Clack... clack... The keyhole turned with a faint grind, but never caught that last sweet click; after a few jittery tries, the key slid out like a fish slipping free.

Anxious first, then words: a muffled voice seeped through the door, trembling like reeds in wind. “Uh... he really locked it from inside...”

It hesitated, then pushed on, a swallow in a dry throat. “Maybe we should just go back. It’s nothing, really—just some cheap little stuff. No need to blow it up—”

The second voice cut in, clean as a knife through silk. “Is your lock expensive?”

“Eh?” The first voice stalled, caught like a deer in lantern-light. “It... probably isn’t worth much?”

“Mhm.”

BOOM!!!

The door went with a thunderclap, dust puffing up like ash from a kiln. A shriek knifed the air. When the smoke thinned, a gold-haired figure stood framed by splinters, with a Nacha Tribe girl beside her, hands clamped over her ears—Pengpeng.

“I’ll pay for the door,” Mira said, voice cool as river stone, then stepped inside and swept the room like a hawk. “Which one’s your room?”

They weren’t burglars under a storm-torn moon; this was Pengpeng’s house—or rather, the shell that should be hers.

“Should be,” because a crab had stolen the shell: someone was squatting here now.

And that “someone” wasn’t a stranger; it was her adoptive father, a shadow that had moved in like winter frost.

Loose-tongued Copato had tattled to her teacher last night, and the story drifted to Mira like smoke. Pengpeng had ducked home only briefly yesterday; her adoptive father had already moved in from afar, and that week she’d left the orphanage, she’d been hauling his life across the map.

It wasn’t Mira’s first hint about the man; Pengpeng had let threads slip while buying flowers, petals telling more than words. Then, morning sun on the orphanage plaza, Mira had found Pengpeng by the flowerbed, quietly wiping tears like rain off leaves, and the picture sharpened in one clean stroke.

Mira said it straight: there was a fracture with the adoptive family. Pengpeng, already dabbing her eyes, heard it and the dam broke; the truth spilled like water from a tipped pail.

Her adoptive mother had passed. Her father, alone and aging, sat like a lone stump on a cold hill; she couldn’t bear to leave him to the wind. She brought him here, hoping to watch over him, to swing by after orphanage work like a sparrow returning at dusk.

But the care met granite. The man was stubborn as baked clay, words sliding off him like rain off oilskin. With years, his rigidity hardened, and after the mother’s death, it soured into wildness; Pengpeng had knelt in the old house begging him not to smash things, but mercy never landed.

Dragged here by coaxing and care, his storms only worsened. Pengpeng became his lightning rod; even a small slip of cloud made him flip the table. The worst was last time—dinner a touch cool, and his hand cracked across her face. Blood welled at her lip and dotted her collar like fallen pomegranate seeds.

That was the stain Mira saw yesterday. Pengpeng hadn’t even had time to wash it; she’d been kicked out like a stray, luggage left behind like shed skin.

Among that luggage lay her birth family’s heirloom gardening tools, a lineage of iron and earth.

She had tried to act fine for the kids and for Mira, smile like frost stretched thin. But at the flowerbed, empty-handed without her tools, the grievance burned through the veneer; once Mira’s words touched the ember, everything flared into confession.

Letting it all out felt wickedly relieving, like dumping a heavy bucket after a long climb—especially when the listener was an orphan too, someone who knew the wind’s bite. Pengpeng finished and felt the cord around her chest loosen; having someone willing to hear about adoptive-family troubles was a lantern in fog.

Regret followed like a cold draft.

Mira listened, then barely hesitated; she asked for the address, intent clear as a drawn blade—she’d go fetch the tools and the rest, alone if needed. Pengpeng panicked, hands fluttering like startled sparrows, but couldn’t stop the tide.

For some reason, this human benefactor abandoned her usual “If you won’t talk, I won’t pry” gentleness, like she suddenly couldn’t read Pengpeng’s fear of blowing things up. After much pleading, they landed on a bare-minimum truce: they’d go together; talk first; don’t call Nacha Tribe guards; if possible, slip in like shadows; best if the father never knew she’d returned; avoid conflict like skirting a cliff.

Which looped us back to that opening note.

Mira kicked open the door, stealth thrown away like a torn veil. Pengpeng’s heart stumbled like a drum hit out of rhythm, but there was no undoing it. She steeled herself and tugged Mira toward her room, praying to every quiet god her father wasn’t home.

The prayer fell like a stone into a dry well.

The place wasn’t large. Past the entry and into the living room, before Pengpeng could turn toward the hall, a gray-haired Nacha elder with a cane blocked them, thin as a storm-scoured tree.

“Dad—”

“What are you... doing here!!”

Her explanation died under his roar, his face twisting like iron in a forge.

“I told you—get out! Get out of my house! Do you hear me!!!”

No space to speak, no gap for breath. He whipped the cane in wild arcs, sweeping glass off the kitchen island in a rain of shards, the metal tip skimming closer and closer to Pengpeng’s cheek. Fear iced her bones; she froze a heartbeat too long.

She tried to step back. The cane was already kissing the air by her right cheek.

Snap.

Compared to the shriek of shattering glass, the snap was soft and steady, like a branch caught mid-fall. Mira caught the cane, her sea-green eyes calm as a still lake. Her voice carried almost no emotion, a winter line drawn clean.

“This is her home. She has the right to come back and take her things.”

“Mira, miss...!”

Pengpeng’s gaze jittered between Mira and her father like a moth between lamps. She wanted to soothe, but words scattered like leaves. Heat rose, trouble thickening like storm-cloud—her father had noticed the gold hair and the long ears.

“Long ears... good! You unfilial girl! You even brought—brought a long ear here! Are you trying to kill me!”

Veins jumped at his temples like taut ropes; under wrinkled skin, cords bulged blue. “I knew it. I knew it. You damned thing. Your mother and I—cough!—we took you in out of kindness, and you only think to steal from us. I—I’ll beat you to death!!!”

“No. You won’t touch her again.”

Mira’s ice cut through his rant. Lines like shining sigils lit under the skin of her forearm, a storm coiling behind a dam.

“From this moment on, you won’t lay a finger on her. If you do, I promise the whole of Sanda will know how a Nacha Tribe man, sworn by honor, spat on the moonlit teaching of Isylia and turned spiritual and bodily violence on his adoptive daughter.”

She spoke each word like a bell struck once, no rise, no fall—an order written on stone. The ordered man flushed red, grunted with strain, but couldn’t stop her from pressing his cane down, inch by inch, like setting a wild branch back to earth.

“Mira, miss, that’s enough. Dad is just... just confused for a moment! Please don’t—”

“Shut up! Unfilial brat!!!”

His scream cracked, a raven’s caw, spittle flecking white foam onto a beard long uncombed. His limbs trembled like strings plucked too hard; his eyes laced with blood like red threads in water.

“Panie! Bite them! Tear them apart!!!”

Glass burst at the living-room window with a winter-cold crash. A half-tall shadow surged through flying shards, a ruff flashing moon-silver—Half-moon Mongoose, clever, loyal, agile and savage, a hunter that feasts on prey many times its size. Called by its master, it leapt midair toward Pengpeng and Mira like a thrown spear.

Terror first, then movement: Pengpeng slapped her hands over her eyes; the world went dark like a moon eclipse.

She waited a few breaths. Nothing happened. She peeled her fingers back, and saw Mira holding the creature by the throat, one-handed, like catching a snake mid-strike.

“You... you...!?”

Pengpeng’s father stared, mouth open like a broken hinge. Pengpeng swallowed a dry pebble of air; words wouldn’t form.

This had gone beyond her worst forecast, her map blown by a gale. The mongrel order to set a beast on her was already a nightmare—but more frightening was what she saw for the first time in Mira’s eyes.

There, behind the calm, lay a shadow like the edge of a blade in snow—the chill of killing intent.