The cool shade of The Iron Ledger washed over us as we finally stepped through the heavy wooden doors. The morning light was still streaming through the front windows, but thanks to Elicia's absurdly overpowered continuous-healing trick, I could actually stand in it without turning into a pile of smoking ash. For the first time in months, I could literally feel the warmth of the sun on my face. It felt incredible, but right now, all I wanted was a heavy blanket and a good night's rest to sleep off the lingering exhaustion of my journey.
I walked straight up to the wooden counter, my inner dress rustling as I leaned against the polished oak.
"Rooms, please," I said, my voice smooth and demanding.
The innkeeper, an older demi-human who clearly didn't recognize my face without the blood wings and the absolute carnage, looked up from his ledger and rubbed his chin.
"Right. One room, two matted beds. That'll be ten silver coins for the night."
Before I could even reach for my belt, Elicia stepped up right beside me. She was still holding my leather purse… the one packed tight with the hard-earned coins I had accumulated through blood, sweat, and high-tier bounty hunting.
"I'll pay for it,"
Elicia said with that effortless, aristocratic grace of a high-ranking Academy Principal. She reached into the pouch, pulled out a single, gleaming Gold Coin, and slid it across the counter with a generous smile.
"Keep the change, good sir."
My jaw nearly hit the floor.
One gold coin?!
In the economic structure of Caria and Tata, one gold coin was equivalent to exactly 100 silver pieces! The room was only ten silver! She was literally throwing away 90 silver coins… nearly a month's wages for a common laborer… just because she didn't feel like counting out the small change!
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Absolutely not! No 'keep the change.' Give us our room, take ten silver, and hand over my ninety silver pieces in return!" I barked, my bounty-hunter pragmatism instantly overriding my exhaustion. I snatched the gold coin off the counter before the innkeeper's trembling fingers could even touch it. I turned a sharp, glaring look at the man.
Elicia blinked, her prestigious, wealthy aura completely short-circuiting as she reacted to my sudden, fierce stinginess. She looked at me, completely stunned by how intensely defensive I was being over a handful of silver coins.
The innkeeper blinked in utter confusion, his hand freezing over the wooden counter as he looked between the elegant, overly generous "Offspring Goddess" and the terrifyingly sharp, petite girl who had just snatched back the coin.
"R-Right, of course! Ninety silver change, coming right up!" the man stammered, hurriedly pulling out a heavy velvet pouch and counting out the silver coins with trembling fingers. The sheer intensity radiating from my dual-colored eyes was enough to make him speed-run the math.
Elicia, meanwhile, crossed her arms over her voluptuous chest, a deeply amused yet completely baffled expression breaking across her face as she looked down at me.
"Little Ren... you just single-handedly financed a massive political escape, you have an ungodly amount of gold locked in your spatial ring, and you're haggling over pocket change? You really have spent too much time living like a rogue mercenary. Back at our household, Elias wouldn't even blink at dropping a gold piece for service." she whispered, her voice laced with a mixture of sisterly teasing and genuine disbelief.
"Elias is a spoiled boy who doesn't know the value of a blood-soaked contract, Every silver in this bag represents a bounty head, a monster slain, or a corrupt aristocrat turned into paste. I'm not throwing away ninety silver to an innkeeper just because you're too high-and-mighty to look for smaller denominations." I muttered flatly, scooping up the ninety silver pieces and sliding them securely back into my leather pouch. I strapped the purse back onto my waist, making sure every single coin was accounted for.
Elicia let out a soft, melodic laugh, shaking her head as she reached over and gently patted my messy hair.
"Fine, fine. You're the breadwinner of this little expedition, Ren. I'll defer to your financial expertise."
The innkeeper quickly slid a heavy iron key across the counter, his eyes fixed firmly on the wood.
"Room 204, up the stairs and to the left, ladies. It's the quietest corner room we have."
"Thank you," I said curtly.
I grabbed the key and turned toward the creaking wooden staircase, the heavy floorboards groaning under my boots. Elicia followed close behind me, her steps perfectly steady now that her legendary mana pool was entirely topped off.
As we ascended to the second floor, the dim, dusty corridor of The Iron Ledger opened up before us. The air smelled of old oak and faint lavender… a massive upgrade from the damp, freezing cellars and blood-soaked snowfields we had been traversing for the past forty-eight hours.
I reached Room 204, shoved the iron key into the lock, and turned it with a satisfying, heavy click. Pushing the door open, I revealed a modest but perfectly clean room featuring two twin beds with thick, heavy blankets, a small wash basin, and a wooden table.
"Finally," I breathed, letting the heavy vanguard cloak slide off my shoulders. I tossed it onto a nearby chair, exposing my form-fitting dark dress and the tightly bound, buckled flaps on my back where my Phase 5 wings were safely compressed.
Elicia walked in behind me, sliding the heavy deadbolt shut into the doorframe. The moment the lock clicked, she let out a long, heavy sigh of her own, the prestigious principal persona entirely evaporating as she looked at the beds.
"We made it, Ren, We're actually safe." she said softly, her eyes turning back to me with a deep, emotional warmth.
I lunged toward the window with a sudden, frantic desperation, my boots scraping harshly against the old wooden floorboards. Every single time I crossed the threshold of an inn, a hotel, or a safehouse, my absolute first instinct… instilled by months of living as a hunted animal… was to eliminate any and all visibility. I grabbed the heavy, dust-laden velvet curtains and pulled them shut with a violent yank, desperate to ensure that not a single trace of my silhouette could be projected onto the glass. If anyone outside caught a glimpse of the shifting, unnatural shadows against the fabric, the 18-million-gold bounty on the "blood-sucking winged demon" would draw the entire regional LKBA Bureau right down upon our heads.
But just as the thick fabric was about to snap shut, my hands locked onto the cloth. My entire body went completely rigid, the breath catching in my throat as my gaze accidentally drifted out beyond the glass, locking onto the distant northern horizon.
Rising sharply at the crest of the rocky hill, silhouetted against the morning sky, loomed the sprawling, jagged architecture of the Callus Manor.
It hadn't changed. Even though the old corrupt hierarchy had been entirely dismantled, and even though a benevolent beastkin leader had been nominated to govern the town, the physical fortress of my nightmares remained completely untouched. The dark stone spires still pierced the sky like jagged teeth, casting a long, suffocating shadow over the lower districts. And there, tucked beneath the eastern wing of that stone monster, was the exact location of the subterranean cellar.
The salt cellar.
The moment my brain processed the visual architecture, the fragile mental barriers I had meticulously built up over the past few months shattered into absolute dust. The phantom sensation of cold iron chains biting into my raw, bleeding wrists flared to life. In an instant, I wasn't a powerful, S-rank Gold-ranked bounty hunter anymore… I was back in the pitch-black dark, stripped bare, enduring 144 hours of agonizing, systematic physical and psychological torment. I could taste the sharp, burning sting of the coarse rock salt being poured directly into my freshly mutilated flesh. I could hear Dominik's mocking laughter echoing off the damp stone walls, Lara's cold, calculating whispers, and Bernard Callus's aristocratic voice sneering as he held up my official death certificate, reminding me that the world had already forgotten I existed. Six days. Six days with absolutely zero sleep, suspended in a waking nightmare where my mind tore itself apart.
A high-pitched, desperate screech tore out from the depth of my throat… a raw, unbridled sound of pure, unadulterated trauma that didn't sound human. My vision blurred into a chaotic vortex of crimson and shadow. The pristine walls of the inn room seemed to bleed into damp, salt-encrusted brick.
"Ren?!" Elicia cried out, her voice sharp with instant, terrifying alarm as she lunged off the bed.
Before she could even take a full step, I threw myself backward away from the window, my knees buckling beneath me. I scrambled across the floorboards like a terrified child and slammed my entire body directly into her chest. I wrapped my arms around her waist with a frantic, iron-clad grip, burying my face deeply into the soft fabric of her uniform. My miniature 5'5" frame was trembling so violently that the wood beneath us vibrated, my fingers clawing at her clothes as if trying to physically burrow myself inside her protective aura.
"A monster... there's a monster, a terrifying monster here! They're going to put the salt in again, Elicia! They're waiting in the dark! The cellar... the chains... make it stop, please, big sister, don't let them take me back to the manor!"
The moment my frantic, trembling body collided with hers, Elicia didn't hesitate for a single microsecond. The prestigious, untouchable aura of the Sisiphon Principal completely vanished, replaced by the raw, fierce instinct of an older sister protecting her shattered sibling. She collapsed onto her knees right there on the hard floorboards, wrapping her long arms around my shaking shoulders and pulling me flush against her chest.
"I've got you, Ren! I've got you, I'm right here!" Elicia cried, her voice breaking as she felt the sheer, violent force of my tremors.
She held me with a desperate, crushing strength, rocking me back and forth as my fingernails dug painfully into the fabric of her uniform. My frantic whimpers about the salt, the chains, and the 144 hours of darkness cut through her heart like a physical blade. For all her god-like power as the Offspring Goddess, for all her ability to knit flesh and bone together in the blink of an eye, she was completely powerless against the bleeding, invisible scars carved into my soul.
"Shh, look at me, little Ren. Look at your big sister, listen to the sound of my voice. Bernard Callus is gone. You killed him, Ren. You tore down his empire. The chains are broken, and the dark can't touch you anymore."
"They're waiting... they're still in the walls..." I choked out, a ragged, breathless sob tearing from my chest as I tried to pull my head back into the shadows of her arms.
My vision was swimming, the clean scent of the inn room entirely replaced by the phantom stench of old copper and stagnant, salt-heavy blood.
"Dominik... Lara... they had a certificate, Elicia... they told me I was dead... they told me nobody was coming for me..."
"They lied to you!"
Elicia fiercely interrupted, her voice ringing out with an unyielding, protective fury that made the very air in the room hum with her divine mana. She pressed her forehead firmly against mine, letting her warm, brilliant white magic cascade over both of us… not to heal a physical wound, but to wrap my frantic nervous system in a soothing, numbing blanket of pure safety.
"They lied to you because they were terrified of how strong you are. You are alive, Eirene. You are right here in my arms, and I swear to you on my life, on our family's name, I will never let anyone put you in the dark again."
I buried my face back into the crook of her neck, my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps as the agonizing grip of the panic attack slowly, excruciatingly began to loosen. The soothing warmth of her divine magic seeped into my chest, acting as an anchor against the roaring tide of my PTSD. The phantom smell of the salt cellar began to fade, replaced once more by the soft, comforting scent of lavender and her familiar, gentle warmth.
Elicia kept her arms locked tightly around me, resting her chin on top of my head as her own quiet tears soaked into my messy hair. She didn't try to make me stand up, and she didn't tell me to be strong. She just held me on the cold floor of Room 204, letting the savior of Tata finally weep like the broken child she had never been allowed to be.