The sheer, overwhelming relief of his words washed over me, completely breaking the last lines of my stoic defenses. The burden of the 18 million gold bounty, the tattered phantom cloak, and the terrifying secrets I had carried alone for months were finally lifted from my shoulders.
I buried my face back into the plush throw pillow, fresh tears spilling over my eyelashes and soaking into the fabric as I let out a long, shaky, weeping sob. But this time, the tears weren't born from fear or trauma… they were the tears of a little sister who had finally been found.
Elias didn't hesitate this time. He sank onto the edge of the sofa right beside us, his large, heavy hand resting securely on my shoulder, while Elicia kept her arm wrapped tightly around my waist. Together, my older siblings began rhythmically, gently patting my back in perfect unison, their combined warmth creating an impenetrable sanctuary in the dim living room.
"Let it all out, little Ren, You've been strong for far too long. Big sister and big brother are here now. We've got you."
"You did good, Weird Eyes, You saved us. Now it's our turn to protect you and this little guy. You're safe."
For a few minutes, the only sound in House 132 was the quiet, rhythmic sound of my sobbing fading into peaceful, exhausted breathing. The heavy, dark static of our family's history finally felt like it was settling into a calm twilight.
GROOOOOOOOWL.
A sudden, incredibly loud, and deep gurgle violently erupted from my midsection, echoing sharply through the quiet room.
I froze mid-breath, my face heating up with a sudden flush of deep embarrassment. My hands instinctively dropped from the pillow to press flat against my stomach beneath my white dress. The rapid, accelerated pregnancy was completely unforgiving; the emotional breakdown had burned through my remaining energy reserves, and my body was instantly demanding food.
Elicia blinked, breaking into a soft, amused chuckle as she rubbed my side.
"Well, it sounds like the baby needs nutrients immediately. All that crying must have made my little nephew starving."
Elias nodded seriously, his eyes scanning the immediate area for anything edible to help his little sister. His gaze locked onto the small porcelain bowl resting right on the coffee table.
"Here, eat these, They're right here on the table."
Elias said dynamically, pointing straight at the small cluster of clean, glistening roasted nuts sitting inside the bowl. This is infact, without a doubt, The very same nuts that I had meticulously sucked all the dark chocolate off of just minutes prior.
The moment Elias pointed at them, Elicia's eyes locked onto the bowl. A sudden, vivid flash of memory hit her… the realization of exactly why those nuts were so perfectly bare, the image of me laughing deadpan, and the taste of the spit-out snack she had been forced to eject from her mouth earlier.
Elicia's comforting, maternal expression vanished in a fraction of a second. She slowly turned her head, her crimson eyes narrowing into a sharp, deeply unamused glare as she looked at the bowl, and then directly at me.
"Elias, absolutely not," Elicia said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, warning register as she pointed a finger at the porcelain dish. "Do not let her eat those. You have no idea where those nuts have been."
Elias blinked in utter confusion, his hand pausing mid-air as he looked between the bowl of perfectly clean, shiny nuts and Elicia's suddenly furious expression.
"What do you mean, where they've been? They're just roasted nuts. They're full of healthy fats and protein, exactly what a pregnant Phase 5 needs to stabilize her core. Why are you looking at them like they're toxic waste?"
I kept my face half-buried in the pillow, but a small, involuntary twitch of my lips betrayed me. My mismatched jade-green and crimson eyes darted toward the bowl, then back to my older brother's completely clueless face. The heavy, emotional atmosphere from just a moment ago was instantly replaced by a wave of ridiculous sibling tension.
"Because, Elias, your precious little hero of Caria over here decided to satisfy her pregnancy sugar cravings by popping the chocolate-covered nuts into her mouth, meticulously sucking off every single molecule of dark cacao, and spitting the bare nuts right back into that bowl." Elicia said, her voice dripping with a mix of lingering disgust and big-sister indignation as she cross-armed her chest,
Elias froze. He stared at the glistening nuts in the bowl. Then he slowly turned his head to look at me.
"You... you sucked the chocolate off and put them back?" Elias muttered, his voice a mix of sheer disbelief and absolute horror.
"I didn't want to make an annoying crunching sound in the quiet house, It was the most efficient way to extract the glucose without destroying my dental alignment on the hard shells." I explained in my flat, deadpan register, pulling the throw pillow up to cover the lower half of my face.
"She fed them to me, Elias! She sat there with that blank, innocent face of hers and told me they were all mine! I chewed them! I actually chewed them before she started laughing at me!" Elicia burst out, throwing her hands up in the air as her face flushed a furious pink.
Elias stared at the two of us for a long, silent three seconds. The fearsome, legendary Shadow Walker, the man who had just vowed to rewrite royal archives and shield an S-rank secret from the Crown, slowly let out a massive, exhausted sigh. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his leather glove, a quiet, rumbling chuckle vibrating in his chest before it broke out into a full, booming laugh that echoed through the curtained living room.
"Unbelievable, Twelve years in the dark, a evolution, an S-rank bounty on her head, and she's still pulling the exact same disgusting pranks she did when we were kids in Allure."
"It's not funny, Elias! She's corrupting my immaculate hygiene!"
Elicia huffed, though the sharp, affectionate smile returning to the corners of her eyes showed she wasn't truly angry anymore. She reached out and lightly flicked the tip of my left blood wing, making me give a small, sensitive jolt on the cushions.
"You are an absolute brat, Eirene."
"The baby demanded sugar," I repeated defensively, my voice muffled by the pillow as my stomach gave another loud, demanding gurgle.
"Alright, alright, No pre-sucked nuts for the future heir of Caria. I'll go raid the kitchen and see what actual, untouched food Alta left in the pantry. Elicia, keep an eye on her before she tries to trick us into eating anything else."
Elias said, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye as he stood up from the floorboards, his heavy duster coat swaying. He reached down and scooped up the porcelain bowl, walking it over to the kitchen trash bin.
"Oh, believe me, I am watching her like a hawk," Elicia murmured, pulling me back into a warm, secure side-hug as the bright, comforting sounds of a real home finally filled the spaces of House 132.
The swinging kitchen door clicked shut behind Elicia as she headed down the hall to fetch a fresh basin of water and some clean towels, leaving only Elias and me in the quiet twilight of the living room.
The abrupt transition from the chaotic, three-way sibling bickering to absolute silence made the air feel heavy again. Elias stood near the kitchen counter, having just tossed the controversial bowl of nuts into the sink. He leaned his tall frame against the wooden counter, his heavy leather duster open, exposing the metallic glint of his revolver. He didn't look at me like an operative anymore. He just looked at me with a quiet, observant intensity, his dark eyes tracing the way my massive crimson blood wings rested limply against the sofa cushions.
I sat there, my newly regenerated left hand still resting protectively over my flat, rumbling stomach beneath my white dress. The deadpan register I usually used to shield myself felt entirely useless against him now.
"You're really warm, Weird Eyes,"
Elias said softly, breaking the silence as he walked back over and sat on the low coffee table directly across from me. He didn't try to grab my hands this time; he just leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"When I touched your hands earlier... it surprised me. I thought... well, after everything I heard about the Crimson Phantom, I expected you to feel cold. Like a corpse."
"My core operates at an accelerated metabolic rate to sustain the child, My human essence is being consumed rapidly. I am not dead, brother. I am just... different."
Elias let out a soft breath, his expression softening into that fierce, protective look that belonged solely to the boy from Allure.
"Different is fine. We can handle different. I just need you to promise me one thing, Eirene."
I shifted slightly, my translucent wing membranes giving a faint, sensitive flutter against the fabric of the couch.
"What?"
"No more vanishing acts, No more masks between us. If you're hungry, if you're hurting, or if that heretic's bloodline starts causing complications... you tell me or Elicia immediately. You don't fight it alone in the dark anymore. Understood?"
The kitchen door remained tightly shut, sealing out the rest of the world and leaving the air between Elias and me thick with the ghosts of the past four months. I looked at my brother… his broad shoulders, his heavy leather duster, the sheer, solid reality of him sitting on the coffee table just inches away. Hearing him ask the exact technical questions about my rapid ascension felt like a bridge snapping back into place, forcing me to connect the weak, frail appraiser I used to be with the feared S-rank predator I had become.
"Well... I got the power from the Blood Curse, And after that cellar in Town Tata, everything I knew about my own limitations was entirely rewritten."
Elias leaned forward, his elbows resting heavily on his knees, his dark eyes locking onto my mismatched jade-green and crimson ones with absolute intensity.
"The Blood Curse? Weird Eyes, the guild and the church appraised that when you were a child. They logged it as a low-tier passive trait… nothing more than an anatomical anomaly that kept you from contracting hemochromatosis if you ingested raw fluids. How does a parlor trick turn you into an entity that can match an elite Luminous Knight squad?"
"Because they were wrong, Everyone was wrong. They thought its sole purpose was just to let me digest blood without getting sick. But since the day I was born, I had been carrying a suffocating, uncontrollable urge deep inside my chest… an insatiable craving that I thought meant I was simply losing my mind. But the day I closed our old family shop in Town Allure and tried to butcher livestock, the scent of the raw meat woke the skill completely."
I lifted my newly regenerated left hand, staring at the flawless white skin before slowly curling it into a fist.
"The millisecond that blood hit my throat, my status screen went completely chaotic. It wasn't a passive trait, Elias. It was an incredibly overpowered, escalating vampiric growth system. Whenever I drink blood, my parameters permanently increase. All of you thought it was just a useless, gross thirst, but the system calculates consumption with escalating returns. +100 Strength, +50 Defense, +100 Mana. The more I devoured, the stronger I became. I wasn't born useless... I was just born with a hunger that needed to be fed."
Elias's breath hitched in his throat. His tactical mind, trained by the highest military orders of Caria, was rapidly calculating the implications of a skill that bypassed traditional level caps through pure consumption.
"A scaling system... fueled by biological consumption. That's why your mana pool exploded during the crisis at Rebelbub Village."
"Yes, I kept feeding it. Hundreds of liters. I unlocked high-tier Blood Manipulation and the Blood Sword in complete secret while the family still thought I was just a common appraiser handling dusty ledgers. But when the taxes from Elicia's academy ledger came knocking via that corrupt bureaucrat Harold, I couldn't stay a shopkeeper. I registered as a Silver-ranked adventurer with the Yellow Flower Guild. For a moment, I had real comrades. We raided the Bronze Coin Guild, we saved a noble's son, and then I fought side-by-side with you at Rebelbub before the necrotic water took my original left arm."
I paused, my breathing catching as the phantom scent of rusted iron and coarse salt seemed to drift through the living room.
"But the Bronze Coin Guild retaliated. They launched a surprise assault on our headquarters and slaughtered the maids. In a fit of blind, unadulterated revenge, I tracked them to Town Tata. I was ambushed by their leadership… Dominik, Lara, and Bernard. They stripped my prosthetic, bound me in magic-suppressing obsidian chains, and tortured me in a dirt cellar for six days. Dominik used rusty shears to cut off my toes and cut out my tongue so I couldn't scream. They shattered my right leg with a sledgehammer and flayed the skin from my limbs while Lara poured coarse salt directly into the raw flesh."
Elias's jaw clenched so hard the bone looked ready to snap, his pitch-black shadow mana violently sparking around his boots for a fraction of a second before he forced it down, refusing to terrify me again.
"They brought me out for a public execution on the sixth day, When they mockingly asked what I wanted for a last meal, I couldn't speak, so I just mouthed the word 'Blood.' Dominik thought it would be a hilarious show, so he had his guards dump a massive barrel of pig's blood directly over my head. But my consumption ledger was sitting at 198 liters out of the 200 required for the next threshold. The moment that fluid drenched my mouth and soaked into my open wounds, the system hit 200/200."
I looked straight into Elias's eyes, letting him see the full, unyielding weight of the entity his little sister had become.
"The Blood Curse triggered my fifth Evolution right there on the scaffold. These massive, leathery wings were born directly from that trauma, forged from the blood and salt of my own torture. The cataclysmic surge of power shattered the obsidian chains. I stood up on legs held together by blood constructs and slaughtered every single one of them. I executed Dominik, and I locked Lara away to rot. But by then, the Bureau had already distributed my official death certificate. Eirene Rynd was dead to the world, and the Crimson Phantom was born."
I rested my hand back over my flat stomach, feeling the tiny, frantic pulse of the heretical life growing inside me.
"I became a bounty hunter because the shadows were the only place that accepted a monster who needed to feed. I targeted the high-level corrupt officials and the Immoral Knights because their blood sustained my core, and their bounties could buy the resources to keep this house… and your squad… entirely safe from the shadows. I didn't want to be a demon, brother. But the cellar didn't leave me with any other choices."
Elias didn't speak for a long time. The heavy leather of his duster coat crinkled slightly as he leaned back, his entire body going completely rigid. The terrifying, precise details of my torture… the rusty shears, the salt, the sledgehammer… hung in the dim light of the room like a suffocating shroud. I could see the muscles in his jaw bunching and relaxing, a brutal, war-trained instinct fighting against the sheer horror of what his little sister had endured while he was celebrating military victories in the capital.
When he finally looked up, his dark eyes weren't filled with fear of the monster sitting before him. They were swimming with a deep, agonizing sorrow.
"Six days, you were rotting in a cellar for six days, and I was filing mission reports in the 8th District. I thought I was a master of tracking shadows, and I couldn't even hear my own sister screaming."
He stood up from the coffee table, his tall frame casting a long shadow across the floorboards. He stepped closer to the couch, but instead of the hesitant, awkward movements from before, his posture was entirely deliberate. He sat down right beside me on the cushion, ignoring the way my crimson wings tensed up, and wrapped his heavy, solid arm completely around my shoulders. He pulled me firmly against his side, burying his hand into my silver hair, holding me with a fierce, crushing grip that felt like it was trying to glue my shattered pieces back together.
"You are not a monster, Eirene, You did what you had to do to survive a hell that would have broken any Luminous Knight I've ever commanded. If a scaling vampiric system is what kept you alive, then I thank the gods for that curse every single day."
I leaned my head against his leather duster, the scent of gunpowder, ozone, and old leather completely enveloping me. The familiar, rhythmic thud of his heartbeat beneath his armor acted like a grounding wire to my chaotic Phase 5 core. My massive wings slowly relaxed, letting their tips rest quietly on the floorboards as my newly regenerated left hand gripped the lapel of his coat.
"The Bureau thinks you're a demon because they only see the blood you leave behind, They don't see the little girl who sat behind a desk for eighteen years reading dusty ledgers just to help our family. They don't see the sister who took a necrotic curse to the bone just to save our hometown's water supply. But I see you, Weird Eyes. I see exactly who you are."
He loosened his grip slightly, pulling back just enough to look down into my mismatched jade-green and crimson eyes. A sudden, cold clarity replaced the sorrow in his gaze… the sharp, tactical mind of the Shadow Walker taking full command of our survival.
"We are rewriting the script today, Let the Bureau keep their official records. The Crimson Phantom died in the dunes, and Eirene Rynd died in Town Tata. From this moment on, you are just a resident of the 3rd District, under the permanent, absolute protection of the Shadow Walker. If your core needs blood to sustain this pregnancy, I will personally hunt the highest-tier magical beasts in the outer sectors and drain them myself. You are never going back to a cellar, and you are never fighting in the dark alone again."
From the hallway, the kitchen door groaned softly as Elicia returned, carrying a steaming basin of water and a clean white cloth. She paused at the edge of the living room, her crimson eyes taking in the sight of her younger siblings finally holding onto each other, the ancient walls of isolation between us completely demolished. A soft, relieved smile touched her lips as she walked over, setting the basin down to finally clean the dust and tears from my face.
Elicia stepped closer with the warm, damp cloth, her touch incredibly tender as she gently wiped away the tear stains, the dust from the desert dunes, and the lingering tension from my pale cheeks. She moved with a practiced, sisterly care, making sure not to irritate the sensitive skin around my temples where my calcified mask used to sit.
"All done, You look like our little Ren again."
Elias stood up from the sofa, the heavy leather of his duster coat swaying as his posture shifted into that of a commanding Luminous Knight captain. The time for crying was over; the tactical window to secure my safety was closing.
"Eirene, Elicia, let's get going, We cannot hide our little sister from the Bureau forever. If we wait too long, their scouts will start cross-referencing the mana trails from the dunes, and Chief Roman will start asking questions I can't administrative-loop away. We go in now, while the iron is hot, and we bury the Crimson Phantom's file for good." Elias said, his voice dropping into a firm, serious register that brooked no delays.
Elicia looked at him, nodding in absolute agreement.
"He's right. The longer we stall, the higher the risk. I'll go change into my formal robes. Give me five minutes."
With a determined stride, Elicia vanished into her bedroom to change her clothes, leaving the room vibrating with a sudden, sharp energy.
I slowly stood up from the plush cushions of the sofa. My legs felt a bit heavy, the rapid, accelerated pregnancy pulling at my stamina, but my core was stable. My massive crimson blood wings gave a quiet, rhythmic flutter before I willed them to compress tight against my back, flattening perfectly beneath the fabric of my white linen dress.
I walked over to the wooden coat rack near the entryway. Reaching up with my newly regenerated, unblemished left hand… a sight that still made a quiet surge of gratitude rise in my chest… I grabbed the tattered, heavy dark traveling cloak that had shielded my identity for months. I shook out the desert dust, the deep hood casting a familiar, protective shadow over my mismatched jade-green and crimson eyes as I draped it over my shoulders. I was walking straight into the lion's den, right back to the Bureau halls where I used to pass my brother as a stranger, but this time, the shadow beside me wasn't an enemy.