Heiress Unmasked: Shaking the World With Geomancy novel Chapter 1996

The reason Morton Grant was known as the "old ghost" was simply because he had been wandering the mortal world long enough.

More than a decade ago—right around the time Levi had just passed—he had been floating around aimlessly, weighed down by a gloomy sort of despair, when he stumbled upon a woman sitting on a bridge, clearly preparing to end her life.

She was holding a single white lily in her hand, her whole demeanor steeped in numbness, like she had long given up on everything.

Maybe it was because he had just seen the streets lined with white lilies at Levi's memorial, but the moment he caught sight of the flower in her hand, he instinctively rushed toward her.

Just as the woman tossed the lily into the river and was about to follow it, a sudden gust of icy wind whipped up from the water.

It was so strong it knocked her backward, sending her tumbling to the ground before she could jump.

She looked around, dazed, but chalked it up to coincidence. Shakily, she got to her feet and began climbing back up toward the railing.

Morton had barely caught his breath when he saw the woman starting to climb back up again. Left with no choice, he drew in a deep breath—as deep as a ghost could—and blew at her again with all the force he could muster.

After the second gust hit her, something seemed to shift. The woman suddenly froze in place, and tears began streaming down her cheeks.

She looked out onto the empty bridge, voice shaking as she choked out. "Is that you?"

The old ghost faintly remembered those words had left her lips.

The old ghost's eyes flew wide open again, his face frozen in disbelief. So, that woman had mistaken him for Levi's ghost back then…

Wait a minute—had she tried to take her own life because Levi had died?

Levi, already reeling at the mention of his sister's suicide attempt, looked visibly shaken. The realization that her pain might've been triggered by his own death struck him like a punch to the chest.

He turned sharply to Shannon, his gaze full of urgency.

Shannon didn't delay, quickly summarizing what she had uncovered about his sister's life, who went by the name Mariam Steele.

"After she ran away from home, she never looked back. At first, she worked odd jobs while trying to find traces of you. But she was nearly trafficked to a remote mountain village.

"Luckily, she was sharp and managed to escape midway but ended up in a place completely unfamiliar to her…"

Mariam had no choice but to keep working, trying to save up enough for the journey home. It was during this time, in that unfamiliar town, that she met another man.