The quiet rustle of the ancient oak tree's leaves was the only sound breaking the twilight calm of the 4th District courtyard. I sat back on the old wooden bench, tucked entirely within the thick, protective shadow cast by the canopy. This was my usual spot in the military sector… the only bench perfectly shielded from the burning rays of the sun, allowing a half-vampire like me to sit in peace without my alabaster skin blistering.
I flipped open the wax-sealed folder Sydney had given me, my single crimson right eye narrowing behind my bone mask as I scanned the faded parchment of the Flower family tree.
The first page displayed an official sketch of the S-rank flesh-merchant. Laulif Flower was a striking, silver-haired man with piercing, aristocratic blue eyes. According to the Bureau's records, he was born and raised in Town Allure… the very same rural hometown where I had been born, and the exact place where an archer's stray arrow had violently gouged out my left eye months ago.
But as I turned the page to look at his marital and ancestral ties, the ink on the paper made my breath hitch behind Leech's Hollow.
The record stated that Laulif had a wife named Snow Flower… the gentle, incredibly kind lady who owned the sprawling vineyards in Town Allure and had served as the previous, beloved ruler of our hometown. But the true, electric shock came when my eyes drifted down to the biological lineage section.
Years ago, Laulif had completely abandoned his family, abandoning his wealth, his position, and his own flesh and blood to build the Bloom Syndicate in the dark. Left behind in that abandonment was his biological daughter.
White Flower.
My fingers tightened against the parchment, nearly tearing the edges. White Flower… the silver-haired leader of the Yellow Flower Guild, the powerful Light Magic knight who had taken me in when I was lost, and the woman who had trusted me enough to name me her vice-leader. She was one of the few genuine friends I had ever possessed in this cruel world, a comrade who had bled beside me before the tragedies stripped away my human form and left me as the Crimson Phantom.
The dramatic irony of the cosmos didn't just tickle my dark sense of humor; it practically suffocated me.
Right now, back in the remnants of our hometown or within her guildhall, White Flower was living under the absolute assumption that her close friend, Eirene Rynd, had died tragically back during the bloody siege of Town Allure. She had no idea that I had survived, that I had been remade into a half-vampire, or that I was currently pregnant with the lineage of the heretic commander Cameron Gal.
And now, the final S-rank target on my ledger… the monstrous human trafficker I had sworn to hunt down to secure my child's future and fund my retirement… was my best friend's deadbeat, criminal father.
I leaned my head back against the sturdy trunk of the oak tree, a cold, cynical smirk spreading across my lips beneath my mask. To protect my baby and vanish into the shadows before the Bureau's three-month summoning ritual ignited, I had to execute Laulif Flower. But knowing he was the man who broke my closest ally's family made this final crusade intensely personal. I folded the records shut, slid them into my trench coat, and stared out into the darkening sky.
The revelation sat heavily in my chest, a cold, hard knot of conflicting loyalties and brutal tactical reality. Before I could even begin to construct an infiltration plan for the coastal docks of the Bloom Syndicate, let alone navigate the highly illegal transit pathways into the forbidden demi-human territories of the Milky Way Continent, I had to find White Flower. Hunting down an S-rank sovereign of the subterranean flesh trade was dangerous enough; doing so while entirely blind to his daughter's current status and proximity to his criminal empire was a liability I couldn't afford.
The geographical landscape of the Andromeda Continent stretched out in my mind like a fractured mosaic of human strongholds, each a potential hiding place for a displaced knight trying to rebuild her life. My first thought naturally gravitated toward our roots. Town Allure, with its sweeping hillsides and once-bountiful vineyards, had been entirely broken by war. White Flower's ancestral home, the proud estate that had once stood as a beacon of leadership for our people, had been systematically burned down to ash and charred timber during the devastating siege that cost me my left eye. The gentle lady Snow Flower's legacy had been choked out by smoke.
While a part of me wondered if White Flower had stubbornly clung to the ruins, trying to cultivate the scorched soil of our hometown out of pure defiance, my pragmatic instincts told me otherwise. She was a survivor, a leader. She would have started somewhere new, establishing a fresh stronghold for the remnants of her guild. But "somewhere new" in Andromeda was a vast, daunting equation.
She could be right here in Caria, embedded deep within the lower districts or operating out of a hidden manor in the Merchant sectors. She could have traveled far to the west to Sisiphon City, the sprawling, labyrinthine metropolis known for its cutthroat politics and mercenary contracts, a perfect place for an independent guild to find high-paying security work. She might have migrated to Lulu City, the coastal trading hub where the wealth of the inland provinces converged, or even established a remote tactical outpost in the rugged, militarized border territories of the Town of Carcaka.
I couldn't waste my remaining month of active retirement blindly chasing rumors across the continent. My pregnancy was operating on an accelerated, volatile two-month demonic cycle; my internal reserves were already being heavily taxed to stabilize the baby's rapidly developing organs. I didn't have the time or the physical stamina to wander from province to province. I needed a precise location, and I needed it immediately.
I pushed myself off the old wooden bench, leaving the protective, deep shadow of the ancient oak tree behind. The twilight had fully deepened into night, the ambient mana streetlamps of the 4th District casting long, geometric shadows across the cobblestones as I adjusted the heavy collar of my crimson trench coat. To find a high-ranking Light Magic knight and guild leader like White Flower, I had to re-enter the central information network. The local registries might have been sparse on Laulif's current cross-continental smuggling routes, but the Bureau maintained meticulous tracking records on every legally registered guild master and high-tier human vanguard within Andromeda's borders.
I marched back across the militarized courtyard of The Bastion, my boots clicking with grim purpose. I was walking straight back into the Luminous Knight Bureau Association, a half-vampire phantom determined to exploit the human archive systems one last time to locate the silver-haired friend who believed I was nothing but a ghost.
The heavy oak doors of the Luminous Knight Bureau Association parted for me once more, the rowdy shouting of the late-night vanguards washing over my calcified bone mask like white noise. I paid them no mind. While walking through the dimly lit streets of the 4th District, I had already taken out my notepad and pre-prepared a concise, direct query with my charcoal pencil, keeping my movements hidden beneath the folds of my crimson trench coat.
I stepped up to the marble registry desk, my single, deep-crimson right eye locking onto Sydney Popov. The elite registrar looked up from her ledger, a knowing, slightly grim expression crossing her features as she adjusted her glasses.
"Eirene, you returned, connecting the dots already?" Sydney said softly, leaning over the counter so her voice wouldn't carry.
Without a sound, I slid the pre-prepared note across the cold stone. It bore a single, striking name written in sharp, heavy strokes:
White Flower.
Sydney's eyes darted down to the parchment, and a flicker of profound realization crossed her face. She let out a slow, heavy sigh.
"Yes... the daughter of the leader of the Bloom Syndicate. I figured you'd look into her once you read those ancestral records."
She leaned in closer, her voice dropping into a tight whisper.
"She actually moved out of Town Allure and came right here to Caria a few months ago after their family manor was burned to ashes during the raids. She's been trying to rebuild her guild from the ground up."
Sydney reached into a separate, local registry drawer, pulling out a small, folded slip of parchment containing the Bureau's active residential logs for high-ranking local vanguards. She discreetly slipped the file across the counter toward me.
"Here are the files. She lives nearby, right within the city lines."
I snatched the parchment with my pale, alabaster right hand, quickly sliding it into the pocket of my trench coat. I gave Sydney a brief, grateful nod of my mask… a silent 'thank you' from a phantom who usually left nothing but bodies behind… and turned sharply on my heel.
I pushed through the exit doors, leaving the rowdy atmosphere of the Bureau behind. Standing out in the cool, crisp night air of the 4th District, my hand instinctively drifted down to rest over my stomach, where Cameron's child was growing in secret. The hunt for the S-rank flesh-merchant was officially underway, and the first step of my final mission was waiting for me just a few blocks away.