The weight of it finally crushed him. The fake smiles he had given his customers, the desperate way he tried to pretend his "real" family was the only one that mattered, and the image of Hoppy’s hopeful, dirty face as she finally found him... it all collided.

The merchant let out a jagged, broken breath. The tears didn’t just drip now; they poured. He looked at the blood on his finger and saw the red of the slime attack. He looked at his daughter Holly and saw the ghost of the girl he had denied.

He didn’t just break the glass. He had broken himself. Under the watchful, invisible eyes of the "ghost" in the corner, the merchant finally began to fall apart, realizing that no amount of profit or prestige could drown out the sound of the daughter he had thrown away.

His daughter, Holly, tilted her head, her face full of innocent confusion.

"Papa? Does the cut hurt that much? I-Is that why you’re crying?"

The question was like a jolt of electricity. He snapped out of his trance, frantically wiping his eyes with his sleeve and forcing a ragged laugh.

"No, no, sweetheart. I’m just... I’m just tired. Business has been a lot today. I’m fine."

He stood up abruptly, gathering the shards of glass with shaking hands. He rushed to the kitchen, every movement desperate and jerky, and thrust his hands under the cold water of the basin. He washed them over and over, scrubbing the blood and the memory of the day from his skin as if he could rinse away his sins.

He splashed the freezing water onto his face, gasping as it hit his skin, trying to wake himself from this nightmare. Just as he reached for a towel, the air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

A shadow fell over him. He turned, and there stood his wife. Her face, usually so warm and welcoming, was twisted into an expression that was cold, sharp, and terrifying. She didn’t look like the woman who had just served dinner; she looked like a predator that had finally cornered its prey.

She moved closer, leaning in until her breath was cold against his ear. He shivered, his knees nearly buckling as she whispered a single, jagged sentence.

"Don’t tell me you’re still thinking about that brat. Hoppy is gone. Your old life is dead. You aren’t that person from that pathetic town anymore. You belong to me now, to my children and my father’s business."

Her expression intensified, her eyes hard and predatory as she tightened her psychological grip.

"You chose this life. You chose us. Now, wipe your face and go back out there. Don’t you ever bring up that brat in this house again. If the children see you like this, I’ll remind you exactly how miserable your life was before I saved you."

Maddy watched the merchant’s shoulders slump, his spirit finally breaking under the weight of his wife’s threat. He wasn’t just a liar; he was a prisoner in a gilded cage. For a split second, Maddy felt a flicker of pity, but it was quickly swallowed by a cold, sharp disgust.

"So that’s it..."

She thought, her eyes narrowing as she watched the man wipe his face with a trembling hand.

"He traded his own blood for a soft bed and a full stomach... but it’s all a fake family. He was a coward, and this bitch was pulling the strings."

She realized now that he was trapped, but it was no excuse. Even as a prisoner of this woman’s ambition, he could have done something. And then she realized that Hoppy hadn’t even set foot inside this house. She hadn’t been locked away; she had been rejected at the very threshold.

A sharp, jagged memory hit Maddy. She remembered the day Drakovitch first brought her to his home. The expression on his mother’s face back then was identical to the one this woman wore now, a look of pure, cold disgust for something she considered beneath her.

"She didn’t even get inside..."

Maddy whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of rage and recognition. She saw herself in Hoppy. She knew exactly what it felt like to be humiliated and cast out, to have the door slammed on your soul before you could even plead for mercy.

She knew the blind, suffocating urge to run until your lungs burned, heading anywhere that was far away from the light of a home that didn’t want you.

Maddy turned away from the house, her decision instant. She didn’t need to track footprints or follow a scent. She followed the ghost of her own past. She knew exactly where a broken girl would go when the world told her she was nothing.

She broke into a sprint, her cloak snapping in the wind. She wasn’t just searching for a child anymore; she was racing to save the version of herself that had once been left to rot in the dark.

Her boots hammered against the cobblestones. She knew how this felt. A child shattered by that kind of rejection wouldn’t run toward the light or seek out a crowd. They would want to disappear. They would look for a place where the shadows were deep enough to swallow their cries.

She sprinted past the guild tavern, which had roared back to life with drunken laughter and the clinking of mugs. The noise was an insult. Maddy pushed her sensory traits to their absolute limit, her vision sharpening and her ears picking up every heartbeat within a three-block radius.

Seismic Dominion, Sensory Roots, Prey Detection, Blood Scent Detection and her Thermal Senses surged. She filtered out the heavy footsteps of guards and the bloated heat signatures of drunkards. She was looking for something small—a faint, trembling warmth.

"Where is she... where is she?"

Maddy mumbled, her voice tight with a rising panic she hadn’t felt in years.

"Hoppy, where are you?"