While Jonah and Vanessa were lost the archive room, struggling with an impossible blueprint, the war reached home.

The first victim was a man named General Madsen. He was one of Ironwood's most trusted strategists, a key mind in the new war council. He was found in his study, a room on the top floor of a secure military building.

The room was locked from the inside. The windows were sealed. The advanced security system had not been triggered.

He was just... dead. There were no wounds. No signs of a struggle. The coroner's report was just filled with confused theories: a sudden heart attack, a rare brain aneurysm.

Seraph and Draven stood in the study. The body had already been removed, but the cold feeling of death still hung in the air. The room was exactly as it had been found, a locked-room mystery.

"I don't like this," Draven rumbled. He scanned the walls, the windows, looking for any sign of forced entry. He found nothing. "It's too clean."

"That's what makes it terrifying," Seraph said, her voice low. She wasn't looking at the walls. She was looking at the clear spots, the paths her eyes could follow. "A professional job. A ghost"

Draven grunted in frustration. He was a man of action, of shields and swords. This kind of tricky puzzle made him feel very uncomfortable. "So what do we do? We can't hit a ghost?"

"We look for its shadow," Seraph said. She took out a special scanner, a gift from Vanessa. It was designed to detect faint traces of runic energy. She began to move it around the room, slowly and carefully.

She looked for almost an hour and found nothing. The room was clean. Then, just as she was about to give up, the scanner let out a beep.

It was on the floor, right behind the General's empty chair. A spot no one would have thought to look.

"Got something," she whispered.

Draven stood close behind her, looking over her shoulder. On the scanner's screen was a faint energy signature. It was a spinning pattern, unlike any magic she had ever seen.

"What is that?" Draven asked.

"I don't know," Seraph admitted, her eyes narrowing as she saved the data. "But it's the only thing in this room that shouldn't be here."

_________________________________________________

Two days later, the ghost attacked again.

The target was one of the Headmaster's political allies, an old councilwoman who was helping to keep the Sterling Syndicate's influence at bay. The attack happened in her home, another secure building, with no signs of forced entry.

But this time, the victim barely survived.

Seraph and Draven found her in the infirmary, looking pale and shaking. A group of healers were working to calm her broken nerves.

"It... it was a shadow," the old woman whispered, her voice thin and shaky with fear. She was a strong, powerful woman who had stood up to generals and corporate sharks, but whatever she had seen had broken her spirit.

"What do you mean, a shadow?" Seraph asked gently.

"It came out of the corner of the room," she explained, her eyes wide with the memory. "There was nothing there, and then... there was. It was a beast. A panther made of darkness. It just... walked through the wall."

She shivered, pulling her blanket closer around her. "It moved so fast. I didn't even have time to scream. It was on me, and then... a woman was standing over me. She was dressed in black. She had the coldest eyes I've ever seen. She just looked at me, and then they were both gone. They vanished. Like they were never there at all."

A shadow that walked through walls.

_____________________________________________

Back in the War Room, the pieces of the mystery suddenly made sense, in a very scary way.

Seraph stood in front of the holographic table, showing her findings. On one side was the strange energy signature from the General's murder scene. On the other was a sketch of a panther-like creature, based on the councilwoman's eyewitness account.

"A locked room. No forced entry. A creature made of shadow that can walk through walls," Seraph said, her voice serious.

Jonah, who had been pulled away from his work on the impossible blueprint, stared at the sketch. He had seen that creature before.

"It's her," he said, his voice a low whisper. "Silas. The Syndicate's Weaver."

Vanessa quickly pulled up the data they had on Silas's Progeny from the fight at the gala. She compared its energy signature with the one Seraph had found.

It was a perfect match.

The room became quiet. The truth was suddenly very clear and scary.

"Sterling isn't waiting for the Damocles weapon to be finished," General Ironwood growled, his voice a deep, rumbling sound. "He's already started his attack. It's a plan to kill certain people. He's trying to cut the head off our alliance before we can even act."

The war had a new front. It was no longer a distant threat in a secret lab or a superweapon in the sky. It was here. A deadly war of assassins, being fought in their own cities, in the safety of their own homes.

"Silas is not just a warrior," the Headmaster said, his face looking serious. "She is a ghost. Her Progeny are designed for infiltration and killing. She can go anywhere. Get to anyone."

The problem seemed impossible. How do you stop an enemy who can walk through walls? How do you fight a ghost?

Seraph and Draven looked at each other. They didn't have the answer. But they knew it was their job to find one.

"She left a trace," Seraph said, her voice now very strong and serious. "It was weak. She's not a real ghost. She's just a person with a powerful tool. And we can hunt her."

Draven nodded, cracking his knuckles. "We're not afraid of the dark," he said, with a tough smile on his face.

The mission was clear. While Jonah and Vanessa worked to build a weapon that could save the world, Seraph and Draven had a more urgent job.

They were ghost hunters. And their hunt had just begun.

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