The wind howled past the calcified edges of my Leech's Hollow Mask as I rapidly descended through the heavy violet twilight, the familiar, sweeping contours of the Allure province rising to meet me. Recognizing the extreme tactical danger of my position, I executed a sharp mid-air banking maneuver and touched down heavily on the dirt road a few miles outside the official town borders, kicking up a quiet cloud of dust.
With a practiced mental pull, I compressed my massive, skeletal blood wings tightly back against my spine, letting the fabric of my tattered crimson trench coat drape smoothly over the slits to hide any trace of my monstrous anatomy.
The caution wasn't born out of paranoia; it was basic survival. The news wires had made it entirely clear that the terrifying legend of the Crimson Phantom had spread across the entire length of the Andromeda Continent. If even a single provincial scout, traveling merchant, or local farmer spotted a winged, blood-sucking demon dropping out of the sky, the town would instantly plunge into absolute panic. Faced with a looming 18-gold threat, the local guard would immediately lock down every exit, seal the borders, and trigger the emergency magical beacons to summon the Bureau's elite vanguards and Chief Roman's Capital Knights straight to the scene.
With my pregnancy operating on an accelerated, volatile demonic timeline and my physical reserves heavily taxed, a full-scale military confrontation was a variable I couldn't afford. I needed to act like a ghost.
I adjusted the thick cloth wrap binding the empty socket where my right eye had been violently gouged out years ago, letting my single, piercing human green eye scan the dark treeline. My right hand instinctively checked the strap of my leather purse, ensuring the structural files and the Registry of the Condemned were secure, while my mind mapped the 12 kg of weaponized tear gas resting silently within my spatial inventory ring.
Stepping out from the dense tree cover, I began the long, silent march toward the town on foot. The air here felt drastically different from the opulent, perfume-choked avenues of the Royal Sector or the bustling, militarized courtyards of The Bastion. It smelled of damp soil, wild grapes, and the lingering, ghostly tang of old smoke… a constant reminder of the devastating siege that had permanently fractured my life and reduced White Flower's ancestral home to charred timber.
After an hour of rhythmic, mechanical walking, the silhouette of the perimeter defenses materialized out of the deepening night. I pulled my heavy hood low, stepping deliberately into the dim, flickering light of the torches flanking the entrance. My leather boots crunched softly against the gravel as I finally arrived at the heavy timber structure of the Town Allure gates, ready to navigate the ghosts of my past to reach that confiscated vault.
The gatekeeper standing beneath the flickering torchlight was a local man whose name had completely slipped from my memory… just another face from a lifetime I had left far behind. He adjusted his leather jerkin, holding his hand out over the wooden barrier with a tired, nocturnal sigh.
"Toll, traveler," he mumbled, his voice carrying the slow, rhythmic cadence of the rural provinces.
I didn't answer. Reaching into the inner fold of my tattered crimson trench coat with my pale right hand, I pulled out a single silver coin and dropped it into his palm. The metal clinked softly, but as the gatekeeper reached for his ledger to log the entry, his eyes caught the distinct, calcified contours of the Leech's Hollow Mask, the heavy cloth wrap binding the right side of my face, and the empty, pinned sleeve where my left arm used to be.
He froze, his eyes widening to dinner plates as he stared at me under the amber torchlight.
"Wait… You're... you're that ruthless bounty hunter from the capital. The one from the Caria registries who took down the S-ranks."
The official flyers and news tallies from the Bureau had clearly made their way even to this quiet corner of Andromeda. Because my unique, battle-scarred appearance was so striking, he recognized me instantly from the descriptions… though, like everyone else, he only saw the feared state executioner, completely blind to the fact that the monstrous half-vampire standing before him was a child of this very soil.
I gave him a single, icy nod of my hood. Shaken by my imposing, silent presence, the gatekeeper quickly unlatched the heavy timber beam, and the town gates swung inward with a low, scraping groan.
I stepped through the threshold, drawing in a deep breath of the nostalgic air of Town Allure. It smelled beautifully of wet earth, wild grass, and the faint, sweet fermentation of the surrounding vineyards that the lady Snow Flower had once ruled over. But beneath the natural sweetness was a darker, lingering undercurrent… the ghostly, bitter tang of ash and old timber from the fires that had consumed my youth.
Walking down these dark, familiar dirt roads as a total stranger was an exercise in absolute, unadulterated irony.
Just a few miles away, in the quiet earth of the local cemetery, a stone marker bore my birth name, Eirene Rynd. My silver-haired friend White Flower had stood before that very grave, weeping for a martyred human archer who had died trying to protect our borders. The entire town lived under the peaceful illusion that I was resting beneath the dirt, a tragic casualty of the war.
They had absolutely no idea that their dead hero was currently walking among them as a mute, fang-bearing phantom, carrying the heretical lineage of a demon commander in her womb, and hunting down the missing patriarch of their town's elite family. I pulled my hood lower to shield my single green eye from the occasional lantern light of a distant window, keeping my boots completely silent against the dirt as I navigated the winding paths toward the ruined, state-restricted foundations of our burned estate.
The narrow streets of the merchant district were pitch-black, save for the faint, flickering glow of dying embers from the blacksmiths' furnaces and the cold moonlight reflecting off the shop windows. I moved like a shadow among shadows, my boots making no sound against the packed earth.
When I finally crossed into the central plaza, the massive timber-and-stone facade of the Town Bureau… the local Adventurers Bureau where White Flower and I used to pick up our low-tier subjugation notices… loomed in the dark. Its heavy oak doors were securely locked, the iron lanterns hanging from the eaves dark and lifeless. I glanced toward a mechanical clock tower near the plaza. Midnight. It had been a grueling four-hour trek and flight since I left the high-security gates of Caria.
A sharp, familiar ache pulsed deep within my core, a heavy reminder from my body that I couldn't push myself like a normal human anymore. My pregnancy, operating on that volatile, accelerated two-month demonic cycle, was rapidly draining my internal mana and physical stamina just to stabilize the baby's growing form. I needed to rest, and I needed to do it immediately.
My initial, instinctual thought had been to slip into the Rynd household… my ancestral family home. But I forced my boots to a halt at the edge of the plaza as practicality overrode nostalgia. The Rynd estate wasn't an abandoned ruin like the Flower Manor; the local registry records indicated the property had been re-allocated after my "death." Someone else was living under that roof now, sleeping peacefully in the rooms where I had grown up. If a heavily scarred, mute phantom in a tattered crimson trench coat suddenly broke through the window, the current residents would think a vengeful corpse had crawled out of the local cemetery. The ensuing screams would bring the entire town guard down on my position before I could even break the seals on the confiscated vault.
I turned away from the path leading to my old home, my single green eye scanning the dark perimeter of the plaza until it landed on a faded, creaking wooden sign hanging over a narrow cobblestone alley: The Grapevine Rest. It was a low-profile, secondary inn situated far enough from the main thoroughfare to avoid prying eyes, catering mostly to transient merchants and weary, low-rank vanguards.
Pulling my heavy hood lower over my calcified bone mask to completely hide my exposed fangs and the thick cloth binding my gouged right eye, I walked toward the tavern door. I reached into my leather purse, my pale, translucent fingers brushing past the Registry of the Condemned to count out a few remaining silver pieces for a quiet, back-room bed.
I pushed open the creaking wooden door of The Grapevine Rest, the small bell above the frame letting out a dull, rusty chime that cut through the quiet midnight air. The interior was dimly lit, smelling heavily of aged oak, sour wine, and floor wax.
Behind the worn counter stood a young woman checking a room ledger. When she looked up, my breath caught tightly behind the calcified lines of my Leech's Hollow Mask.
It was Veer. One of my former comrades from the Yellow Flower Guild.
"Greetings, ma'am. Welcome to The Grapevine Rest," Veer said warmly, offering a polite, hospitable smile to the imposing, tattered crimson silhouette standing in her doorway.
The absolute, unadulterated irony of the cosmos was starting to feel like a deliberate insult. First White Flower in the Royal Sector, then her mother Snow, and now Veer… one of the very frontline allies I had fought beside before the siege… working a night shift at a local provincial inn. She was looking directly at me, completely oblivious to the fact that the fearsome, one-armed capital bounty hunter she was serving was the exact same "dead" friend she had mourned months ago.
I didn't utter a sound. Reaching into the deep pocket of my trench coat with my pale right hand, I pulled out a pre-prepared note from my pad and slid it across the wooden counter:
"ROOM."
"Sure, ma'am. That'll be two silver coins for the night," Veer replied efficiently, turning to pull a heavy iron key from the wall grid behind her.
As I reached into my leather purse to count out the two silver pieces, my single green eye drifted down, locking onto her silhouette. My gaze froze. Beneath her simple canvas apron, Veer possessed a noticeably swollen, rounded belly.
She was pregnant.
I had been away from my hometown for five months, adapting to a shattered body and a monstrous transformation. Seeing her advanced, blossoming pregnancy compared to my own situation sparked a bizarre, jarring sensation in my chest. My own pregnancy, despite operating on an accelerated, highly volatile two-month demonic cycle, was still in its early internal stabilization phase; my abdomen remained completely flat and unrevealing beneath the heavy, strategic folds of my combat gear. I looked perfectly normal, while she was visibly carrying new life. And I didn't need to ask to know who the father was… it had to be Leonhard, the other prominent survivor of our collapsed guild roster. They were building a life out of the ashes.
I dropped the two silver coins onto the counter with a soft metallic clink. Veer scooped them up, completely missing the icy, translucent texture of my skin, and handed me the iron key to Room 4 at the end of the hall.
"Sleep well, traveler," she murmured.
I gave her a single, silent nod of my hood, turned on my heel, and marched down the narrow, dimly lit corridor. Entering the small, spartan room, I immediately turned the heavy iron deadbolt behind me with a loud click.
I strode across the floorboards, grabbing the heavy velvet window drapes and pulling them completely shut, plunging the room into absolute, pitch-black darkness to protect my half-vampiric biology from any stray morning light. Finally allowing my ironclad guard to drop, I unbuttoned the front of my tattered crimson trench coat and slid it off my shoulders, exposing the empty, pinned sleeve on my left side and the jagged road of pale battle scars carving across my flesh.
I unlatched the Leech's Hollow Mask, setting it onto the bedside table alongside my purse, and carefully unwrapped the thick cloth binding the empty socket where my right eye had been gouged out.
With a sharp mental release, the massive, skeletal blood wings compressed tightly against my spine finally unfurled, stretching out to their full breadth in the safety of the dark room before wrapping loosely around my torso like a protective, morbid cocoon. Exhausted from the grueling four-hour flight and the heavy toll the demonic lineage was extracting from my internal mana reserves, I collapsed onto the small bed. I closed my remaining green eye, letting the quiet hum of my hometown lull the Crimson Phantom into a dreamless sleep before the hunt inside the confiscated vault began.