"Hey… stop that! I told you it's sensitive!" I hissed, my left wing jerking forward in a sharp reflex.
Despite my protest, Elicia's fingers began playfully tracing the spanning membranes of my wings again. Because these Phase 5 wings were fundamentally composed of high-density solidified blood mixed with a light, pulsing layer of raw liquid mana-blood, they felt oddly warm and thrumming to the touch. But as the Principal of Sisiphon, she was far too fascinated by the anatomical anomaly to care about standard boundaries.
"To think a blood curse could manifest stable morphological flight appendages..." she murmured, her analytical tone practically buzzing with academic wonder.
"Focus, big sister, Evelyn is safe. In fact, she's currently operating as a Luminous Knight, ranked 3rd on the high-tier capital leaderboards. The Bureau assigned her directly to Branch 3 to guard the main city gates. And surprise... she and I actually share the exact same roof in the lower district right now."
Elicia's playful teasing instantly halted. She went completely breathless, her heart hammering wildly against my back as the reality finally washed over her. Our tiny, unborn baby sister… the one we thought was buried under tons of collapsed mine rock six years ago… was a top-tier capital prodigy. And just like that, I wasn't the fragile youngest sibling of the Rynd family anymore. I was officially the middle child.
"Oh, by the gods… She's really alive... My little Evelyn is alive. Ren, I'm so incredibly glad... I can't wait to see her. I want to hold her so badly." Elicia choked out, a brilliant, tearful smile blooming against my shoulder as she squeezed me tight.
I let out a soft, rhythmic beat of my wings, slowing our descent until my boots lightly clipped the damp grass of a secluded clearing just outside Caria's inner walls.
"Yeah. She's waiting for us."
Elicia rested her chin back on my shoulder, her voice softening into a gentle, curious whisper.
"I'm so happy, Little Ren. Truly. But... you mentioned there was bad news. What is it?"
I touched the ground, my knees absorbing the impact flawlessly as my massive demonic wings slowly folded inward, melting back into the hidden spatial static beneath my tattered coat. I kept Elicia securely balanced on my back, but a heavy, suffocating weight suddenly settled deep into my chest.
I took a deep, shaky breath, staring out into the dark treeline as a profound sigh of exhaustion and relief escaped my lips. There was no more hiding anything from her.
"Big sister... I'm pregnant," I confessed, my voice dropping into a quiet, vulnerable whisper.
I felt Elicia's entire body go completely rigid against my spine, her breathing instantly locking up.
"During my infiltration at the Immoral Knights stronghold two months ago, I used my shifting ability to disguise myself as Vanessa Katt, the wife of one of their high-ranking commanders, Cameron Gal. My sole objective was to get close enough to claim his head. But before I could execute the strike, Cameron caught me off guard. He deployed a high-tier, forbidden charm spell… a deep hypnosis that completely overrode my cognitive defenses, forcing me into a state of artificial, overwhelming infatuation."
A sharp, bitter knot formed in my throat, my fingers tightening against her legs to keep my composure.
"We... we had an incredibly rough, intense sex while the spell was active. I managed to break the curse, execute him, and clean out their entire base afterward... but the biological reality didn't disappear. I've been running the diagnostic ledger through my Inspect skill. I'm exactly two months pregnant with his child."
"Tell me you're joking, Eirene… You're... you're pregnant? By a target?!" Elicia's voice dropped into a terrifying, trembling octave, the cheerful older sister completely vanishing. Her breath hitched violently against my neck.
"Hey, big sister, don't worry about it! I've already calculated the timeline. I'm taking my official maternity leave next month, so… h-hey! Stop! Don't touch that! You're gripping it!"
Fling!
In her absolute, unadulterated shock and white-hot maternal fury, Elicia's hands shot downward and clamped onto the sensitive musculature of my right wing joint with an accidental, iron-clad grip. The sudden, intense pressure instantly short-circuited my nervous system.
My right wing seized up completely, folding flat against my back, leaving only my left wing frantically beating against the air currents. Our stable flight path abruptly decayed into a erratic, heavy wobble, tilting us sideways as we dipped dangerously low over the jagged treeline.
"That absolute, vile piece of trash!" Elicia suddenly spat, her usual refined, academic composure completely exploding into a barrage of raw curses. She was practically vibrating with rage against my spine, her eyes flashing with a lethal light as she yelled into the wind.
"Hypnotizing a student… hypnotizing my little sister?! A forbidden charm spell?! If that bastard Cameron Gal were standing in front of me right now, I would use my bare hands to… "
"Elicia, let go of the joint! I already killed him! I put his head on a spike and entirely burned his empire to ashes! There's no one left to fight! But right now, you're grounding us!" I yelled over the rush of the wind, straining my core to keep us from spiraling into the canopy.
She blinked, realizing her grip was causing us to lose altitude, and slowly loosened her hands from the rigid bone-structure of my wing. My right appendage snapped back out with a violent, air-cutting thwack, stabilizing our trajectory just in time.
We weren't in Caria yet. The extreme turbulence and our chaotic flight adjustments had slowed our momentum significantly; looking down at the dark, endless expanse of dense forests below, we still had a remarkably long, grueling way back before we would see the city gates. The autumn mist felt heavier now, cooling the raw adrenaline in the air.
The explosive rage in Elicia's posture slowly drained away, replaced by a profound, heavy silence. She adjusted her weight against my 5'5" frame, her arms wrapping around my neck again… not with a frantic grip, but with a gentle, protective softness that felt completely foreign to my isolated, bounty-hunter lifestyle.
"You really do have a child growing inside you, Ren..." she whispered, her voice cracking with a mixture of lingering sorrow, disbelief, and a sudden, fierce protectiveness. She leaned her forehead against the back of my shoulder, staring out into the distant horizon.
"My broken little sister... is going to be a mother."
"Yes, Elicia, I will make sure my child has a much better life than the one we had to endure. No cellars, no chains, and no hiding in the dark." I murmured, my voice softening as I stabilized our trajectory against the shifting winds.
As I looked up, my dual-colored jade and crimson eyes widened in sudden, stark panic. Far along the eastern horizon, the deep indigo of the night sky was beginning to fracture. A pale, golden sliver of light was bleeding through the distant mountain peaks.
A sunrise.
We still had a long way to go before reaching Caria, and with the dawn breaking, my Phase 5 demonic biology presented a catastrophic problem. My body was violently allergic to direct sunlight; the moment those golden rays touched my bare skin, the solar radiation would trigger an agonizing, incinerating cellular collapse.
"Big sister, hold on tight! We need to descend right now!" I barked, my tone snapping into pure, survival-driven urgency.
Before Elicia could even process the warning, I tightly folded my massive, leathery blood wings against my spine, cutting off all lift. We dropped like a stone. The wind roared like a jet engine in our ears as we plunged into a sheer, vertical freefall toward the dense forest canopy below.
"Hey! Slow down, Little Ren! Aaaaagh!" Elicia screamed, her prestigious principal demeanor completely evaporating as she clutched my neck with white-knuckled terror, her face buried into the stolen cloaks.
Just fifty feet above the treeline, I violently snapped my wings back open.
FWOOOSH!
The dense membranes caught the air with a deafening crack, instantly arresting our terminal velocity. I angled my body, guiding us through a tight gap in the pine branches, and used the remaining kinetic momentum to safely glide parallel to the forest floor, brushing through the tall, damp grass.
We hit the ground at high speed. I slid on my boots, but because Elicia's legs were completely paralyzed from her mana depletion, her grip slipped upon impact, and she collapsed gently but awkwardly onto the dewy grass beneath a massive, sheltering oak tree.
We were finally on the surface, shrouded in the deep shadows of the thick forest canopy. I exhaled a ragged breath, looking down at my clothes. My signature crimson trench coat was completely ruined… shredded by the blizzard, stained with the blood of the Branch 1 vanguard, and singed at the edges. With a fluid motion, I unbuckled the tattered fabric and cast it aside, leaving me in just my dark, form-fitting inner dress.
"Little Ren... you absolutely scared the life out of me," Elicia gasped, panting heavily as she propped herself up against the tree trunk, rubbing her temples in sheer disbelief at my reckless maneuver.
"No time to complain, big sister," I muttered, watching the stray beams of morning light begin to pierce through the higher leaves like golden lances.
I quickly knelt down beside her, unbuttoning one of the thick, layered vanguard cloaks I had wrapped her in earlier. I pulled the heavy, insulated fabric over my own 5'5" petite frame, flipping the deep, oversized hood up to completely shadow my face and newly restored features. Enveloped in the stolen military cloth, I stood perfectly concealed in the artificial shade, safe from the incinerating rays of the morning sun as we prepared for the final, grounded leg of our journey back to Caria.