The rising sun cast long, skeletal shadows across the graveyard as Leonotis clapped his hands together, a wide, undaunted grin on his face.
"Alright, Team Soul-Finders! Operation: Give Zombiel A Soul is officially a go!"
Low grumbled, stretching her stiff limbs with a groan.
"Remind me again why we're chasing butterflies and asking an eccentric old widow if Zombiel needs the 'ase of a well-fed turnip'?"
"Because," Leonotis said brightly, consulting a tattered notebook now filled with his hasty, near-illegible scribbles, "Widow Eno swore her prize-winning turnip had a particularly vibrant aura before it… well, you know."
He shuddered dramatically.
"Met its unfortunate, delicious end in a stew."
Their first stop had been the village elder, a wizened man with eyes like cloudy marbles and a penchant for cryptic advice. His suggestion?
"Catch the last sigh of a dying badger. They say it holds the melancholy of the earth."
This had resulted in a fruitless, rather smelly, and slightly morbid trek through the woods.
Next, they'd encountered a group of superstitious villagers who insisted the soul resided in the most fleeting of things.
Jacqueline, with the patience of a saint, had attempted to capture the "essence of joy" emanating from a giggling child in a small, enchanted vial, only to end up with a handful of empty air and a very confused, slobbering toddler.
Leonotis had tried to bottle the "ase of a summer breeze," which, predictably, proved equally elusive and resulted in him sneezing for ten minutes straight.
Now, they were attempting to follow Widow Eno's latest bizarre suggestion.
Zombiel, his usual blank expression unchanged by their chaotic quest, stood patiently as Leonotis chased a particularly stubborn monarch butterfly around a patch of wildflowers, a flimsy net flailing wildly and ineffectively in his hands.
"Come on, you little spark of life!" Leonotis wheezed, tripping over a hidden root and tumbling into the flowers.
"Just a tiny flutter of your… your soul-stuff! For a good cause!"
The butterfly, thoroughly unimpressed by his plea, fluttered gracefully away from the net and landed gently on the tip of Zombiel's nose.
Zombiel blinked once, slowly, his grey eyes crossing slightly as he tried to focus on his new companion.
"Perhaps," Jacqueline said dryly, an amused smile playing on her lips, "we should try a different approach. Folklore, it seems, is proving to be… unreliable."
Low snorted.
"You think? I'm starting to think Zombiel's better off soulless if this is the alternative. At least he gets some peace and quiet."
Their quest took another strange turn when they stumbled upon an abandoned blacksmith's forge at the edge of the village, its stone chimney crumbling and its double doors hanging off their rusted hinges.
Inside, resting on a dusty, forgotten anvil, was a small, ornate iron box, intricately etched with swirling patterns.
As Leonotis, driven by insatiable curiosity, reached for it, a wisp of flickering orange flame erupted from within, accompanied by a sharp, indignant squeak.
"A ghost!" Leonotis yelped, snatching his hand back as if burned.
A miniature fire salamander, its body composed entirely of harmless, silent, dancing flames, hovered in the air above the box.
Its tiny glowing eyes, like sparks of molten gold, fixed on them with what appeared to be profound annoyance.
It zipped around the forge, leaving shimmering trails of heat in its wake, occasionally bumping into old tools with a soft, ethereal poof.
"Well, I'll be," Low muttered, a hint of genuine amusement finally breaking through her subdued demeanor. "Looks like we found ourselves a spicy little ghost."
Jacqueline cautiously approached the fiery apparition, her scholarly curiosity piqued.
"It seems… tethered to this box. Perhaps it was its home? Or its prison?"
The fire salamander ghost zipped back towards the box and nudged it with its snout of flame, letting out another frustrated, high-pitched squeak, confirming her theory.
Leonotis grinned, his earlier failures forgotten.
"A fire salamander! Lively, spirited… literally! Spirits are kinda like souls with ase combined right? Zombiel, what do you think? A little inner fire to get you going?"
Zombiel tilted his head, his usual vacant gaze fixed on the dancing, mesmerizing flames.
"Fire… warm?"
"It can be!" Leonotis said enthusiastically. "Though this little guy seems more… feisty than warm."
He narrowly avoided being singed as the salamander ghost zipped past his ear, leaving a faint, sharp scent of sulfur in the air.
"Definitely feisty!"
The fire salamander ghost pulsed with an inner light, its spectral flames shifting through mesmerizing hues of vibrant orange, crimson, and shimmering gold.
It floated between the three living children and the one undead, casting dancing shadows on the dusty anvil and soot-stained walls of the old forge.
The air around it felt strangely warm, alive, and full of a mischievous, fiery energy.
Low crossed her arms, raising a skeptical eyebrow at Leonotis.
"Okay, genius. You found a ghost. Now what's your brilliant plan? How exactly are you planning to get that," she jabbed a finger at the zipping flame-spirit, "into him?"
Leonotis beamed.
"I have no idea! But I'm sure we'll think of something!"