The porch steps of House 132 didn't creak beneath my boots. I moved with the unnatural, weightless precision of a predator, my right hand turning the brass doorknob. It was unlocked… a quiet testament to the peaceful, ordinary safety my family thought they lived in.
Inside, the house smelled of lavender, old paper, and the comforting, rhythmic warmth of living pulses. My enhanced senses instantly mapped the interior. Down the hall, in the smallest bedroom, my little sister Evelyn was fast asleep, her breathing light and undisturbed. In my own bedroom upstairs, my oldest sister, Elicia, was sleeping soundly, likely having stayed up late waiting for me before finally succumbing to exhaustion in my bed.
They were safe. They were human. And I was standing in their living room like a ghost made of ash and stolen blood.
I closed the front door behind me with a faint, clinical click. Moving through the dark, I unbuttoned my heavy traveler's cloak with my single hand and hung it on the coatrack by the door. The fabric slipped away, exposing the reality of my ruined 5'5" frame: the blunt, deadened stump where my left arm used to be, the tattered, blood-stained tunic, and the massive, heavy crimson blood wings folded tightly against my shoulder blades.
Before the panic could spike again, my first instinct… the deeply ingrained, hardwired survival programming of a anomaly… took complete control of my muscles.
I crossed the room silently, my bare boots making no sound on the floorboards. One by one, I pulled the heavy, dark curtains completely shut across the living room windows. I locked out the moonlight. More importantly, I locked out the impending dawn. If the nosy neighbors in the residential district saw the silhouette of a winged demon through the glass, or if a single stray beam of sunlight managed to pierce the room and scorch my hypersensitive skin, the simulation would collapse before I could properly delete it.
Once the room was entirely encased in a pitch-black, artificial night, I collapsed onto the light blue sofa. I didn't lay down like a person resting after a hard day's work; I sank into the cushions like a broken machine, my right wing slightly flaring to support the awkward balance of my torso.
Staring up into the absolute darkness of the ceiling, my mind spiraled right back into its cold, mathematical monologue.
"You came back here, Why? To be close to them one last time? Look at the sheer danger you just introduced into this house. You are a biological weapon sleeping on a light blue sofa. If the hunger flares up while you are unconscious, if the camel's blood burns out faster than your processing core calculated, you won't just be a burden… you will be their executioner."
A tear slipped from my mismatched jade-green eye, cutting a clean path through the dried, metallic stains on my cheek.
"Elicia is sleeping in your bed right now, probably worrying about your long hours, completely unaware that the little sister she loves is a parasite. Evelyn is dreaming of a normal future, entirely oblivious to the fact that a monster is sitting just down the hall, wrapped in the dark. You are a disgrace to the very name they share with you. You are a demon playing pretend at being a sibling."
The rhythm of their distant heartbeats echoed in my ears, a beautiful, agonizing reminder of everything I had permanently lost.
"Suicide is the only logical conclusion to this script, Eirene. You cannot stay in this house, you cannot go back to Elias, and you cannot let the Luminous Knights find what you've become. To exist is to commit a crime against the innocent. The ledger cannot be balanced with calculations anymore. It can only be balanced by erasing the anomaly entirely. Tomorrow, when they wake up, the monster will be gone, and they will finally be safe from the dark."
And I knew this, the blood curse does it's thing, it is the first cause of my destructed life.
[420L/450L= evolution for Phase 7]
Phase 6
[420L/ 255L=+1000 mana(completed)]
[420L/ 267L=+50 strength(completed)]
[420L/ 291L=+50 defense(completed)]
[420L/ 299L=+100 agility(completed)]
[420L/ 304L= +50 strength(completed)]
[420L/ 315L= +100 defense(completed)]
[420L/ 329L= +1000 vitality(completed)]
[420L/ 341L= +500 mana(completed)]
[420L/ 358L= +50 agility(completed)]
[420L/ 369L=+1000 mana(completed)]
[420L/ 375L=+100 agility(completed)]
[420L / 379L =+1500 vitality(completed)]
[420L / 384L =+100 defense(completed)]
[420L / 395L =+100 strength(completed)]
[420L / 410L =+50 agility(completed)]
[420L / 425L =+150 defense]
[420L / 437L =+1000 mana]
[420L / 448L =+100 strength]
This blood curse, is not a gift from the gods, it was a literal curse, a curse to become an vampire.
The absolute darkness of the living room seemed to press down on me, heavy and suffocating, as I sat paralyzed on the light blue sofa. My single, massive crimson wing gave a sudden, involuntary twitch against the fabric, the raw muscle fibers spasming from the lingering exhaustion of the flight and the volatile, parasitic energy humming through my spine. The blunt, scarred stump of my missing left arm throbbed with a dull, cold ache… a permanent, physical reminder of the boundary I had permanently crossed.
I was completely broken. My tactical matrices, my protective calculations, my desperate justifications… every single defense mechanism had completely dissolved, leaving only the raw, psychological horror of what I had become. I was a monster hiding in the dark, a biological hazard sleeping just down the hall from the innocent sisters I loved, fueled by the stolen life of a slaughtered animal. There was no math left that could fix this script.
A final, shaky breath escaped my lips, tasting of dust and copper.
Yielding entirely to the crushing weight of the trauma and the heavy, narcotic lethargy of the circulating blood, I let my head fall back against the cushion. My mismatched jade-green and crimson eyes slowly drifted shut, locking out the blackness of the room. As my consciousness began to fracture and slip away into the void, the phantom, melancholic notes of Bocelli's opera offered one last, silent echo in the corners of my mind, guiding me down into a deep, unfeeling sleep.