We didn't waste a single second.

The moment that blast resounded through the forest, the three of us dropped the firewood and sprinted toward the campsite at full speed.

Dried twigs snapped under our feet, bushes whipped at our faces, and the smell of scorched soil grew sharper the closer we got.

Michael's sword was already in his hand.

Alexia immediately deployed her Origin Card.

And I… was desperately praying it was just Ray trying to eat Kevin again and nothing serious.

Soon, we broke past the treeline… and flinched at the sight that awaited us there.

In front of us was our campsite, which now looked less like our campsite and more like a battlefield.

Our companions were spread out in a wide formation, weapons drawn and stances tense, just like we'd been taught back at the Academy.

That meant whatever they were facing was something intelligent.

Which, in turn, meant the situation was definitely serious — contrary to what I'd hoped.

I looked around and spotted a ridiculously thick pillar of gray smoke spiraling upward from the center of the clearing, where an ashy crater had formed.

Sparks fizzled around its edges, and Ray stood a couple of steps away from it.

The grim look on his face suggested he was more than ready, almost itching, to unleash another devastating explosion at any given moment.

We approached, our breaths quick.

"What happened!?" Michael called out, smoothly assuming a fighting stance.

Kang, already in his half-transformation, responded without leaving his position on the flank. "There was… I don't know, a ghost suddenly fell between us and—"

The smoke shifted, billowed, and cleared right then, completely diverting our attention from whatever nonsense Kang was muttering.

A silhouette emerged from the settling dust, stepping into our view.

It was… a woman.

A strange woman of tall stature and dusky complexion, seemingly in her early thirties.

Dressed in a long black coat embroidered with silver threads that tastefully hugged her statuesque figure, she looked tantalizingly beautiful.

Her blonde hair had an almost metallic sheen, falling in smooth waves down her back, and her eyes shone like two molten orbs of gold.

But none of that captured our attention as much as her presence did.

You see, her very existence felt unreal, almost ethereal, even as she stood right in front of our eyes.

Why? Oh, nothing special. It's just that her entire body… was slightly see-through.

…Yeah. She was translucent. Like a ghost.

She raised one hand authoritatively while keeping her expression graceful. It was a gesture that demanded we cease our pitiful struggle while she still had the patience to overlook our impudence.

"As I was saying," she spoke calmly, as though continuing a conversation interrupted by the explosion earlier, "everyone needs to cool down and listen to me—"

Ray instantly pointed a palm at her. The air itself before him started to vibrate and heat up as a second explosion began condensing.

"Ray, wait!" Juliana shouted, suddenly realizing something. Unluckily, she was too far away to stop him in time.

…Luckily, the detonation never happened.

Because I was close enough.

I grabbed Ray by the collar and yanked him back hard.

His explosion fizzled out with a pathetic spark.

"Whoa!" he spun toward me. "Sam! She shook off my attack like it was nothing! And she looks like a specter! I'm responding normally here—"

I shushed him before he could ramble any further… for I was busy staring at the woman in shock.

It didn't take much time for me to recognize her. And the moment I did, my heart sank straight to my feet. "…Aunt Morgan?"

The woman's head turned sharply in my direction, her golden hair swaying like liquid sunlight.

When her gaze found mine, her eyes widened, and her stern composure melted into pure relief.

"Sam…?" she breathed. Her familiar voice was soft, soft as it was real, real enough to reassure me this wasn't a dream.

She stepped toward me, ignoring every armed Cadet in the clearing. Ignoring Ray's slack jaw. Ignoring the drawn weapons and the taut, confused tension in the air.

She looked at me the way someone looks when they finally find something precious they thought they'd lost.

"Oh, thank the stars," she said, trembling with warmth I hadn't seen from her in years. "You're safe. You're really safe."

She stepped closer, reaching out to caress my face. "Are you hurt anywhere? You've been missing since what happened at the Night Sanctuary. We didn't even think—"

Her words faded into background noise as I kept staring at her.

This woman was… Morgan Kaizer Theosbane.

My father's sister.

My…

Aunt.

•••

"Aunt!? Wait— no, aunt?! Did you just call her your aunt?!" Ray's shrill squeal cut through the clearing and snapped me out of my daze.

As I saw my aunt's hand reaching for my face, I instinctively recoiled, taking a quick step back and pulling away before her spectral fingers could so much as touch me.

Aunt Morgan froze.

For a moment, the warmth on her face cracked… and she looked hurt. Her reaction wasn't anything dramatic. Most people would've missed it.

But I didn't.

And what followed after that was, understandably, silence.

An awkward, suffocating, intense silence where no one spoke or moved.

A silence in which even this usually murderous forest seemed unsure of how to react to whatever this reunion was supposed to be.

No one knew what to make of it.

Thankfully, after what felt like an eternity, Michael leaned slightly toward Alexia and whispered far too loudly to be considered a whisper, "I always suspected he was related to unholy things like ghosts and demons."

SMACK—

Lily gently slapped the back of his head.

"That's not a ghost," she hissed. "That's the Queen of Smiles herself. Empress of the Damned. Morgan the Soulmancer."

Then she stepped forward and bowed respectfully toward my aunt. "We apologize, Lady Morgan. We didn't recognize you."

Ray stiffened.

"Oh, uh… yeah, sorry!" he blurted out before, for reasons known only to his panic-riddled mind, activating his drone and starting a recording.

He thought he was being discreet.

He wasn't.

I glanced at him.

…Yeah. That was definitely in case she killed him. At least there'd be evidence.

Morgan turned her gaze toward them and inhaled slowly.

When she exhaled, the crack in her expression was replaced by the same composed calm she'd worn when she first emerged from the smoke.

"Sure," she said evenly. Then her eyes moved back to me. When she spoke again, her tone was polite, but left absolutely no room for refusal. "Now, if you all don't mind. I'd like a moment alone with my nephew."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.