The setting sun washed the entire forest in a dusky gold. Gaps between the leaves looked like wounds someone had cut with scissors, leaking threads of broken light.

Lu Xingchen crouched at the edge of a forest clearing and pinched up a handful of soil between his fingers. Fine crystalline grains mixed into the dirt, glinting faintly in the twilight—the residue left behind when a spirit vein had been disturbed. His brow creased slightly. His heartbeat ran a few beats faster than usual.

Something was wrong.

He had been tracking this patch of woods for three days now. Three days ago, on the hillside outside Dawnlight Town, he had felt that abnormal pulse—like something underground struggling to break free. His father always said spirit veins were the lifeblood of the continent. Any disturbance could be the first sign of disaster.

He stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. The faint light cupped in his palm flickered, as though something were pressing down on it. The deeper he walked into the forest, the dimmer it grew.

"Mother was right…" he murmured to himself, though his feet did not stop. "When the time comes, you still have to come."

Lu Xingchen was, in truth, a little afraid of these woods.

Not because of the woods themselves—he had grown up in Dawnlight Town, gathering herbs on the hills and catching fish in the river. There was nowhere he had not been. It was because twelve years ago, in a forest just like this one, he had nearly been taken by the shadowfolk.

That was one of his earliest memories. Black shadows pouring in from every direction. His mother's scream. His father's hammer. And the light that tore through the dark—his mother burning through every last drop of her light spirit power to bring him back. After that he ran a fever for seven full days. In his dreams, faceless black figures came again and again.

And still he had come.

Because the Light Spirit Hall had already recognized him as a light spirit wielder. Afraid? Afraid or not, the work still had to be done.

The forest grew deeper. The dusk grew thicker. Lu Xingchen had to gather the light in his hand into a brighter sphere. It pulsed in his palm like a restless little sun. The air smelled of damp rotting leaves, mixed with something else he could not name—a faint, cloying sweetness.

He stopped.

Too quiet.

The birdsong, the insect chirping, the rustle of wind through leaves—all of it had vanished. The whole forest seemed to be holding its breath.

Then he saw it.

In a clearing not far ahead, more than a dozen black shadows had formed a ring. Inside the circle, a point of light struggled. The light was weak, like a candle about to go out, yet it still fought to flicker. Lu Xingchen's eyes widened. Those were not ordinary beasts or bandits.

Those were shadowfolk.

More than a dozen of them.

His first instinct was to run.

His second was: the light inside that circle belonged to someone else.

Reason told him to turn and flee while the shadowfolk had not yet noticed him—to run as far as he could. But his feet might as well have been nailed to the ground. He could not move a single step.

The light inside the ring flickered once more, as if making a final struggle.

"…Damn it."

Lu Xingchen cursed under his breath. The next second he was already charging.

He did not know what he was thinking. Maybe the memory of his mother fighting to save him was too deeply carved into him, and he could not bear to watch someone else hurt in front of him. Maybe it was nothing more than hot blood rushing to his head. Either way, by the time he came back to himself, the ball of light in his hand was already flying at the nearest black shadow in the ring.

"Hey!" he shouted, his voice carrying a thin layer of false bravado over real fear. "You lot hiding in the dark over there! Let him go!"

The shadowfolk clearly had not expected a human to burst out of nowhere. The one he struck let out a piercing shriek, as though seared by red-hot iron. Its entire form twisted violently.

"A light spirit wielder…" one of them said. The voice seemed to rise from deep underground—low and cold. "And a lone little whelp at that. Fine. We'll take you both back."

It was over.

Lu Xingchen lamented inwardly. He had set out to save someone and ended up delivering himself along with that flickering light.

More than a dozen black shadows surged toward him like a dark tide. He desperately gathered light and hurled it outward, but the spheres did little against pure shadowfolk—and the more he used his light spirit arts, the faster his strength drained away.

His breathing grew ragged. His vision began to blur.

Just as he thought he would be swallowed entirely—

Every shadow pulled back at once, as though struck by something and thrown off.

A figure landed in front of him.

The man was not tall. His back was lean. He wore fitted black clothes. Lu Xingchen could only see his profile—lines carved cold and hard, lips pressed into a straight line, expression unreadable.

What held his attention most were the man's eyes.

The pupils were impossibly deep, deep enough that you could not see the bottom. Like two ancient wells. One look was enough to chill the spine.

Those were shadowfolk eyes.

"A man of the Shen family?" The leader's voice carried a note of caution. "This is our business. It has nothing to do with you."

"Nothing to do with me?" The man spoke lightly, his voice like well water in deep winter. "You move on my territory and tell me it has nothing to do with me?"

Lu Xingchen blinked. The Shen family? The Shen clan of Shadowvale?

The leader fell silent for a moment, then finally snorted coldly. "We misjudged today. Withdraw."

The shadows receded like a tide, vanishing in the blink of an eye as if they had never been there at all.

Quiet returned to the forest. Birdsong, insect calls, the rustle of leaves—all of it crept back piece by piece.

Only then did Lu Xingchen realize he had collapsed to the ground, his back drenched in cold sweat. He looked up, ready to thank the man—whoever he was, he had saved his life—

Only to find that the man had already turned to leave.

His back was remote. His steps steady. He showed no intention of staying.

"Wait!" Lu Xingchen called, struggling to his feet. "What's your name? I haven't thanked you yet—"

The man paused and turned his head slightly.

In that instant of eye contact, Lu Xingchen saw his gaze clearly.

Cold. Distant. And beneath it, the faintest trace of—

Disgust?

"No need to thank me," the man said, voice flat. "Next time, don't stick your nose into other people's business."

Then he was gone. As silently as he had come, his figure melted into the deepening dusk until Lu Xingchen could no longer see him.

Lu Xingchen stood where he was, staring at the empty woods, his heartbeat still thundering in his ears.

Those eyes stayed with him. That coldness was not an act—it was carved into bone. Yet for one instant, as the man turned to leave, Lu Xingchen thought he saw something else.

Loneliness.

Heavy, crushing loneliness.

"…What a strange man," he murmured. He bent and picked up the light sphere that had already dimmed on the ground, then started toward town.

Dusk had fully swallowed the forest. But at one moment he glanced back—

In the deepest dark, he thought he saw a figure standing among the tree shadows, watching the direction he had gone.

He blinked. Nothing was there.

Maybe he had imagined it.

And yet somehow he felt today's events would not end here. That strange shadowfolk man. The shadows who had attacked him. The spirit vein disturbance deeper in the forest that he still had not traced to its source… All of it had to be connected.

He quickened his pace toward town.

In the night, the lights of Dawnlight Town glittered like a string of warm yellow stars at the foot of the hills. That was his home. The place he could return to.

As for the people and events he had encountered today—

He closed his hand around the lingering warmth in his palm and said softly, "If I run into you again, I'm getting answers out of you if it kills me."

The wind rose, lifting fallen leaves into spinning arcs through the dark.

Somewhere deep in the tree shadows, a pair of bottomless eyes watched the receding point of light until it vanished completely into the night.

"…Trouble."

The man spoke one word under his breath, then turned and melted back into the dark forest.