Chapter 271: A ghost

Nerissa nodded confidently. "We have a highly advanced, encrypted facial-recognition program linked directly to the High Court’s national registry. Even if you only have a rough sketch or an incomplete rendering, the software can run a comparative biometric sweep to yield accurate results."

A sharp glint flashed in Kieran’s blue eyes. This was his absolute best chance at finding an answer. He was utterly convinced he had seen the drawn face somewhere before, and he couldn’t rest until he uncovered the truth.

"Lead the way," Kieran commanded softly.

"Right this way," Nerissa said, guiding him down a narrow side passage into a private, high-tech terminal room.

She pulled out a chair before a high-resolution terminal, launched the military-grade software, and demonstrated how to calibrate the optical scanner. "Once you place the document on the scanning bed, hit ’execute sweep.’ It will cross-reference the features against both active and archived citizens. I’ll step out to give you absolute privacy, Lord Kieran."

"Thank you, Nerissa," Kieran said politely.

Nerissa offered a respectful bow and stepped out of the office, pulling the frosted glass door shut.

Left alone in the quiet room, Kieran reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out the folded, high-grade sketch paper he had torn from Yuki’s personal notebook. He unfolded the sheet carefully, smoothing out the edges before placing it face-down onto the glowing glass bed of the scanner.

He sat back in the ergonomic leather chair, pressing the execution command.

Though he tried to maintain clinical detachment, his pulse subtly quickened as he stared at the screen. He couldn’t stop thinking about this incomplete sketch. It felt as though a critical, long-buried piece of memory was dangling right in front of his eyes, just out of reach.

The software scanned the charcoal strokes, rapidly mapping the eye-distance, nasal bridge ratio, and cheekbone angles. The loading bar moved smoothly across the screen: 20%... 50%... 85%... 100%.

BEEP.

The system chimed, displaying a bold notification across the dark interface:

0 DIRECT MATCHES FOUND.

2 PHYSICAL SIMILARITY PERCENTAGES DETECTED.

Kieran’s dark eyebrows pulled together as he clicked on the comparative breakdown.

Aevia Donovan (Current Luna, Immigrant Record) — 50% Feature Similarity.

Yuki Ravencourt, née Donovan (Adopted Noble) — 30% Feature Similarity.

A heavy, hollow wave of disappointment washed over Kieran’s chest.

Is that all? he thought, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. Was this drawn face simply familiar to him because it shared striking, structural traits with Aevia? Had Yuki simply spent her free time drawing a fantastical male version of her own sister?

Kieran narrowed his eyes, magnifying the scanned sketch and placing it side-by-side with Aevia’s official high-court portrait.

On first glance, the structural resemblance was undeniable. The elegant slope of the nose and the almond shape of the eyes were remarkably similar. But the longer Kieran stared at the side-by-side comparison, the more the subtle differences stood out. The jawline was far sharper, the brow ridge significantly deeper, and the spacing between the eyes carried a harsh, predatory edge that Aevia’s soft features completely lacked.

It was the exact same phenomenon seen between him and Kaden: at a quick glance, people often mistook them for identical twins because of their shared Ravencourt framework, but upon closer inspection, their bone structures were vastly different. It was similar to how Xavier Velmore and Kaden shared a strikingly similar broad silhouette despite belonging to entirely different bloodlines.

Kieran let out a low, frustrated groan, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Am I really just overthinking a silly adolescent drawing?

"Lord Kieran?"

Nerissa’s soft voice cut through his thoughts. She was standing at the open door, carrying a steaming mug of fresh black coffee. "Do you need any help? I heard the terminal chime."

Kieran sat back, gesturing toward the screen. "The system couldn’t identify a direct match."

Nerissa’s brows furrowed in mild curiosity. She stepped into the room, setting the coffee mug down on the edge of the desk. "Zero matches? That’s odd. Even completely unrelated citizens usually generate a low-percentage flag for shared physical traits. It’s like how Xavier Velmore occasionally flags a twenty-percent structural match with Lord Kaden because of their shared shoulder-to-hip ratio."

Kieran pointed to the monitor. "It flagged two partial matches. Come take a look."

Nerissa leaned over the desk, her eyes scanning the high-definition monitor. The second her gaze landed on the zoomed-in sketch, her breath caught, and her lips parted in genuine awe.

"Goddess above... he is absolutely gorgeous," she blurted out instinctively, taking a quick sip of her coffee to compose herself. She let out a small, sheepish chuckle. "Honestly, I’m not even stunned that Luna Aevia was flagged as a fifty-percent match. Look at those cheekbones!"

Kieran’s lips twitched with mild amusement, but his tone remained dead serious. "Enough jokes, Nerissa. Do you have any actual idea who this could be?"

Nerissa stopped smiling, her expression turning thoughtful as her eyes lingered on the drawn face. "Well... it sounds entirely crazy," she admitted softly, her brows knotting together.

Kieran narrowed his eyes. "How crazy?"

Nerissa turned her head, looking at him with a hesitant glint in her dark eyes. "Have you ever heard the court rumours regarding Luna Aevia? The noble ladies calling her face so strikingly ethereal that she could compete with the Goddess Nyxoria herself?"

Kieran’s frown deepened. "What does an ancient mythological Goddess have to do with a charcoal sketch?"

Nerissa stepped closer, her voice dropping into an earnest, hushed whisper. "Lord Kieran... this sketch looks unsettlingly familiar to me. It reminds me of an old, restricted text preserved inside the innermost Alpha vault."

Kieran let out a low, humorless chuckle. "Are you honestly suggesting that the answer to a modern sketchbook mystery lies inside an ancient religious text about the Moon Goddess?"

"I told you it sounded completely crazy!" Nerissa admitted defensively, her hands coming up. "But hear me out. When I was a little girl, my grandfather brought me into the inner vault during the Grand Lunar Solstice ritual under the Alpha’s presence. He showed me a sacred manuscript written centuries ago by the High Grand Priestess Vespera, a priestess who allegedly suffered a near-death trance and transcended into the higher realms, the Everdusk, the great realm in-between, and the afterlife where she claimed to have witnessed the divine entities firsthand."

Nerissa pointed a manicured finger directly at the terminal screen. "Every single historical statue and holy painting of Nyxoria in our temples is based entirely on the illustrations contained within that specific manuscript. But Nyxoria wasn’t the only entity Priestess Vespera sketched in her journal, Lord Kieran. She drew the guardians and the ancient beings residing on the other side, the side the living cannot cross."

She leaned over the desk, her tone turning deeply analytical. "Think about it logically, Lord Kieran. Isn’t it terrifyingly suspicious that our national military database, a software that contains biometric mapping for every registered shifter, non-shifter, noble, and commoner born across the entire continent over the past hundred and fifty years, cannot find a single record for this man?"

Nerissa raised two fingers. "There are only two reasons a military database yields an absolute zero result. Either the person possesses supreme, classified security protection where their identity is completely erased from public registers, a protocol reserved exclusively for high-tier royal bloodlines, or the person is a ghost who existed long before the census was ever created. Someone who was never entered into the system to begin with."

Kieran’s gaze darkened significantly, a cold, heavy chill settling deep in his chest as he stared at the drawn violet-eyed male on the screen.

His sharp medical intuition screamed at him that this was no ghost.