The heavy, iron-reinforced barrel of the Death Chant Shotgun dissolved into a stream of red light, vanishing back into the digital void of my storage ring.
Silence rushed back into the mountain pass, heavy and suffocating. The only sound left was the ragged, wet whistling of my breath through my throat, escaping into the freezing twilight as a thick plume of white vapor. The Lifeline curse was slowly fading now that its source was dead, but the gaping cavity in my abdomen and the raw, bleeding stump where my right ear had just been left me lightheaded, my vision swimming with a dark, vignette blur.
Crunch.
A singular, heavy footstep pressed into the snow behind me.
My remaining leathery wing twitched instinctively, a cold shriek of adrenaline piercing through my Pain Manipulation skill. I slowly turned my upper body around, my boots slipping in the red-stained mud as I faced the rocky alcove.
Elicia was standing there.
But she wasn't the sister who had looked at me with tear-filled eyes just moments ago. The grief on her face had frozen over, replaced by an absolute, glassy mask of pure horror and military conditioning. Her hands were no longer trembling. In her right glove, she tightly gripped the hilt of a standard-issue Luminous Knight greatsword she had retrieved from the corpse of a fallen paladin. The blade caught the dim, bruising indigo glare of the midnight sky.
I took a single, halting pace forward, extending my right hand toward her in a silent, desperate plea.
Clank.
The moment my boot shifted the snow, Elicia's posture instantly dropped into a rigid, textbook combat stance. Her knuckles turned stark white against the leather wrap of the sword's handle. The pale green emerald light from the enhancement rings I had given her flared aggressively, casting monstrous, distorted shadows of my tattered wings against the ice walls.
"Stay back, don't you dare take another step toward me."
My heart imploded. The absolute, primal terror that the Bureau's hounds could never instill in me now completely paralyzed my nervous system. She didn't see her little sister. She didn't see the girl she used to protect. Behind her spectacles, her crimson eyes were tracking the massive, leathery membranes folded behind my back, the violent claw scars ripping across my bare face, and the dark, predatory aura of a demonic strain. To the Principal of the Sisiphon Academy, to the Commander of Branch 1, I was the very definition of the kingdom's rot. I was a monster. An abomination wearing the flesh of her deceased family.
"What are you? My sister... my little Ren died months ago in the capital! I buried her clothes! I wept over her grave! You... you vile, deceptive creature... you growled in the dark and wore her face just to mock my grief? Did the abyss spit you out to finish what that fallen angel started?!"
The words cut deeper than the Mist Blade ever could.
The weight of my months of silent running, the agony of my mutations, and the crushing despair of my isolation finally broke me. My knees buckled beneath my tattered crimson coat. I collapsed heavily into the freezing drifts, sitting in the blood-stained snow as my strength entirely deserted me.
Desperate to shield myself from the lethal glare of her sword, I pulled my remaining right arm tightly over my head, tucking my silver hair and my bare, scarred face behind my elbow. My leathery wings wrapped around my trembling torso like a broken, dark cocoon, trying to hide the monstrous truth of my existence from the only person whose love I still anchored myself to.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry out her name. I wanted to tell her about the market stall in Town Allure, about the taste of her beef stew, about the baby growing inside my womb, and about how much I had missed the simple, quiet warmth of our old kitchen.
But I had no tongue.
When I opened my mouth to speak, no human words came out. Instead, a hollow, wet, and profoundly pathetic sound tore from my throat… a ragged, choked-up whimper that sounded entirely like a wounded, dying animal groveling in the dirt. It was a high-pitched, mangled shriek of pure agony and despair, echoing piteously against the unyielding permafrost.
Hot, heavy tears cascaded from my single jade-green eye, freezing instantly against my pale, scarred cheek as I rocked back and forth in the snow. I was completely defenseless, a mutilated anomaly weeping at the feet of her executioner, entirely at the mercy of the sister who held the blade.
The ragged, animalistic whimpers tearing from my throat seemed to echo off the jagged ice walls of the mountain pass, a pathetic and hollow sound that carried the entire, crushing weight of my isolation. I kept my right arm locked over my scarred face, my leathery wings trembling violently as I waited for the cold, absolute finality of her golden-infused steel to pierce my skull.
Clank.
The heavy greatsword didn't slice through my flesh. Instead, the sharp, metallic ring of steel striking the frozen earth reverberated through the blizzard.
Through the narrow gaps of my feathers, I saw Elicia's rigid combat stance completely disintegrate. Her knuckles, previously white from gripping the hilt, were now shaking uncontrollably. Her crimson eyes dilated behind her spectacles, tracking the frantic, terrified cadence of my weeping. No monster from the abyss would grovel in the snow and wail with such raw, painfully familiar human desperation. The tactical armor of the Branch 1 Commander shattered, leaving only a broken, mourning sister.
"Ei... Eirene...?" she whispered, using my full name… a name she hadn't spoken since the pristine granite gravestone was erected in the capital.
The sound of my true name caused my wings to convulse, a wet, choked-up gasp escaping my lips.
Elicia didn't hesitate anymore. She took three frantic, uncoordinated strides forward, her heavy, fur-lined robes dragging heavily in the crimson-stained drifts before her knees buckled. She dropped straight into the freezing mud right in front of me, entirely uncaring of the dead paladins or the toxic residue of the tear gas still lingering in the air.
With a desperate, forceful motion, she reached out and wrapped her arms completely around my tattered crimson trench coat, pulling my mutilated, shivering body tightly against her chest.
FWOOSH.
My leathery, demonic membranes flinched at the sudden physical contact, but Elicia didn't pull away. Her trembling, leather-gloved hands gently brushed against the coarse, dark skin of my wings, tracing the skeletal structure anchored to my spine. To the rest of the world, these wings were a heretical mutation… the very definition of the kingdom's rot. But to Elicia, as she pressed her face into my silver hair, they didn't feel cold or monstrous. They felt radiating, intensely alive, and undeniably warm.
"Oh, gods... it really is you," Elicia sobbed, her stoic composure entirely breaking as her hot tears soaked directly into the fabric of my collar, mixing with the freezing snow on my neck. Her embrace tightened, her arms locking around my torso as if she were trying to physically stitch my broken pieces back together with her own strength.
She gently rocked me back and forth in the red-stained drifts, her hand moving up to cradle the back of my head, carefully avoiding the raw, bleeding trauma where my right ear had been.
"Shush... don't cry, don't worry, little Ren, Big sister is here. I've got you. I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry I let them tell me you were gone. I'm not letting anyone hurt you again. Just breathe... big sister is right here."
Buried deep within her warmth, surrounded by the faint scent of the administrative ink and holy incense she always wore, the terrifying reality of the Bureau, the leaderboard, and my missing tongue faded into the howling wind. For the first time in months, I wasn't just a parasitic anomaly running for my life in the dark. I was safe.
The howling of the northern blizzard seemed to distance itself, fading into a dull, muffled roar against the absolute warmth of Elicia's embrace. She held me with a desperate, crushing intensity, her arms locked around my tattered crimson coat as if she were trying to physically anchor my drifting soul back to the earth. There was no hesitation in her touch. There was no lingering trace of the battlefield commander or the prestigious Academy Principal. In this freezing, blood-stained clearing, she didn't care about the massive leathery wings folded tightly against my back or the heavy, dark scent of my sixth-evolution biology. She only cared that her little sister was breathing. She only knew that I was alive.
Slowly, the frantic tightness of her grip shifted. Elicia gently loosened her arms and slid her leather-gloved hands upward, resting them firmly on my trembling shoulders.
"Little Ren... let me look at you," she whispered, her voice cracking with a raw, breathless desperation.
She gently pushed me back just an inch or two, forcing us both to lock eye to eye. Through her tears and the frost-rimed glass of her spectacles, Elicia looked directly into my ruined face.
The dim, bruising indigo light of the midnight sky laid every single horror bare. She saw the violent, jagged claw scars tearing across my pale skin where my mask had once been. She saw the empty, calcified structure of my missing left arm, a hollow sleeve pinned against my side. Her gaze traced upward to the raw, bleeding trauma on the right side of my head, where my ear had been cleanly sheared away by the apex demon. And finally, her eyes locked onto my gaze… my single, desperate jade-green eye weeping in the dark, paired with the hollow, scarred right socket that still bore the visceral, tracing crimson of the Rynd household line.
As she took in the total, catastrophic tally of my mutilations, the relief on Elicia's face violently shattered. A look of profound, agonizing guilt twisted her features, so intense it seemed to physically choke the breath from her throat.
"Oh, gods… Eiene… What did they do to you? What did the capital do to my sweet girl?" Elicia choked out, her hands sliding from my shoulders to gently, hesitantly hover just millimeters away from my scarred cheeks, her fingers trembling so violently she could barely keep them still.
A fresh, cascading torrent of hot tears broke through her composure, tracking rapidly down her face and freezing in the biting wind. She fell to her knees deeper into the crimson-stained snow, her shoulders sinking under a crushing weight of self-reproach.
"It was my fault, I was the eldest... I was supposed to protect you. When you were suffering in the dark, when they were tearing you apart piece by piece, I was sitting in my comfortable office in the capital! I let them hand me a hollow document. I let them tell me you died of being a hero, and I believed them! I left you all alone to fight through this hell..."
I let out another soft, muffled whimper through my missing tongue, a low, animalistic vibration in my throat as I instinctively leaned my face forward, resting my scarred cheek against her trembling, gloved palm. I wanted so badly to tell her that I didn't blame her. I wanted to tell her that her warmth was the only thing that kept me running through the kingdom's rot.
"Look at what you had to become just to survive, The wings... the scars... I don't care what the Bureau calls you. I don't care what the church says. You are my family, Ren. I failed you once, but I swear to you on my life… I will burn the entire kingdom to ash before I let them lay another finger on you. Big sister is never letting go again."
Elicia whispered, her thumb gently wiping a frozen tear from beneath my jade-green eye, her voice dropping into a ragged, fierce vow. Elicia's hand shifted down from my scarred cheek, her palm pressing firmly against the center of my tattered crimson coat, directly over the smoking, unhealed cavity where the fallen angel's Mist Blade had left its necrotic brand. The moment her glove made contact with the tattered fabric, the Level 8 Mana Pool and the Level 5 Healing Enhancement Ring I had forced into her possession flared with an blinding, absolute emerald luminescence. The artificial 500% multiplier violently collided with the remnants of the Lifeline curse, shattering the 30% limitation through sheer, overwhelming magical volume.
"Let me fix you, No more hiding. No more bleeding in the dark. Divine Regeneration."
A profound, rushing sensation of pure warmth instantly echoed through my entire biological matrix. It did not feel like the clinical, sterile mana of a standard party healer; it felt like the heavy ceramic bowls of beef stew from our childhood kitchen in Town Allure. It felt like the thick woolen blankets she used to tuck around my shoulders during the harsh winter solstices. Under the cascading waves of her god-tier holy magic, the howling, sub-zero blizzard around us completely lost its bite, replaced by a radiant, summer-like heat that seeped deep into my marrow.
Then, the mechanical rewriting of my flesh began.
A violent, hyper-accelerated tingling sensation erupted from the empty, calcified structure on my left side. I watched in absolute awe as a network of pristine white bones sprouted outward from my shoulder socket, followed instantly by the rapid weaving of crimson muscle fibers, deep blue veins, and pale, unblemished skin. My missing left arm was growing back in real-time, the fingers stretching and flexing as the nervous system fully integrated.
Simultaneously, a sharp pressure throbbed inside my hollow right orbital socket. With a wet, rhythmic pulsing, a brand-new, flawlessly structured eye began popping out from the regenerated optic nerves. The dark vignette blur in my vision shattered, replaced by a crystalline, dual-perspective clarity as the eye fully formed, settling into the familiar, tracing crimson hue of the Rynd household line.
Down inside my heavy leather boot, the long-standing agony of my past escapes finally found peace. The three severed toes from my left foot… lost months ago to frostbite and frantic flights from the Bureau's hounds… began growing back, the cartilage and nails knitting together flawlessly until my footing felt perfectly balanced against the earth.
The physical restorations swept upward into my face like a wave of pure grace. The raw, bleeding trauma where my right ear had been cleanly sheared away smoothed over, a perfect, unscarred ear forming in its place to catch the sound of Elicia's ragged breathing. The horrific, jagged Glasgow smile that had been forcefully carved into the corners of my mouth during my initial captivity dissolved, the ruined tissue seamlessly tightening and binding until my lips were smooth and whole once more.
And then came the center of my silence. Inside my mouth, a dense, warm surge of cellular regeneration flooded my jawline. The severed, smooth stump at the back of my throat frantically extended, muscle fibers and taste buds weaving together in a matter of seconds as my missing tongue was completely, flawlessly restored.
For five agonizing, solitary months, I had been an anomaly running in the dark, restricted to the guttural, heartbreaking whimpers of a wounded animal. I had been a ghost with no voice to claim my own existence.
As the blinding emerald light slowly receded, leaving my body entirely unblemished, free of scars, and fully restored, my new fingers clutched tightly at Elicia's fur-lined robes. I parted my lips, testing the unfamiliar, beautiful weight of air moving across my vocal cords.
"Elicia," I said.
My voice was soft, clear, and perfectly human… carrying the exact, gentle resonance of the little sister she thought she had lost forever to the kingdom's rot.
The sound of my own voice… clear, whole, and vibrantly human… shattered the final remnants of my isolation. The silent, suffocating wall I had lived behind for five grueling months had been violently torn down by her love. Looking into her tear-streaked face through my two perfectly restored eyes, the sheer weight of everything I had done, everything I had become, and the chaos I had dragged to her doorstep completely overwhelmed me.
"Big sister… I'm sorry... I'm so sorry for all of this. I'm sorry I made you cry, I'm sorry I hid from you... I'm sorry for what I've become..."
I didn't care about the dead paladins around us. I didn't care about the freezing winds of the northern border. Driven by a primal, desperate need to protect the only sanctuary I had left in this world, I violently flexed my massive, leathery demonic wings. With a powerful, sweeping motion, I brought the dark membranes forward, curving them around the two of us like an absolute, impenetrable shield, completely walling out the rest of the cruel world.
With both of my fully restored, unblemished hands, I reached forward and wrapped my arms around her neck, pulling Elicia into a crushing, breathless hug. I held her with every ounce of my newly restored strength, burying my face deep into her shoulder, my silver hair mingling with the fur trim of her cloak.
Elicia didn't flinch from the wings enclosing her. She didn't try to pull away from the strength of my grip. Instead, she let out a long, shaky breath, her arms locking around my waist just as tightly, anchoring me to her chest.
"Shush, Eirene..."
Elicia whispered tenderly, her hand gently stroking the back of my head as she rocked me within the dark cocoon of my wings. Her voice was a warm, soothing balm that instantly quieted the roaring storms in my mind.
"Don't worry, little Ren. Don't you dare apologize to me. Big sister is here. I've got you now, and I am never, ever letting go."