ASHEN VALE POV
I kill the Shade with one hand while checking my phone with the other.
My fingers close around the spirit's throat—it feels like grabbing smoke mixed with ice—and I channel grief energy through my palm. The emotion I consumed from yesterday's mass possession incident crystallizes into a blade inside the creature's body. It screams. Then it explodes into black mist.
Three seconds. New personal record.
"Ashen, you didn't even look at it!" Yuki's voice crackles through my earpiece. "That's showing off."
"It's efficiency," I reply, wiping spirit residue off my hand. It dissolves before touching my skin. "The Shade was Class-E. Hardly worth my time."
I'm standing in a garbage apartment in the Undercity, and there's a boy on the floor who should be dead. He's maybe eighteen, unconscious, with weird silver streaks in his black hair. According to my scanner, he flat-lined three hours ago from spirit possession. The same Shade I just killed.
But his heart is beating now.
"Yuki, I need a medical team at my location," I say, kneeling beside the boy. "We have a survivor."
"Survivors from full possession don't exist, Ashen. You know that."
"Then explain the pulse I'm feeling."
Silence on the other end. Then: "I'm sending a team. Don't do anything weird like care about him, okay? It's creepy when you act human."
I ignore her terrible attempt at humor and study the boy's face. He's nobody special—just another E-rank warrior trying to survive in the slums. His file says Kai Chen, orphan, no family, drowning in debt. The type of person who dies quietly and nobody notices.
Except he didn't die.
Something brought him back.
His eyes suddenly snap open—dark and panicked and full of intelligence that doesn't match his age. For one second, he stares straight at me like he's seeing a ghost.
"You're real," he gasps. "You actually saved me."
"Don't thank me yet," I reply coldly. "I need to know how you survived possession. That's impossible."
He blinks rapidly, and I watch about five different emotions flash across his face—confusion, fear, relief, then something calculating. Like he's solving a puzzle at high speed.
"I... don't know," he says carefully. "I remember the spirit attacking, then darkness, then waking up to you killing it."
He's lying. I can tell because his heartbeat jumped when he said "I don't know." But that's not my problem. My job was to eliminate the spirit. Done.
I stand up to leave.
"Wait!" He scrambles to his feet, swaying. "What's your name? I should at least know who saved my life."
I almost don't answer. Names create connection, and I don't do connection. But something about the way he's looking at me—grateful and curious instead of terrified—makes me pause.
"Ashen Vale."
His eyes go wide. "The Phantom General? THE Phantom General just saved a random E-rank warrior in the Undercity?"
"I was hunting the Shade. You were collateral benefit."
"Still counts." He grins suddenly, and it transforms his whole face from exhausted to almost charming. "Thank you, Phantom General."
Nobody smiles at me. People flinch, scatter, or try too hard to impress me. They don't just... smile.
I feel something uncomfortable twist in my chest. An emotion I haven't felt in seven years.
I turn away fast. "The medical team will be here in five minutes. Try not to die again before they arrive."
"Hey, uh, one more thing?" His voice stops me at the door. "Do you believe in second chances?"
I look back at him. He's standing there in his garbage apartment, covered in spirit residue, technically dead three hours ago, and he's asking philosophical questions.
"No," I say flatly. "Second chances are fairy tales. People don't change. The dead don't come back. And the world doesn't care about what you deserve."
Something flickers in his eyes—not hurt, but understanding. Like he expected that answer.
"That's what I thought too," he says quietly. "But I'm still here. So maybe the world's rules are breakable."
Before I can respond, my phone buzzes with an emergency alert. Director Feng, my boss at the Spirit Warrior Association.
The message makes my blood run cold:
Report to headquarters immediately. Unauthorized fear energy signature detected in Undercity. Readings suggest illegal harvesting operation—possibly torture-based. You're assigned to investigate and eliminate the source. Target profile attached.
I open the attachment.
The energy signature's origin point is this building. This apartment. It spiked exactly three hours ago—right when Kai Chen supposedly died and came back.
I look up at him slowly.
He's staring at me with those too-intelligent eyes, and I realize something that makes my combat instincts scream.
This boy isn't a lucky survivor.
He's something else entirely.
And I just let whatever he is know exactly who I am.
"Ashen?" Yuki's voice crackles in my ear. "I'm seeing the same alert. That energy signature... it's coming from inside your location. Is the target there with you?"
I watch Kai Chen's face carefully. He's still smiling, but now it doesn't reach his eyes. He knows I got a message about him. He's waiting to see what I'll do.
Kill him as ordered? Or ask questions first?
"Ashen, confirm: is the target present?"
My hand moves to my weapon.
Kai doesn't run. Doesn't beg. Just stands there watching me with an expression that's part curiosity, part resignation, like he's already calculated all the possible outcomes of this moment.
"Yeah," I finally respond. "Target acquired."
Then I do something I haven't done in seven years.
I make a choice based on gut feeling instead of orders.
"But I'm bringing him in for questioning instead of elimination. Something's wrong with this case."
"Ashen, your orders are—"
I disconnect the call.
Kai raises an eyebrow. "You just disobeyed direct orders for someone you met thirty seconds ago. Why?"
I don't have a good answer. I should kill him. It's cleaner. Safer. But that uncomfortable feeling in my chest won't go away.
"Because," I hear myself say, "dead people don't produce fear energy. So either you're not actually Kai Chen, or the rules just broke. Either way, I need to understand what you are before I kill you."
His smile returns—sharper this time, more dangerous.
"Well, Phantom General, that makes two of us trying to figure out what I am."
He extends his hand like we're making a deal instead of him being my prisoner.
"I promise I'll be a very interesting investigation."
Against every instinct screaming at me, I shake his hand.
His skin is warm. Alive. Human.
But the fear energy rolling off him tastes like nothing I've ever consumed before.
It tastes like something that shouldn't exist.