The smile lingered for a moment longer before he let it go.
His fingers loosened, and the card smoothly vanished, folding itself away into his storage space. One second it was there, and the next the space between his fingers was empty, and his hand came to rest on his chest.
His eyes stayed on the ceiling.
'Helping the guild with Tara's case,' he thought, his mind turning the idea over slowly, 'that'll count as my first mission for them.'
It was a clean way to start. No manufactured task, no contrived assignment handed down through bureaucratic channels — a real situation, already in motion, already demanding a resolution.
Yuan hadn't framed it that way explicitly, but the logic was obvious. He was already involved. He already knew more about the shadow element than anyone else in the guild did. Pulling him into the investigation wasn't just convenient — it was the only thing that made sense.
And the thing was, he would have been pursuing it regardless.
