Immortal Paladin

068 Little Ghost

“I just want my sister back,” said the boy.

His voice was small, barely above a whisper, but it carried weight. A child’s wish, so simple yet impossible.

I let his words settle between us before responding. “Your sister… she didn’t—?”

“She’s still alive,” he interrupted. “But they took her.”

I frowned. “Who’s ‘they’?”

The boy’s form flickered, and his little hands clenched into trembling fists. “The people in black masks.”

Black masks. That could mean a lot of things in this world. Cults, bandits, sects, assassins. Maybe even Abyssal Clans.

I rubbed my chin. “When did this happen?”

“Long ago.” His voice was distant, and his cloudy eyes seemed to see something I couldn’t. “I remember the fire. The screaming. My sister crying. Then nothing.”

I glanced at the charred remains of the house behind him. That fire must have been the one that killed him.

My first instinct was to offer some kind of reassurance, but what could I even say? ‘I’ll bring her back?’ I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t know when this happened.

“…Do you know where they took her?”

The boy hesitated. His translucent fingers curled into his tattered robes. “Deep. Below.”

I frowned. That didn’t sound good. “Below where?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

Of course. Because why would this be easy?

I exhaled and studied him for a moment. He barely reached my knee, his ghostly form flickering slightly as if he might fade at any moment. The gaping wound on his neck was a stark contrast to his otherwise innocent, childlike face.

“Alright,” I said finally. “Let’s start with this—what’s your name?”

"Hei…" the boy started, voice soft and distant, like he was pulling his name from the depths of a fading memory. "Hei Mao."

Hei? As in the Black Clan?

I studied him more carefully. His clothes were old, tattered, and barely held together. They weren’t fine robes, nor did they carry the usual insignia of the Black Clan. Still, the possibility lingered in my mind.

Then again, he spoke a different dialect. Maybe his surname was just a coincidence.

I let the thought pass and introduced myself. "Da Wei," I said with a small nod.

It wasn’t my real name, but it was close enough. The transposed version was pretty convenient. More than that, it served as an extra layer of protection—one of the things I had picked up in my readings. Some spells and rituals needed a person’s true name to take effect. I wasn’t about to make things easier for any stray cultivator looking to curse me in my sleep.

"Hei Mao, huh?" I continued, offering a smile. "That’s a cool name."

"It isn’t really that cool… At most, it’s cute," Hei Mao muttered, crouching down.

With deliberate motions, he picked up a stick and began writing on the dirt.

I watched as the strokes took form. The first character was Hei—Black. The second was Mao—Cat. Black Cat.

Huh. Fitting.

But what really caught my attention wasn’t his name. It was the fact that he could pick up the stick at all. Most ghosts couldn’t interact with the physical world so easily. The fact that he could meant he was either particularly strong… or particularly stubborn.

"I don’t know," I said, tilting my head. "I find cats pretty cool. Though, they can be kinda psychopathic sometimes."

Hei Mao looked at me like I had just spoken absolute nonsense.

I crouched beside him and, using my finger, wrote my own name in the dirt. Da Wei. I thought about it and then gave a meaning to the name people had been mispronouncing to me. The first character, Da, meant Great. The second, Wei, meant Guard. Great Guard.

Hei Mao squinted at the writing, then at me. "Now you’re just showing off."

"Does your sister have a name?" I asked.

Hei Mao hesitated, his small ghostly form still as he stared at the dirt. "...I don’t remember," he admitted. "We’re twins, though… and she should remember my name. If you find her, tell her that I miss her."

I nodded. "Why don’t you come with me?"

Hei Mao shook his head. "I can’t. I’m bound to this place. If I go any farther, I’ll become weaker."

I took on a more serious tone. "I can protect you."

He became quiet.

"If you want," I continued, "you can come with me, and we can look for your sister together."

Hei Mao looked up at me, his translucent eyes filled with something unreadable. Then, he shook his head again.

"I can’t," he said. "I have to mourn for them."

He lifted a small, ghostly hand and pointed inside the charred building.

I followed his gesture and peered into the ruins.

Inside, among the blackened remains of what had once been a home, lay the scorched bodies of a family of three—a mother, a father, and a child.

Hei Mao shared with me how he had been in this patch of land for a long time.

Long enough that the charred ruins of the house weren’t the first home to stand here. But this family—the one whose remains now lay blackened and brittle—was the first to ever truly set roots. He watched them build their lives, their routines, their little traditions. The way the father hummed before speaking, how the mother always wiped the table twice, how the child—his name already slipping from Hei Mao’s memory—liked to chase after butterflies before dinner.

He had watched them, and over time, he had grown accustomed to their company. Even if they never saw him, he had been there, a silent observer, an unseen neighbor.

I listened quietly, letting him speak at his own pace. There was something sad in the way he clung to them, as if keeping their memory alive was the only thing holding him together.

Still, I couldn’t help but point out the obvious. "Hei Mao, if they were like you, if they were still here, wouldn’t they have appeared by now?" I gestured toward the burned wreckage. "The dead don’t just move on like that, right? If they had regrets, if they had things left undone, wouldn’t they still be lingering?"

Hei Mao’s small fingers curled into fists. He looked toward the ruins, his face unreadable. “They should be here,” he murmured. “They should be here with me.”

I crossed my arms. “But they’re not.”

He bit his lip. “I know.”

"Then why are you still mourning them?"

Hei Mao’s expression twisted, caught between anger and grief. "Because if I don’t, who will?"

I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. "You really think they’d want you stuck here like this?"

Silence.

Hei Mao stared at the ruins, his small frame stiff. His lips parted like he wanted to say something, but no words came out.

I studied Hei Mao carefully. The way his little ghostly fingers trembled, how his lips pressed together in something too stubborn to be just grief. There was more to this than just mourning.

“What are you so scared about?” I finally asked.

Hei Mao flinched. His gaze snapped to me, wide-eyed, like I had yanked some hidden truth out of him. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he gripped the hem of his tattered clothes, a reflexive motion that only made him look more like the lost child he was.

I exhaled through my nose. “You’re not just mourning them. You’re hoping—wishing—that they made it to the next life after this, right?”

He nodded slowly as if hesitant.

I tilted my head toward the burnt ruins. “For all I know, they already have. I mean, I don’t see them around. Do you?”

Hei Mao’s lips parted, but no words came. His eyes flickered to the charred remains inside the house, then back to me.

I sighed. “But that’s not what you really wanted, is it?”

His little hands clenched tighter.

“You didn’t want them to move on,” I said, watching his expression closely. “You wanted them to stay.”

Hei Mao sucked in a breath, an empty, ghostly sound. His shoulders shook as if I had spoken the one truth he had been trying to avoid.

For a long moment, he was silent. Then, in the smallest voice, he admitted, “…Yes.”

If I compared Lost Legends Online’s ghosts to the ghosts of this world, they had at least one thing in common: they were illogical creatures that often contradicted themselves.

Why mourn the dead when you were dead yourself?

Why cry for those who had moved on when you yourself were stuck?

And yet, another similarity between the ghosts of both worlds was how they lied—not just to others, but to themselves.

I could feel the lies. My Divine Sense flickered every time Hei Mao spoke half-truths. The way his voice wavered, the way he hesitated, it was all too telling. Not to mention, the powerful miasma that surrounded the ruined house didn’t belong to the burnt corpses inside—it all came from him.

I sighed.

If a ghost was confronted with the truth, they would usually lash out. That was standard knowledge. Most of the time, they’d snap, go feral, or outright attack in denial. It was basically the equivalent of an existential crisis, but with more screaming and spectral claws.

But Hei Mao didn’t.

That was what set him apart.

Or maybe it was because of me.

I remembered an old joke back in LLO—how my friends used to tease me about my ability to solve problems with talk-no-jutsu, even though my speech stat wasn’t all that high. Apparently, it worked just as well in this world.

I knelt down to his level and asked one more time, “What are you so scared about?”

Hei Mao’s lips trembled.

And then—black tears poured from his hollow eyes, ectoplasm dripping like ink down his pale cheeks. A choked sob escaped his throat as he suddenly lunged forward and hugged me, tiny arms gripping tightly around my waist.

“I… I am scared of being alone…” he whispered. His voice cracked with the weight of the words he had buried for so long.

I felt his cold, spectral form press against me, but there was warmth in the way he held on, like he was desperate not to disappear.

I exhaled softly and patted his back.

“I’m here,” I told him. “You’re not alone.”

I inhaled deeply and reached within myself, calling forth the power of Divine Possession with Ephemeral Touch.

The moment I activated it, my soul trembled.

"To seize the body is to seize the self. To walk another’s path is to know their truth. For a moment, the soul is unbound, freed from the chains of its own flesh, given wings to fly into another. But beware—the self is fragile. To linger too long is to forget the shape of one’s own soul. To possess is to risk being possessed in turn."

The flavor text echoed in my mind like a warning bell.

I braced myself. This wasn’t like LLO, where I could just use Divine Possession on an ally and call it a day. This was real. And I was about to possess a ghost.

It was unbelievable, but for a second time… I managed to evolve a skill.

I reached out and grasped Hei Mao’s essence.

For a fleeting moment, the world twisted. The sensation was foreign, weightless, like my body had lost its form, my mind stretched thin across an eternity of memories. I wasn’t just watching Hei Mao’s past—I was living it.

The laughter of a mother, the calloused hands of a father. The warmth of a home built from love, now reduced to ash.

And then—pain. A burning, searing pain at his throat. A scream that never came. The feeling of slipping, falling, drowning in the abyss of death but never truly reaching the bottom.

I understood.

Hei Mao’s grief. His anger. His loneliness.

And yet, despite all that suffering, despite the way the world had abandoned him, he stayed. Because he had a family once. Because he didn’t want to let them go.

I returned to my body with a shuddering breath. The air around us felt lighter. The oppressive miasma had thinned, and Hei Mao… he was different now. His presence had softened. The lingering resentment that made his ghostly form twisted and jagged had faded.

Hei Mao looked at me with wide, watery eyes.

“…Can you help me send them away?”

His voice was small and fragile.

He turned toward the charred ruins of the house and pointed. “They deserve better.”

I met his gaze and nodded.

I raised my hand and called forth holy power. The warmth of divinity surged through my veins as I cast—

Turn Undead.

Golden light flooded the burnt remains. The energy seeped into the broken foundation, purging the lingering hatred, unraveling the threads of regret that bound this place to sorrow.

Slowly, the air shimmered.

And then—they appeared.

A mirage of a family, standing together, bathed in soft, ethereal light.

The father and mother smiled gently, their forms whole and untouched by death. Between them stood a girl, identical to Hei Mao, except feminine—his sister.

The girl beamed. “I missed you too, brother!”

Hei Mao’s breath hitched. His small hands clenched at his sides.

The truth had been in front of him all along. This wasn’t just some family he had watched over.

It was his family.

Because of his resentment, because of his innate talent, he had cultivated and persisted even after death. His will had been too strong, his refusal to move on too powerful. He had forgotten who he was.

Hei Mao sobbed.

But unlike before, his tears were no longer black and inky.

They were clear. Pure.

“I… I am sorry…” His voice cracked. “And I love you all… Mom… Dad… Sis… I… Thank you…”

His family smiled. And as the light grew brighter, they opened their arms, welcoming him home.