CHAPTER 118: GHOST HUNTER?

They had survived the unthinkable together.

He had been just a boy when he was trafficked alongside Luna. She had saved him.

And when she was adopted by Leonard, she insisted on taking Hunter with her. Others had been reclaimed by their families or taken in by kind strangers—but Hunter had no one.

Because of the vitiligo that scarred his face, his parents had cast him aside.

To them, he was not a son but a burden—something to be hidden, erased.

His skin bore the cruel contrast of fate: half light, half dark, as if dawn and dusk had collided upon his flesh.

He remembered the night they left him. He had been five years old, clutching a ragged toy car in his tiny hand.

His mother wouldn’t look at him; her face twisted whenever her eyes flicked to the pale patches creeping across his cheek.

His father said nothing, only dragged him down a dirt road, past the edge of the village, to where strangers waited.

The boy had cried out, "Mama!" and reached for her dress. She stepped back.

Her lips trembled, but her hands stayed folded tightly behind her, as though touching him would stain her.

"You’ll be better off," his father muttered gruffly, shoving him forward. "We can’t raise a child like you."

The strangers didn’t even ask his name. To them he was another mouth to sell, another problem to discard.

From that night onward, the world rejected him. In crowded streets, people stared too long or looked away too quickly.

Children pointed. Adults whispered. Even the kind ones—those who offered scraps of food—never forgot to glance at his face first, pity dulling their eyes.

Everyone except Luna.

Her gaze didn’t skitter across his face searching for flaws, nor soften with false sympathy.

Instead, she stepped closer, her eyes steady and filled with something he had never seen before—admiration.

"You are beautiful," she said softly, her voice certain, almost reverent. "Like nature itself."

He blinked, stunned. Beautiful? No one had ever used that word for him. Not once.

She tilted her head, studying him with the same wonder one might hold for the dawn sky streaked with two colors, or a river where light and shadow danced together.

There was no hesitation, no doubt—only acceptance.

And for the first time in his life, he felt seen—not as broken, not as cursed, but as something rare. Something worth cherishing.

And under Leonard’s roof, for the first time, he felt warmth. He felt family.

From a young age, Luna had buried herself in the world of herbs and medicine.

Days blurred into nights, nights into weeks, and often she forgot what rest even meant.

Her hands grew raw from grinding roots, her eyes red from poring over ancient texts, and still—failure met her at every turn.

Potions curdled. Mixtures soured.

Remedies slipped through her grasp again and again.

But she never gave up.

Even when Leonard scolded her for skipping meals, even when others mocked her childish obsession, she pressed on with stubborn determination.

She would stay awake until dawn, testing tinctures, measuring doses, scribbling furious notes on scraps of parchment.

And then, at last—after countless sleepless nights and near-disasters—she succeeded.

A medicine. A cure.

Hunter had been bewildered when she pressed the vial into his hand.

At first, he had only been curious about Luna’s obsession with medicines and herbs.

Her endless scribbling in notebooks, the way she would vanish for hours into dusty libraries or lock herself away with jars of strange powders and bitter-smelling roots.

He thought it was just another one of her eccentric passions, like the way she memorized star charts or studied old languages.

But now he knew.

Every sleepless night, every ink-stained page, every failed attempt that left her hands trembling—it hadn’t been for knowledge alone.

It had been for him.

For the boy the world had discarded. For the face no one else could bear to look at.

When he realized the truth, something inside him broke and mended all at once.

He remembered staring at her, unable to speak, as she smiled faintly and pushed a cup of her bitter concoction toward him.

"You’ll hate the taste," she warned gently, "but it’ll help."

He swallowed it down without protest, not because he believed in the medicine yet, but because she had made it—for him.

And under her care, he began to heal.

And from that moment on, his loyalty was no longer a choice. It was carved into his very soul.

That was why he was unshakably loyal. Why the Phantoms meant everything to him. Why Luna was everything.

After the torrent of messages finally quieted, Aurora’s fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Her thoughts were sharp, deliberate, every word carrying the weight of urgency.

"I’ll explain everything later," she typed at last, her pulse quickening. "But right now, I need you to find someone. A woman named Abigail Kristoffa."

She attached the digital trail she had uncovered—a fragment of records, and the link that led back to Philips, the very dealer who had once bought her like she was nothing more than property.

Her next words were colder, edged with steel:

"I want them. As soon as possible."

Hunter read the message in silence. His jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing at the name.

A low sound rumbled in his throat—a sharp hum of acknowledgment—but the weight behind it was unmistakable.

He didn’t need to ask why. He didn’t need explanations.

If she wanted this woman found, then the woman was already as good as caught.

No one hunted ghosts better than Hunter.

Slowly, he turned to his left, still crouched low in the thick undergrowth, his senses tuned to every sound around him.

His eyes darkened at once, a storm brewing within them, and a scowl etched itself across his face.

Slowly, he shifted, turning to his left from the crouched position he held.

They were surrounded.

The island’s silence was broken by the faint rustle of boots in the undergrowth—the unmistakable pattern of elite forces tightening their net.