Inside this Soul Carriage, something lurks—thorned trouble wrapped in winter iron—so nasty even a Red Robed Wraith won’t touch it.

Otherwise that guy wouldn’t have tried to drag himself aboard like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.

That Red Robed Wraith probably wants to borrow her hand, use her like a blade, to cut out whatever inside this carriage even she fears.

Nana Toki watched the Protagonist Lord in the corner, head bowed like a wilted lotus, her face thoughtful as dusk. If a Red Robed Wraith can’t handle it, and she doesn’t save him, that wraith might corner herself and gamble—provoke the buried menace to pry him free—and then the enemy he faces will be a storm with no forecast.

He could even faceplant into oblivion, a candle snuffed mid-breath.

That’s one ending Nana Toki wouldn’t mind seeing; the wind there cuts clean, no real problem.

But.

In these occult-fantasy loops, Heaven’s order seldom lets a beautiful, deadly ghost be spent just to push the hero against a stronger beast. The usual end? At the final heartbeat, the hero awakens some weird power, slaps the hidden boss into dust, and teases out an even larger calamity, like pulling a thread from a silk tapestry.

Nana Toki didn’t want that ending. Right now, her vessel in this plane is fragile as rice paper in rain. If she loses control of this plane’s stage, the later arcs will treat her like grit in the gears.

She might even fail the System’s training quests, those two tasks still hanging like twin blades above her.

For herself—and for the System’s unfinished pair—she has to save the Protagonist Lord.

Nana Toki sighed inwardly. This plane’s Plot has netted her tight, like ivy strangling a wall, refusing her even a pinch of easy gain.

Still, if we follow the regular ghost novel rhythm, spirits can devour each other to grow, like night swallowing stars to deepen the sky.

The thought arrived like a spark dropped on oil. If she eats a Red Robed Wraith, by the old trope, won’t her body harden to match that blood-red strength?

“...”

At the rear door, Li Kexin shivered, frost shooting up her spine. For one breath, she read a hunger in the white-clad she-ghost’s eyes—a quiet wish to eat her, like a hawk eyeing a rabbit.

A flimsy obsession-ghost wants to devour her, a Red Robed Wraith? Has this one... cracked?

“For your safety and everyone else’s, please return to your seat.”

The ghost driver squeezed a crooked smile through the rearview like a warped lantern. He was hinting—thin as mist—that something in here bites hard.

But.

“If I don’t? What can you do about me?”

Nana Toki’s voice scraped the carriage like ice on glass. The moment it fell, Xiaoxiao Ji in the corner felt the temperature dive, a cold river rushing under the floorboards, and the passengers around them turned wrong, faces lit by hungry moonlight.

Each set of eyes weighed Nana Toki like knives on a cutting board, ready to surge and tear her into ribbons the next second.

“Sis Ling Jiang... maybe let it go...?”

Xiaoxiao Ji hunched her neck like a sparrow in wind and tried to soothe.

Except—

“Let it go my ass! If you’re not convinced, come touch me. I’ll show you this ghost-lady isn’t easy prey.”

The passengers ignored Xiaoxiao Ji like fog over a pond, and Nana Toki, drifting by the rear, let her courage swell like a drum, maxing out the taunt.

A few short-tempered ghosts would have charged already, if not for the shadow of Li Kexin by the rear door—her red robe a stop-sign painted in blood.

“You’re on your first ride and don’t know the rules in a Soul Carriage.”

The man by the left window, masked like a clinic phantom, fixed on Nana Toki and spoke. “This No. 14 Soul Carriage belongs to a Lord on the Longvine ghost side. You boarded his Carriage, so you obey his law, or a little obsession like you will be scattered like ash by the beasts inside.”

His voice was chalk-scratch, nails on slate, making the skin crawl like ants.

A Lord from Longvine’s ghost school?

How did Longvine Academy turn ghost, and who is this Lord?

New words slid off the rail of the original plot and thudded in Nana Toki’s ear, and her gut said the wind had changed.

Ever since she handed the Red Robed Wraith to the Protagonist Lord, the plot wandered into fog.

Unlike past planes, where her meddling bent the track but left the map readable, this plane felt like a beaten game where she chose a wrong branch on purpose, and the ending jumped into the dark.

That’s lethal—like stepping off a cliff that wasn’t on the chart.

She almost missed the low-tier planes.

No Nesting Phoenix, but at least the air was easy to breathe.

System: “...” Is the host broken?

No Phoenix, she pines; with Phoenix, she complains.

What you can’t have stays noisy; the favored always gets cocky.

“If you don’t want to anger that Lord, don’t wake the human in the last row. Spare us, and spare yourself.”

The masked man’s gaze kept twitching to Li Kexin at the rear door, like he feared her turning, a blade from behind. “If he learned what he shouldn’t, then dying slowly inside his own dream is mercy. Don’t meddle.”

Ghost school. That Lord. Forbidden knowledge. Dreams.

Nana Toki tasted the copper of hidden-plot on her tongue. Otherwise, none of this madness would link clean.

If the masked man’s words hold water, the Protagonist Lord overheard Longvine Academy’s secret, and being a Spirit Exorcist drew the puppeteer’s eye like a moth to a candle.

Which now circles back to Nana Toki; the knot is in her lap, tight and sour.

Even if she doesn’t save him, the seven-day exchange trip to Longvine Academy will pitch her into secrets anyway. If they’ll fix sights on her sooner or later, why not strike first like a blade drawn at dawn?

She lifted her eyes to the masked man and made her choice, smile thin as a crescent. “Say I’m walking down a road. Someone rushes up and says, ‘Keep going and you’ll be killed.’ What should I do?”

“...”

He blinked behind the mask, missing the thread, trapped in fog. Like the rest, he stared without blinking. “What are you getting at?”

“Before he kills me, I kill him.”

The words left Nana Toki like flint, and for once, a harshness cut her face like north wind. The carriage fell silent as graves; even the ghost driver, hands tight on the wheel, looked stunned, lantern-eyes wide.

Is this woman mad—trying to kill the Lord of that ghost school?

Mad. Absolutely mad. No sane ghost or human thinks like this. In life, she must have been a wild storm.

“I get it. You’re just bored of breathing and looking to die.”

The masked man’s anger bled through his teeth, a cold hiss. Even with a mask, Nana Toki imagined the twisted mouth underneath, a knot of thorns.

“That Lord isn’t someone you just kill. If you want death, don’t drag us into your grave.”

His eyes were pure ink, whites swallowed, like black insects swarming under glass. He stood and stepped closer, one foot then another, anger boiling like tar.

“If you want to die, I’ll do it now. Better that than you souring this Carriage.”

He didn’t hide his killing intent; it flowed like a blade drawn slow. Why wait for her to doom them? Snuff the ember before the straw catches.

“Man, you really don’t listen... Fine. Have it your way.”

Nana Toki shrugged, helpless as a reed in rain at his sudden charge.

“If you think you’ve got it, come test me. I’m a peace lover, honest. I don’t fight useless fights.”

Thud—deep and dull. Beside her, a black Colossal Axe appeared, the long haft resting against the floor like a night-tree, warning the “passengers” in silence that its master isn’t a petal to pluck.

“I think you need to cool off.”