Primordial Heir: Nine Stars-Chapter 325: Investigation

Unaware of the storm silently moving toward their region, the trio left their villa at first light. They took a rugged, all-terrain vehicle provided by the mayor and drove out of Oxglen's cheerful bustle, following the winding road into the thickening pine forests of the foothills.

The change was gradual, then sudden. The well-paved road became gravel, then dirt. The air grew cooler. The sense of modern ease slipped away. After about an hour, they rounded a bend and saw Oakhaven.

It wasn't a village anymore; it was a settlement under siege. The wooden fences were broken in places. The few fields they could see were trampled and neglected. The houses, simple log and stone structures, looked huddled together for warmth and protection. There was no smoke from morning fires. No sound of children playing. An eerie, watchful silence hung over the place.

As they stepped out of the vehicle, the inhabitants emerged one by one. They were thin, their clothes worn out. Their eyes were the worst part—haggard, sunken, and filled with a deep, tired fear that had settled into their bones. They watched the cadets with a mixture of desperate hope and numb suspicion, this cauchemar would soon end they all wished for.

The village chief, an old man with hands like knotted wood and a face carved by decades of worry, hobbled forward. His name was Boren. He looked at their uniforms, at the clan crests on the girls, and his shoulders slumped not in relief, but in resignation that things had gotten this bad.

"You're from the academy," he stated, his voice scratchy. "Thank you for coming. But I don't know what you can do."

Elreth stepped forward, her natural royal grace softening into something more approachable. "Chief Boren," she said, her voice warm and respectful. "Please, tell us everything. Start from the beginning."

The chief nodded, gesturing for them to sit on a rough-hewn bench outside his home. Elreth sat with him, leaning in, her expression one of focused empathy. She was in her element here—listening, reassuring, drawing out information with gentle questions. Nero and Khione hung back, letting her work her diplomatic magic.

The story was grim. It started with the cows. Not just taken, but vanished. No blood, no broken fences, just empty pens in the morning. Then, a week ago, Old Man Gerran didn't come back from checking his snares. They found his hat, but not him. Two days later, it was the Miller brothers, strong men in their prime, who went to fix a boundary fence. They never returned. The village guard had searched. They'd found nothing. No struggle, no tracks beyond the usual deer and boar. It was as if the mountain itself had opened up and gobbled them.

"We're afraid to go beyond the tree line now," Boren finished, his eyes on the dark wall of pines that pressed close to the village clearing. "Even in daylight."

While Elreth continued to comfort the chief and gather more details—who was related to whom, who saw what last—Nero and Khione shared a look. It was time for their part, to go investigate.

"We're going to look around the perimeter," Nero told Elreth quietly. She gave a slight nod, her attention still on the chief.

Nero and Khione started their investigation. They began at the village edge, where the first cow pen had been emptied. They moved slowly, their senses stretched thin.

And they found trails. Lots of them. But they were all wrong.

There were deep, heavy gouges in the mud from boar tusks. There were the delicate, paired hoofprints of deer. They saw the scratch marks of climbing forest cats on trees and the scattered feathers of owl kills. They found a badger sett, and the burrow of something smaller. The forest was full of normal, wild life. It was practically teeming with it.

That was the problem.

"Too many trails," Nero muttered, crouching by a mess of hoofprints. "It's like… everything is still here. Still active. A predator big enough to take cows and men would scare off the smaller game. It would leave a dominant trail. A territory."

Khione nodded, her icy eyes scanning the undergrowth. "There is no dominant trail. Only chaos." She pointed to a patch of ferns.

"Deer passed here recently. They would not if a major threat was near."

They spent hours on it. They circled the entire village. They checked the last known locations of the missing men—a trampled patch near a creek, a stand of trees by the broken fence. They found the men's footprints. And then they just… stopped. As if the men had simply ceased to exist mid-step. There were no drag marks, no signs of a scuffle, no sudden sprint away. Nothing.

It was deeply frustrating. The evidence was everywhere, and it told them nothing. The sun climbed higher, but the cold, fearful atmosphere of the village didn't lift. They saw the villagers watching them from their doors, the hope in those haggard eyes slowly dimming as the two cadets just kept walking, looking, finding nothing.

Nero kicked a rotten log in frustration, sending up a cloud of termites. "This doesn't make sense. Even magic leaves a residue. A teleportation spell, a portal… something. This is just… nothing."

Khione placed a cool hand on his arm, calming his agitation. "The 'nothing' is the clue," she said quietly. "The absence is deliberate. It is not a beast. It is not a simple monster."

She was right. The sheer, clean lack of evidence was itself a signature. Something intelligent was at work. Something that could move through a vibrant forest without disturbing the wildlife, could take large prey without a trace, and could make people vanish from the face of the earth.

They returned to the village center as the afternoon began to wane. Elreth met them, her diplomatic smile gone, replaced by a serious frown. She had gotten the same story from a dozen angles. Fear, silence, and vanishing.

The three of them stood together, the desolate village around them. Their first day of investigation was over. They had worked hard, moved carefully, and used their skills. And they had discovered absolutely nothing. The only thing they had found was the chilling certainty that they were not hunting an animal.

They were hunting a ghost. And it was watching them right back.