Chapter 17: Ghost Hunting-2

"You’re sure about this," Wen Ruo said, for the third time.

"I’m sure." Lian didn’t look up from the door. "I need to know what’s actually happening to me. Sitting here waiting for it isn’t going to tell me anything."

The doctor had come back once more before visiting hours ended. He wanted Lian kept overnight, a few more tests in the morning, nothing urgent tonight. His parents hadn’t argued.

Nobody said much of anything, honestly. His mother kissed his forehead fast, her jaw tight the way it got right before she cried. His father squeezed his shoulder once. Jun stood in the doorway a second too long before their father steered him out by the collar. None of them had known what to say, so none of them had tried.

The room had gone black except for a blade of hallway light under the door. The hospital’s daytime noise had thinned to almost nothing: machines humming somewhere down the corridor, a cart wheel squeaking past at long, uneven intervals.

It was time.

Lian eased himself off the bed, testing his legs before he trusted them with his full weight. He crossed to the door and pulled it open by degrees instead of all at once, careful not to rush it. The hinge groaned regardless, metal dragging against itself loud enough that his heart jumped into his throat.

The corridor stayed still. Silent.

He leaned out and checked both directions. Empty either way, the fluorescents dimmed to their night setting, one flickering weakly near the nurses’ station a long way off.

Wen Ruo was already out there, standing in the middle of the hall like she’d never needed the door at all.

"You should be more careful than that," Lian said.

"I’m not visible to them. Not the way you are." She tilted her head at him. "You’re the one they’d catch."

"Noted." He pulled the door shut behind him as quietly as it had opened. "Let’s go."

They found the first one twenty minutes later, in a supply closet with its door left ajar. Wen Ruo had it by the back of the neck before Lian even registered movement, holding it out to him the way a cat presents something it’s caught.

The shape squirmed in her grip, pale and no bigger than a fist, the same twisted infant-shape from the hospital room.

"Do I need to kill this one too?"

"Where the hell did you even find that." Lian’s stomach turned. "That’s the same thing. There’s more of them?"

"There’s always more of them." She said it flat, almost bored, but something crossed her face right after and vanished before he could read it.

"What was that look?" He’d caught it anyway. "You flinched."

"I didn’t flinch." She was already turning the shape over in her grip. "Kill it, or don’t. Your call."

"Kill it."

She didn’t hesitate. Her hand closed and the small skull gave with a short, ugly crunch, one he already knew he’d still be hearing days from now.

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S̸u̷c̴c̷e̶s̷s̸f̶u̷l̴l̸y̷ D̴e̸v̷o̸u̸r̴e̷d̶

3 low-t1er sp1rits ○ut of 3/30

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r̷e̶w̷a̸r̶d̷ 1 @b1l1ty

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They kept moving. Wen Ruo drifted ahead of him down the hall, barely touching the floor, fast in a way that owed nothing to running.

"Hey, wait." Lian’s breath was already sawing in his chest, lungs burning to keep pace. "I’m still alive, remember? You’re going too fast."

"You don’t need to be dead to keep up. You need to be in shape." She glanced back, unbothered, her steadiness having nothing to do with lungs. "Which you very much aren’t."

"There." Lian’s voice went flat and cold all at once, exhaustion gone out of it entirely. He was staring past her down the corridor. "Another one."

Crouched at the far end of the hall, past where the lights gave out, was something shaped like the others, the same soft, unformed limbs, except this one was massive. It filled most of the corridor’s width, hunched low to fit under the ceiling, stretched so far past infant that the word had stopped meaning anything.

"What the fuck is that." Lian’s voice cracked. "It’s huge. I’ve never seen anything like this."

"Neither have I." Wen Ruo’s face had gone tight, disgust pulling hard at her mouth. "That is disgusting."

"Why are you disgusted? It’s a spirit, same as you."

"Don’t compare me to that." The words came out hard, clipped. "It’s been eating the small ones. Feed long enough in one place, and this is what you become."

"It can evolve?" His stomach turned over. ℯℯ𝑙.

"They all can. There’s a whole tier system for what they grow into. I’ll explain it later." She didn’t look away from it. "Right now we figure out if we can win this."

The thing saw them.

It didn’t creep, didn’t test the air the way the small ones had. It threw its head back and screamed, a sound too large for the throat that made it, and then it was moving, fast, filling the corridor as it came.

"Lian, stay by the wall." Wen Ruo was already gone before she finished the sentence, closing the distance at a speed that blurred her outline entirely.

Her fingers lengthened as her hand met the thing’s stomach, nails drawing into something closer to blades than claws, and she drove them in to the wrist.

Black fluid sheeted from the wound, darker than blood had any right to be, catching the hall light strangely. The creature shrieked, a note that carried something almost like language buried inside it, and Wen Ruo answered it in kind, raw sound crashing into raw sound.

It should have ended there. It didn’t.

The thing threw its weight into her and she skidded backward a full body length, boots scraping tile, catching herself an instant before it would have pinned her against the wall.

"It’s old," she said, her voice fraying at the edges for the first time all night. "Older than me. In what it’s survived, not in years."

"You have time to talk?" Lian’s voice cracked from where he stood frozen against the wall. "Focus."

She was already moving again, ducking under a limb that swept where her head had been a half-second earlier. The wall took the blow instead and cracked under the impact, plaster raining down in a fine white dust.

"Don’t you have some kind of skill?" Lian shouted after her, half hysterical. "Like in the manhwa, some ability, something?"

"This isn’t a manhwa." She dropped low, dodging again, then came up inside its reach with both hands already changed. "This is just me."

She started cutting.

One limb, then another. Black fluid sprayed with each strike, arcing far enough that it hit Lian’s face before he understood what was happening, warm against his skin, heavier than it should have been. The fact that he could feel it at all, when the doctors and nurses two floors down would never see any of this happening, made his stomach lurch harder than the gore itself did.

The creature’s screaming changed pitch as the limbs came off one by one, something closer to pleading now, folding in on itself where it had once filled the whole corridor. Wen Ruo drove her hand into what remained of its center, and the scream cut off all at once, mid-note, like something unplugged.

The corridor went silent except for Lian’s own shaking breath.

Wen Ruo straightened up slowly, black fluid dripping from both hands, and looked him over. Her voice still carried that fresh, frayed edge when she spoke.

"You’re covered in it," she said, something close to surprise in it.

Lian looked down at himself. His shirt clung to him, soaked through in a dark, heavy patch exactly where it would have spread if the fluid had been his own blood. He hadn’t felt a single wound open anywhere on his body.

He was starting to understand that wasn’t the part that should worry him.