Three days had passed since the fight.

The ring had been dismantled, the souls had calmed down.

Lug had ordered a swing the day after the fight, which arrived two days later.

The delivery man didn't understand the reason for the order, but he didn't ask questions.

Once the swing was installed, the Valmont children spent their time playing with it.

From a chance encounter with an unnamed ghost on the way back from the city to the installation of a swing at Valmont.

Sometimes life sees funny connections form.

Lug had been pensive since the fight.

His encounter with Xam had left him with an unpleasant feeling.

He felt weak, shy, not very interesting, ugly.

It was not new, Lug had never had a good image of himself, but it was the first that it was a problem for him.

Maybe before he saw Xam again, he didn't believe in change.

Maybe he had accepted that this failed image he had attached to himself was all he would ever know.

Whatever the case, Lug was now looking to evolve, he was finally ready to leave his old self behind.

One morning he woke up with a clear mind: He was going to act for a change.

As he left his house after having had his breakfast, he went to see Eno.

"Hi Eno, I've been thinking about it and I want to become a better person, what should I do about it?" asked Lug.

Eno who was leaning against the wall of the house looked taken aback.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Become a better person? But you're already a great person, you don't need more!" said Eno.

"That's nice, but I really want to change."

Eno understood that the subject was serious, so he beckoned Lug to follow him, they walked to his grave, he bent down and with his hands took a big book.

"I always leave it here, my mother always told me that you don't take the sacred anywhere!"

He had a big Bible in his hands.

Lug often forgot it because Eno was discreet, but he was a Christian.

"Oooh... No thanks, I was asking you for your opinion, not to go and find the answer in a book!" said Lug, waving his hands in refusal.

Eno put the Bible against him and said:

"I understand. But let me give you some advice. You have to die so you can be born again."

Lug looked abashed.

"Die? That sounds a bit harsh for advice, but thanks. I'll try to remember that."

Lug left and walked aimlessly towards his house.

He was pensive, wondering how Xam had managed to change so quickly.

It was futile to compare himself to a ghost whose form was much more free and adaptable to change.

But Lug did so out of ignorance, or a willingness to suffer from an unfair comparison.

"Pain! The commander must have given him a hard time with hard training! I need some hard trials of my own."

Lug had come to the hardest possible conclusion: make himself suffer.

He took his trusty bucket of water and sponge and then headed for the forbidden area.

Primont.

As soon as he arrived near this cursed district, he began to feel a threatening aura, the plants were not growing around.

There was nothing, not even a single ghost near there.

Primont was the only completely walled-in neighborhood.

The wall was quite high, about six feet high, so there was no possibility to see over it.

A gate that no longer closed kept this ghost prison separate from the rest of the cemetery.

Once inside, Lug had just enough time to see the desolation of the area before he was stabbed in the stomach.

All Lug felt at that moment was a great pain in his stomach and a hand holding his neck.

A rather small, bald ghost with several missing teeth had been waiting for him at the entrance and had attacked as soon as Lug had stepped inside.

The ghost laughed as it twisted the knife in the belly of its victim.

Lug threw his bucket of water in the air which surprised the ghost, he then extricated himself in extremis from the pincers in which he was and ran away from Primont.

Lug didn't stop running until he closed the door of his house behind him.

Nothing had prepared him for this.

Everything he had felt in Primont was violence.

He felt no pain where the knife had gone in and no marks remained.

He understood something : the ghosts couldn't hurt him physically, but he still felt the pain as if it came from a real attack.

That day Lug decided never to return to Primont.

He learned a lesson: There are some things you can't change.

Whether this referred to him or to the neighborhood he had just fled, no one knew.