Mira pried up the shattered wall brick, and found a gold ring pressed beneath it.

She lifted it, brushed the dust away; the inner engraving surfaced, half packed with congealed blood.

—Maker: Sommerich Boni.

Mira mouthed the name in silence, and already knew what the ring was for.

As a desert custom, every clan’s founder forges a pure-gold ring with their name, then passes it on when they die.

The ring keeps circling to the eldest alive, a flame of surname and bloodline, never snuffed by the wind.

Yet now this token lay under a brick, veiled in dust, cold as a desert night, telling a different tale.

“Ma’am, I found nothing on my side.”

A shout rose behind her. Mira stood, hesitated half a heartbeat, pocketed the ring, and stepped out of the ruined house.

“Same here. No different from the other half of the village. Nothing.”

Mira nodded. “No corpses or severed limbs?”

“Right. Same blood smears and claw marks as before. Nothing new.”

Mira nodded again, her brow folding like dunes, and listened to the rest of the reports.

They hadn’t voted, but the remaining scouts had already treated her as their lead, reporting to her before anyone else.

It wasn’t only respect for her calm; in a place this strange, they needed someone strong at the keystone to steady hearts.

Strange. Eerie. Wrong.

When Mira used the Magic Crystal Stone to speak with Adelaide, she hadn’t laid out how bad it was here.

The bad wasn’t an attack; it was the opposite. They hadn’t seen a single soul besides that little girl.

Not just no living. Not even a single corpse.

“Ma’am, in my view… the chance any villagers still remain here is very low.”

A warrior spoke with hesitation; Mira closed her eyes, and her brow tightened like gathering stormclouds.

He wasn’t wrong. Signs of struggle and ruin lay everywhere, yet a vast village held not even a fingernail.

It killed every theory she had. If plague riots raged, we’d find limbs and torsos scattered like driftwood after a storm.

If bandits raided, same story; what raiders leave a pure-gold ring, yet strip every body clean from earth and grave?

Yes, graves. Even the grave pits were empty.

In days of searching, they’d found hundreds of crude mounds; markers named plague dead below, but the pits held only grave goods.

Not a pinch of ash. Not a shard of bone.

At this point, no simple plague could explain it.

“Maybe we should go back and ask your companion for support. Her search magic can pinpoint oases across the desert.”

“It’d be more efficient than us—”

The medic tried, but Mira’s eyes flashed like ice; he shivered and shut his mouth.

“I said it already. Don’t drag her into this.”

Mira spoke each word like a warning bell, plain and hard.

“If we find no survivors, we write that to Srandel. If we meet an enemy, we handle it ourselves.”

“Either way, no one from camp approaches this place. Clear?”

“Y-Yes! Understood!”

Crushed by her presence, the medic snapped a salute on reflex, like on parade.

Mira let her stare ease. “We’ve covered eighty percent of the village. Two days more, and we’re done. No need to tense up.”

Relieved breaths rippled through the squad, like cool wind in a kiln. The mood loosened.

After she calmed them, Mira scanned the faces around her, and her brows pinched again.

“Hold on. Where’s Kabos?”

They looked at each other, all blank. Assembly time had passed, yet one man was missing.

Trouble at this hour? Their nerves drew tight again—until a shout jumped out from behind a broken house.

“Ma’am! I need you to see this!”

Kabos stumbled up to Mira, drenched in sweat that stank of fear more than sprinting.

“I… I think I…”

“Breathe. Say it slow.”

Mira gripped his shoulders, forcibly straightening his sagging spine; with that braced strength, his breath steadied.

“I… I think I found where the corpses disappeared.”

The place Kabos meant was a deep well standing at the village edge.

At a glance it was a plain desert well, but blood trails crawled toward it from all directions like veins.

Kabos had followed one line here, and this well seemed the confluence where every stain ended.

Mira narrowed her eyes. She drew her sword, stepped toward the mouth, one step, then another, like walking into surf.

Nothing happened.

She reached the rim with no resistance. Kabos came up beside her.

“I’m sure the bodies got dumped into this well. How else would we find nothing?”

Obvious, yes. Mira shot Kabos a look, then peered down.

She expected layer on layer of water-swollen remains. Instead, she saw… clear water.

She blinked, blamed the light; she looked again, and saw the same: no debris, no dark blood, only spring-clear water to the eye.

Under the moon, Mira even saw her reflection in the well.

It was knife-sharp, despite the thirty meters, each detail picked out like threads: sun-browned skin, messy black wig, and eyes behind a beak mask.

Weariness showed there like crescent bruises.

The sight caught her, not for the disarray—no one looked polished after leaving the convoy.

It caught because it called up another face.

—Yes. It made you think of that little girl, didn’t it?

Mira stared at the water, her face and the violet-haired girl’s slowly overlapping, like two moons in cloud.

When Mira found her in a half-collapsed house, the girl had worn that same look.

Numb. Silent. And pain flickering in those eyes, like sparks in ashes.

—She looks so much like you. So small, yet left behind.

—She should’ve died that night, but Heaven joked, and forced her to face this spiteful world alone.

—No wonder you asked Big Sister to care for her. You saw yourself in her, and wouldn’t let her suffer a slave’s fate.

Mira’s breath grew heavy, the hand on her sword trembling like a string in wind.

—No. Not just that…

—Oh, I see… I see!

—Hehe… hehahahaha! Delicious. Delightful…!

—You want her to replace you, to become Adelaide’s new “little sister,” don’t you!?

Mira’s nails bit through her palm; the stabbing pain snapped her back. She lunged away, and smacked Kabos clear with a backhand.

As everyone gaped, about to ask her what she was doing, the wellmouth erupted like a volcano, a column of blood jetting up.

Everything it touched blackened and melted, the air fouled with a sweet, rancid stink.

Half a heartbeat later, their heads would have been swallowed.

“Move!”

Lightning flashed along Mira’s sword in a skin of white; she ripped a daylight-bright arc, cleaving the column, and raised an earth shield over the scouts.

The vanguard snapped to and drew steel. “We’ll—”

“—Back! Protect the convoy!”

Mira’s shout hit like iron, brooking no argument.

“—Understood!”

After a brief hitch, the one who respected her most turned first. He hauled the stunned Kabos and sprinted toward the convoy.

He didn’t make ten meters. His legs stopped.

“Ahh, you folks do treat this lady like air. How very troublesome~”

He looked down in disbelief at the bone spike jutting through his chest like a pale thorn.

Up above, the blood column Mira had split gathered again; a hand, porcelain-white, reached out, flicking water for fun.

With a playful tap, the spike snapped back; the big man vomited blood and fell in a heap.

“You!”

Mira’s pupils shrank; she locked on the female silhouette coalescing in the blood. Her lightning went from white to blue, heat spiking.

“Since you’re here, you must stay and play properly with me~”