A few days later, on the morning of the day off that Crusch had granted to Witch Hunt, Soren returned to the adventurers' guild.
At least, that was how it would later be remembered.
At the time, none of them knew yet.
Morrigan and the rest of her party had arrived at the guild hall at the crack of dawn.
The building was quieter than usual, the usual chatter of adventurers dulled by the early hour.
Only a handful of people milled about, night-shift workers turning in requests, insomniacs nursing cheap ale, and a few guild staff preparing for the day.
They stood at the reception desk, listening as the receptionist shuffled through reports.
"This is all pointless," Hannah muttered after several minutes.
Morrigan didn't correct her.
Everything being reported was useless.
Clearly false sightings.
Half-remembered descriptions.
People trying to make quick coin off desperation.
"I saw her near the west gate," one report claimed, dated two days before Soren even left.
Another mentioned a white-haired girl drinking in a brothel, something so absurd it almost felt insulting.
Morrigan barely registered the words anymore.
She didn't care about the silver she was bleeding; she didn't care how many false leads piled up.
She cared about one thing.
Whether Soren was alive.
Soren was a member of her party.
That meant she was Morrigan's responsibility.
Morrigan's jaw tightened as memory after memory replayed in her mind, Soren sitting quietly at their table, listening more than speaking.
Soren nodding along when Morrigan promised Witch Hunt would act as a shield for her over the break.
Soren saying she wanted to return to Stellaris Academy stronger, richer.
She had trusted Morrigan.
And Morrigan had failed her.
"I'm sorry," the receptionist said quietly, setting the last report down. "This is all the information I have."
She looked genuinely apologetic, her shoulders slumped slightly as she met Morrigan's eyes.
"It's… fine," Morrigan replied after a moment.
Her voice was steady, but it took effort.
"It's not your fault."
She exhaled slowly.
"We'll go to the Goblin King's Nest today," she continued. "Do a thorough exploration. Every tunnel."
"I wish you the best," the receptionist said, bowing her head.
Morrigan nodded in return and turned away.
The party moved toward a table in the corner of the hall.
Their table.
Usually, it was loud.
Laughter, teasing, the clatter of mugs and plates.
Stories from jobs gone wrong or just barely right.
Today, it felt foreign.
Morrigan sat down last, fingers curling against the wood as she stared at the tabletop.
She felt like she had failed all of them.
"Mori…" Hannah murmured.
She reached out under the table, her hand slipping into Morrigan's. It was warm. Steady.
It didn't help.
"We'll find her," Alice said.
Her tone was serious, unnaturally so.
Alice was always smiling, always loud, always trying to lift everyone's spirits, no matter how bad things got, but now, she wasn't smiling at all.
Although she hadn't been particularly close to Soren, she still cared.
They all did.
"Oh! You're back! Are you alright?"
The receptionist's voice rang out suddenly, cutting through the air.
Every head in the guild turned.
Standing at the reception desk was a figure that barely looked human at first glance.
Their hair was dull, matted with grime.
It was obvious it was naturally light, bright, even, but mud and blood obscured its true colour.
And the blood…
From head to toe, they were covered in it.
Dried patches layered over fresh stains.
All of it red.
Human blood.
Morrigan's chair scraped loudly as she stood.
Her breath caught.
"Soren?" she whispered.
The name rippled through Witch Hunt like a shock.
Morrigan didn't wait.
She crossed the guild hall in seconds, her boots hitting the floor hard as she stopped in front of the figure.
"Soren… are you alright?" she asked.
The question felt stupid the moment it left her mouth.
Soren looked like she had crawled out of a battlefield.
But Morrigan needed to hear it.
Soren nodded.
Just once.
Alice was next to speak, her voice trembling as relief flooded in.
"We were so worried! We—"
"Sorry."
Soren cut her off.
The word was flat, empty.
"You look awful…" Hannah muttered, her sharp grey eyes scanning Soren's face.
They closed in around her instinctively, voices soft, gentle, careful.
Nobody asked what happened.
Nobody asked where she had been.
All that mattered was that she was here.
Alive.
Safe.
…Or so they thought.
"We're here for you," Morrigan said softly, a smile forced onto her face. "You don't have to do anything alone."
She reached out, her hand lifting toward Soren's head.
And then…
Soren recoiled.
Her entire body jerked backwards as if struck, cloak flaring with the sudden movement.
Torn fabric shifted, exposing blood-soaked rags, half-healed wounds, and bruises that hadn't fully faded.
Her breathing turned ragged.
Shallow.
"No," Soren whispered.
Morrigan froze.
Before she could react, Soren slipped past them, breaking the circle they had formed, and fled.
Silence swallowed the guild hall.
"…What just happened?" Alice asked weakly.
Nobody answered.
Morrigan couldn't speak.
The look in Soren's eyes.
The way she had flinched.
Run.
Her chest tightened painfully as she lowered her hand.
"…Let's try talking to her again tomorrow," Morrigan said after a long moment. "Just… give her space."
The rest of Witch Hunt nodded.
None of them mentioned that tomorrow, they wouldn't be here.
They parted quietly.
Morrigan sank into a nearby chair.
Her mind went blank.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
That night, long after Witch Hunt had returned to the royal palace, Morrigan remained behind at the adventurers' guild.
The building had quieted to a hollow stillness, the kind that only came once the last of the late-night drinkers had stumbled out, and the lanterns had been dimmed.
She sat alone at one of the long tables, fingers wrapped around a mug that had gone cold hours ago.
She hadn't taken a single sip since the afternoon.
She had told the others to go on ahead without her.
"I'll try speaking to her again," she had said. "Just once more."
They had hesitated, exchanged glances, then nodded.
Morrigan knew they trusted her judgment, trusted her, and that only made the weight in her chest heavier.
But in the end, she didn't go to Soren's room.
She couldn't.
If what she suspected was true, if the look in Soren's eyes earlier hadn't been a fluke of exhaustion or shock, then knocking on that door would do nothing but make things worse.
Morrigan had seen that look before.
Not often, but enough times to recognise it when it appeared.
The look of someone who had survived something they shouldn't have had to.
So instead, once the sun dipped beneath the horizon and the streets outside the guild grew dark, Morrigan stood, fastened her cloak, and left.
She hired a carriage without explanation, giving only a destination.
The Goblin King's Nest.
The driver glanced at her through the mirror, clearly confused as to why anyone would want to head there at this hour, but Morrigan's expression cut off any questions before they could form.
The ride passed in silence, broken only by the rattle of wheels and the distant sounds of the city fading behind them.
When the carriage finally stopped, Morrigan disembarked and continued on foot.
The forest between the road and the dungeon entrance was thick, moonlight barely filtering through the canopy above.
She moved steadily, efficiently, as if her body had already decided what needed to be done even while her mind lagged behind.
Her boots crunched softly against leaves and dirt, and with every step, the unease in her chest tightened further.
It took hours.
But eventually, she found it.
The dungeon entrance loomed ahead, half-swallowed by shadow, and the ground surrounding it told a story long before Morrigan reached the threshold.
Blood.
Scorch marks.
Broken branches and churned earth.
The unmistakable signs of a violent struggle.
Morrigan stopped several paces away, her breath catching despite herself.
For a brief moment, she considered turning back.
Pretending she hadn't seen this.
Pretending there was still some other explanation.
Then she clenched her jaw and moved forward.
She began with the bodies.
One by one, she examined them, forcing herself to be methodical.
Names first, faces she recognised, faces she didn't.
Affiliations, equipment quality, insignias.
She catalogued everything silently, committing it to memory.
Then she studied the wounds.
Lightning burns that had blackened flesh to the bone.
Sections of skin melted entirely away.
Limbs encased in frost, fingers snapped off cleanly where ice had made them brittle.
Crushed skulls.
Deep, precise slashes from a blade.
No two deaths were the same.
It was excessive.
Deliberate.
Yet Morrigan felt no nausea, no revulsion.
She had long since learned how to separate herself from scenes like this.
Corpses were a fact of life in her profession, an unfortunate constant.
Normally, she would have already begun thinking about reports, about jurisdiction, about how to spin this in a way that spared her party trouble.
But tonight, her thoughts kept circling back to one thing.
'Soren.'
"For her to do this…" Morrigan murmured under her breath.
She continued her inspection, careful not to disturb more than necessary.
She searched pockets, checked packs, noted expressions frozen in death, some twisted in terror, others slack with surprise.
Whatever had happened here, it had ended quickly, but not cleanly.
Eventually, her gaze fell on a dagger.
It was embedded in the side of one man's waist, driven in deep enough that removing it caused blood to well out immediately.
Morrigan hesitated only a second before gripping the hilt and pulling it free.
She held it up to the moonlight.
Cheap craftsmanship.
Worn grip.
Nothing remarkable.
And yet.
She brought it closer to her face, nostrils flaring slightly.
There it was.
A faint, sour tang clinging to the blade, subtle, but unmistakable if you knew what to look for.
Morrigan clicked her tongue quietly.
She withdrew a cloth from her pocket and wiped the dagger clean, removing both the blood and any residue clinging to its edge.
Then she retrieved a potion vial, uncorking it and holding it between her teeth, careful not to swallow yet.
She drew the dagger across her palm in a shallow cut.
Pain flared briefly, then vanished as she tilted her head back and drank the potion in one smooth motion.
She spat the empty vial aside and watched as the cut sealed itself almost instantly.
She waited.
Counted her breaths.
The faint heaviness that crept into her limbs was all the confirmation she needed.
"Sleeping poison," Morrigan muttered.
She flexed her hand a few times, testing herself, before letting her arm fall back to her side.
Disgust twisted her expression as she looked back at the bodies.
"Fucking disgusting creatures."
The pieces slid together in her mind with sickening ease.
They had found Soren alone.
Ambushed her.
Used poison to incapacitate her.
And then…
Morrigan swallowed hard, bile burning at the back of her throat.
She didn't need to imagine the rest.
The brutality of the counterattack made perfect sense now.
The excess.
The rage.
The lack of restraint.
Soren hadn't been fighting monsters.
She had been fighting men.
Men who thought they could take advantage of a lone, young adventurer.
Men who had assumed she was weak.
Men who had never considered the possibility that their victim might survive.
Morrigan dragged a hand down her face, exhaustion finally seeping into her bones.
"Fucking hell… I hate this line of work."
Being an adventurer meant seeing the worst the world had to offer.
It meant witnessing villages looted under the cover of monster attacks.
It meant mediating disputes that ended in blood simply because someone knew they could get away with it.
It meant learning, again and again, just how little morality mattered to some people.
And sometimes…
Sometimes it meant finding scenes like this.
Rapists who exploited chaos.
Who preyed on the vulnerable.
Who didn't care whether their victim was grieving, lost, or simply unlucky enough to cross their path.
Sometimes that victim was a survivor.
Sometimes, a missing person no one was looking for.
Sometimes, just someone trying to live.
…And sometimes, that victim was a newly orphaned girl, barely holding herself together, trying to survive any way she could, trying to claw her way in this hell of a world.
Morrigan raised her palm, her expression hollow as she surveyed the carnage one final time.
"You don't deserve a proper funeral," she said quietly. "And I won't let any of this follow her. She's too young for this."
Magic surged.
"「Infernal Flood」"
Fire roared forth from the magic circle forming in her palm, spilling outward like a living tide.
The flames consumed everything in their path, bodies, blood, weapons, reducing them to nothing but ash and scorched earth.
The heat was immense.
Relentless.
When it was over, there was nothing left.
Nothing to trace.
Nothing to haunt Soren later.
Morrigan lowered her arm, staring at the blackened ground.
"I should have done better," she whispered.
This had happened because of her.
Because she hadn't protected Soren enough.
Because she had accepted Crusch's request.
Because she had rushed the missing person notice.
Because she had failed as a leader.
Her shoulders sagged as the realisation settled fully.
"I'm sorry."
She stood there for a long moment longer, knowing the apology would never be heard, before turning away from the scorched remains and disappearing into the night.
————「❤︎」————