Among the Nacha Tribe there’s a crude proverb: a fart bottled too long won’t come out, meaning fine-spun plans crack like thin ice.

Varie swore by it, so her net was simple as a snare in thorns—crouch in the bushes by Pengpeng’s foster father’s place, grab the Medicine Peddler, and be gone.

But that pared-down plan met a stone wall at the first step.

Pengpeng’s foster father lived like a lone crane, a ways off from Sanda’s central district, where the streets were empty as a dry riverbed.

It made sneaking a breeze, yet staking out a dead stream was soul-numbing. A whole month of sandpaper days ground everyone’s patience to dust.

At first, they worked like pros, faces smeared with mud, the whole squad holding fast. Two weeks in, it became half-squad shifts. Another week, just two watching, the rest tucked inside Mira’s Sealed Ward spell like cards in a box, playing hand after hand.

“This old guy’s too reclusive. Not even a familiar face knocks,” Kabos grumbled by the campfire, then flipped a card with a hook of a smile. “Oh ho—this one. I win.”

Hos, the squad’s jinx, eyed Kabos’s grin, then his own middling hand. He clicked his tongue, let his gaze skitter, and sighed like a winded actor.

“Man, your luck’s unfair. Guess I lose this round.”

“Hey, hey, don’t weaponize your jinx,” Tela snapped, palm slapping his reaching hand. “No more drawing.”

“What d’you mean weaponize? It’s a card game, not a war budget!”

Tela’s childhood glare pricked his balloon. Hos deflated, then pivoted fast, eyes on Kabos, picking up the earlier thread. “Honestly, it’s good the old man’s gate isn’t swarmed. If a crowd floods the door, how do we spot the ‘damned’ Medicine Peddler? What if we grab the wrong guy?”

Kabos chewed it over. It had a point; crowds breed chaos like weeds in rain.

He nodded, conceding the sense. “If only we knew his face…” He raised his voice to the circle. “Hey, brothers and sisters, tell me—what do you think he looks like?”

Tela stuck to facts like a needle to thread. “Don’t know. The old man said his voice sounded male. Face and ears hid under a hood. That’s it.”

“Face mirrors heart,” their devout comrade boomed across the flames. “Anyone who spits on Isylia’s glory must be ugly beyond mercy.”

“Huff… hrr…” Barni rolled like a big cat, belly to the fire, purring and rumbling for the easy answer.

Barni looked so lazily adorable that everyone drifted closer, tossing guesses like leaves into the flame.

After a round of lively noise, they had only Tela’s known facts. The rest was wind and rumor, like the believer’s answer—no roots, no fruit. Kabos sagged, then his eyes sparked, and he turned to Hos.

“Uh… why the hopeful stare?” Hos balked.

“Big bro Hos, give us a guess. A guess is still a trail.”

“No way—that kind of mercenary jinx won’t work. Look, I didn’t even win.” He squirmed, but the circle’s expectant eyes were a tightening net. He sighed, scratched his hair, and gave in.

“How would I know… If I had to say, he feels like… a faceless ‘ghost.’”

“A faceless ‘ghost’? Seriously? You believe those human folk tales?” Tela rolled her eyes, fluent in souls and rebirth.

Hos flushed. “You forced me to pick! And think about it: we’ve dug for the source like badgers—maybe not three feet deep, but every normal channel’s covered. If Mira hadn’t tripped on a clue, we wouldn’t even know his gender. That kind of mystery—like a faceless ‘ghost’ from human legends, right?”

“It’s nonsense, idiot. Human superstition.” Tela volleyed back without spin.

Their spar flared into the usual daily skit, laughter and jeers circling like fireflies.

After a while, Varie, sitting a bit farther from the flames, tilted her head toward the white-haired Elf whose eyes were lost in sparks.

“And you? What do you think?”

“…Think what?”

“What that guy looks like.”

“How would I know?”

“At least give a hunch.” Varie shrugged like a loose cloak. “Maybe he really is a ‘ghost.’ Anyone tangled with a drug like this isn’t ordinary.”

Mira slid her gaze away, cool as frost on steel. Varie, used to this sealed-jar silence, rambled on.

“In your people’s tales, those ‘ghosts’ don’t hit hard physically, right? I’ve never heard of one strangling someone bare-handed.”

“Because ghosts don’t kill with hands,” Mira said, voice soft and bare as moonlight.

“How do they kill?” Varie leaned in, stacking the question. “In human legends, I mean.”

“Many ways. Mostly illusions. A faceless ghost has no set face; it becomes the shape of your worst nightmare. It lures you to chase it, until your foot finds empty air and the cliff takes you.”

“So it tricks you onto your own death road. Clever.” Varie frowned, thinking. “But if your nightmare stood in front of you, a normal person would bolt, not chase.”

“That’s why I called it superstition. Thinking too deep is like staring into smoke.”

“Relax. It’s just a pastime.” Varie smirked. “Menglan and your sister wouldn’t chase. Me? I’d chase and beat it stupid… You? What would you do?”

She asked, but her eyes already slid back to the fire, not expecting an answer. Still, a small tremor touched Mira’s face.

After a beat, Mira breathed, “I—”

Varie snapped upright, cutting her off like a blade. “Beanpole!”

Beanpole barreled through the Sealed Ward’s shimmer, voice slicing the night. “He’s here! That guy showed!”

Kabos and the rest had been about to pop a bottle; the shout flipped them from ease to iron. They rose as one, grabbed steel and wood, and sprinted for the house like a drilled unit.

Their camp lay back, so the house wouldn’t tip the Medicine Peddler’s nose. By the time they arrived, the watcher on-site was buzzing like an ant on a hot pan—things were slipping their leash.

At the side door stood a hooded figure in a coat black as a crow’s wing, fist knotted in the foster father’s collar. His voice cracked like thunder. “Where’s the half-moon mongoose? I’m talking to you! Where is it? I said no animal, no drug. You forgot what I said?”

“I… I didn’t bring it back. I just—just forgot!”

The old man shook like a leaf, hands fluttering to ward him off, eyes flinging SOS sparks toward the hill where Varie’s crew hid.

“Damn,” Varie hissed, a curse low as embers.

She’d stashed the half-moon mongoose with Pengpeng, worried its hostility would spook the team. She hadn’t guessed its temper was part of the peddler’s counter-scouting.

Worse, the foster father hadn’t guessed either; his panic said it plain. And he wasn’t the only one reading that plea—the hooded man read it sharper, like ink on snow. That glance bared the ambush.

The Medicine Peddler flung the old man aside and bolted toward the market lights.

Varie and Mira rose from the grass like arrows leaving a bow, but before the sprint took, the hooded man glanced back. He drew a long-barreled thing from his pocket and aimed at the fallen elder.

Bang! Clang!

The shot cracked, iron rang. Varie was already a shield at the old man’s front, but the shooter didn’t let up. He lifted again—bang, bang—two more report-loud blasts, this time at the house-top water tower.

“Are you—!”

The place was old as dust; its tower frame rusted like old blood. Both rounds hit the thin bones. The heavy metal tank lost balance in a heartbeat, smashed through the roof, and dropped for the elder like a falling moon.

In that blink, the Medicine Peddler was slipping from their sight like a shadow in rain.

Truth be told, he mattered ten thousand times more than the man behind Varie’s shoulders. Still, she bit down and set her feet. She turned and loosed, her arrow knocking the tank off its fall line like a gust tipping a sail.

Gunfire kept barking; metal kept singing.

Mira stood firm, deflecting every incoming round with a magnetic sweep, honoring her promise to guard the foster father. She twisted one bullet’s path, then snapped her wrist and sent it home like lightning returning to cloud.

A distant howl tore the air. That bullet smashed the gun barrel in the Medicine Peddler’s hand, killing his fang. It skipped up and struck his face—more precisely, the mask on it.

The hit didn’t drop him; the mask, made of who-knew-what, ate the impact. A shard broke, and a sliver of cheek flashed bare.

He dragged his hood down to hide the ruin and slipped into the market’s drift like smoke.

Mira stood rooted, eyes wide, breath cold.

Because, in that one shard of time, she saw something that shouldn’t exist—

a ghost.