“Begin the hunt.”
The entire room fell silent for half a beat.
No surprise. No outcry.
Because they all knew—
this order had long been waiting,
only held back by the question:
When do we stop hesitating?
I had given them that moment.
After the adjutant’s name was erased from the records,
reports came flooding in.
Some said they saw her in a non-regulation cloak near the forest edge.
Some claimed she was drawing circles by the old dock.
One said she broke into an abandoned warehouse and left with only a data crystal—took nothing else.
I read every report.
Some were true.
Some were lies.
Some full of detail, some clearly deranged.
But I didn’t scold them.
Because I understood—
The hunt is never about discovering the truth.
It’s about erasing ambiguity.
Human order is not built by filling in gaps.
It is built by removing them.
I drafted the capture plan myself.
Lock down the southern woods.
Sweep 37 suspected shelters.
Deploy five full squads, each equipped with Purge Confirmation Devices.
Alchemists to monitor at all times.
I specified two rules:
- No verbal contact during any stage.
- Upon identification—execute immediately.
Before departure, the alchemist asked:
“What if she still looks human?”
I said:
“Then she must be purged even more.”
He paused, then said:
“I’ll record wave data. Ensure the conclusion has support.”
I replied:
“The human reaction is the clearest evidence.”
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The hunt began before dawn.
The soldiers dressed in silence.
No speeches.
No sendoff.
They knew—this wasn’t an exercise.
It wasn’t even a campaign.
It was a correction.
The final deletion of a wrong coordinate from the world.
No drums.
No prayers.
Only boots on wet stone.
I stood at the city gate, watching them depart.
I didn’t look up.
This wasn’t a farewell.
It was just another function of order.
No results on Day Two.
Range expanded by Day Three.
On Day Five, a squad found traces under the old bridge.
She had been there.
The signs were small:
half-eaten ration bread, a torn blanket, a folded sheet of paper.
No words.
Just a single line,
drawn from the bridge toward the distant mountains.
Clean, deliberate. No emotion in the stroke.
It was like she wanted to say:
“This is where I’m going.”
The alchemist asked,
“Do you think she wants us to follow her?”
I didn’t reply.
I just burned the paper.
On the way back, a young soldier asked me:
“Commander… do you really believe she changed?”
I said:
“You’re still asking that?”
He hesitated.
“No… I just wanted to make sure we’re not making a mistake.”
I stopped and looked at him.
“You think the hunt is to decide if she’s the enemy?”
“No. The hunt is to confirm that she’s no longer one of us.”
“Whether she’s an enemy?
We don’t need to know.”
“Whether she’s still one of us?
We already know.”
He said, “Yes, sir.”
I watched him walk away.
His back flickered in torchlight.
And for a moment, I thought—
He looked just like her.
But I didn’t say it out loud.
The hunt lasted seven days.
Every report said the same:
No contact.
No target.
One weak signal—insufficient.
No battles.
No captures.
No body.
Just a spreading silence in the air—
like the whole city knew something was dying quietly.
But no one could name what.
Her?
Us?
Or this unspoken past that clings to us?
I wrote a final note on the last report page:
“The target has no path left.”