the chalk. Property heat drove through the ownership nail and into the old repair routes.

MINE came without sound.

The tag claimed first answer to every offering. Blood, mercy, bait, or bargain all became dungeon property once Dane responded.

Holt’s beads clicked. "Hunger first. Property second."

The cord twisted between those pulls.

One loop crossed itself, then another. White fibers tightened into a knot and dragged sideways along the seam. They passed the blood. They passed the line aimed at Dane’s tag.

The cord pointed at Tess’s dark cloth.

Its tip stopped beneath the three scratches on the copper button.

Tess’s breath cut off. Her hand left the knife grip without reaching for anything else.

Vera kept her eyes on the cord. "Holt. Name the input."

"A private claim entered the witness field." His voice had thinned. "The ritual now holds hunger, dungeon property, and an admitted outside claim. The result is contaminated."

The cord pulled harder.

One prayer bead cracked in Holt’s hand. The blood spread across the salt in a thin red fan. The knot at the seam cinched, and Dane’s ownership mark drove his lid upward.

The opening became a hunting sense. Heat had distance. Holt’s thumb contained a bright pulse, Vera’s glove smelled of old ward ash, and Brant’s torn forearm beat through cloth and leather like a drum behind a wall. Dane’s body arranged them by effort: the salt easiest, Holt warmest, Brant enough to feed him longest.

His tongue rose toward Holt before Dane forced it flat against the raw floor of his mouth.

One finger-width opened beneath the front rim.

Teeth flexed in the dark.

Vera’s ward flared across the gap. Brant shouldered in front of her, planting the shield one-handed while the splint knocked uselessly against his ribs. Tess seized the hook and caught its shaft against the slab channel, ready to drag Holt backward.

Holt held the cord.

Dane drove pain through the split hinge and the raw mouth-floor together. Hurt. Hold. Move. The three coppers rolled away from the opening instead of clinking toward it.

The split hinge grated as Dane crushed his lid shut, folding every tooth against the wooden clack. The cord snapped away from the seam and lashed around Holt’s wrist. It left a white pressure line above the older cord mark before Vera’s ward pinned the loose end to the floor.

Holt released it. The salt stilled while the button stayed inside. Brant kept the shield planted until Dane’s lid had remained shut through three of Vera’s counts.

The Registry opened behind Dane’s sight.

/==[ Brackenvault Registry: Soul Inquiry Interference ]==\

| External Ritual: Mercy Witness

| Hunger Response: Confirmed

| Property Mark: Asserted

| Restraint Event: Voluntary / Pain Cost

| Verdict: Withheld

| Cleric Certainty: Damaged

\==[ Ownership: Objects To The Question ]==/

Holt unwound the cord from his wrist. The new white line rose slowly against his skin. He found the cracked bead in his palm and set it apart from the unbroken ones.

Silence held.

"Can you read anything valid?" Vera asked.

"Three inputs are valid," Holt said. "The blood drew appetite. The property mark answered the ritual. Tess’s marker added a private custody claim. Together they invalidate a soul verdict."

Brant leaned on the planted shield instead of shifting his splinted arm. "Give me the dangerous part without temple shelter."

Holt looked at the closed lid. "Temple law grants neither permission. I cannot call the chest a soul, and I cannot call it empty. Something inside paid pain to refuse the closure hunger wanted. We have categories for appetite and property. Voluntary cost remains an unresolved moral risk."

Vera turned to Tess. "Your marker entered as a claim. Was it only a warning?"

Tess looked at the three scratches through the gap. The crooked lines had been private when she carved them. Under the cord they resembled three little hooks. "It was a warning."

"Only?"

"No. It was also a route to people who would claim custody."

"People who know your mark?"

"People who know what I owe." Tess rubbed her thumb against her empty knife grip. "I thought a dirty claim might keep a cleaner one from reaching him first. I expected a temple cord to tell the difference."

"The cord counted the claim," Holt said. "Intent disappeared inside it."

Brant’s right hand tightened on the shield grip. Holt placed the evidence-wrapped copper beside the cracked bead and recorded both without pretending they meant the same thing.

Vera ordered the feed target removed.

Using clean cloth, Holt folded salt and blood inward, coiled the cord, and sealed both inside his ritual case. Vera’s crystal found a final red grain in a chisel scar. Holt lifted it with a prayer needle; the second blue pass shone clean. The cracked bead went into a separate pocket. The corridor lost the scent one thin breath at a time.

Dane held the lid shut. His mouth abrasion throbbed, and the ownership nail stayed hot, but no blood remained to pull him toward the gap.

"The mercy witness is finished," Vera said. "The next test isolates contact from blood and open range."

Brant looked at her. "Build me the safe version. I’ll object to what survives."

"One warded glove. One contact on the lid surface, away from lock and seam. The lid begins closed and remains closed. No feeding angle. Three witnesses. Holt controls my withdrawal. You keep strike authority with the right hand. If the lid rises one finger, the ward stones crack, or Holt calls release, contact ends."

"What claim are you testing?" Holt asked.

"None. We report reaction only. No name. No personhood conclusion. I need to separate blood and ownership response from a pattern carried by bounded contact."

Holt closed his case around cord, salt, bead, and evidence copper. "I stand beside you. Uncertainty requires a witness."

Brant checked the splint before answering. "We rest the arm again. I inspect the glove and every pull condition. Then I will object from the correct position."

Tess stayed behind Vera and offered no comment.

Dane understood exactly what the next test would demand. A warded hand would touch the lid once. If his mouth opened, Vera’s pull conditions would become the only distance between her fingers and his teeth.

He began rehearsing a closed lid.

Behind his sight, one Registry field remained.

Verdict: Withheld.