Twelve years ago, the sun over the town of Allure didn't feel like the burning executioner it would eventually become. It was just hot, baking the dirt roads of our small village where I was a reckless fourteen-year-old trying to figure out how to handle the dark, static mana buzzing beneath my skin. I didn't have the full potential of my dark magic yet… no legendary Shadow Walker status, no enchanted revolver, just raw, untamed shadows that slipped through my fingers like smoke whenever I got angry.
And that afternoon, I was furious.
I had been heading back from the town square when I heard the harsh, mocking laughter echoing from a narrow alleyway.
"Look at her! She's a freak!"
"What's wrong with your face, monster?"
A dull, heavy thwack of a stone hitting flesh cut through the air, followed by a small, pathetic whimper. My chest tightened. I broke into a dead sprint, tearing around the corner of the brick building.
There she was. My little sister, Eirene… only six years old, looking impossibly small as she curled into a ball on the dirt. A group of older neighborhood kids stood in a circle around her, their hands loaded with jagged rocks. They were mocking her, throwing stones relentlessly just because of her weird eyes… one jade-green, one crimson… that didn't look like anyone else's in the village.
"Hey! Get the hell away from her!" I roared.
The biggest bully turned around, a smirk on his face, but he didn't even get a syllable out before I closed the distance. I brought my fist back and slammed a heavy punch straight into his jaw. He staggered back, gasping, and before his friends could react, another punch followed, cracking against his nose.
The anger inside me boiled over, pulling the volatile, dark mana out of my core. I focused everything I had, straining my young veins until a tiny, spherical ball of pure dark magic materialized in my palm. It wasn't the continent-shaking magic I'd command in the future, but it hissed and crackled with dangerous energy. I threw the dark sphere directly at the feet of the remaining kids.
BOOM.
The small blast sprayed dirt and dark sparks across their shins. It was enough. Terrified by the sudden display of magic, the bullies shrieked, dropped their rocks, and fled down the alleyway in a panicked scramble.
The dust settled, leaving only the sound of heavy breathing. I turned around and saw little Eirene still sitting on the ground, her small white dress covered in dirt and her knees scraped up from the stones. I let out a breath, trying to shake the tension from my knuckles, and walked over to her.
Using my favorite teasing nickname for her, I looked down and offered a cocky smirk.
"Hey, Weird Eyes. You're safe now."
Eirene looked up, her mismatched eyes wide and shining with unshed tears. She didn't hesitate. She reached out with her tiny, uninjured hand, gripping my fingers with a surprising, fierce tightness.
"Thank you, big brother," she whispered, her tiny voice trembling.
My throat tightened, but I just gave her hand a gentle tug to pull her up to her feet. I brushed the dust off her small shoulders.
"Come on. Let's walk home."
We walked hand-in-hand through the winding streets of Allure, my six-year-old sister keeping close to my side the entire way. The moment we crossed the threshold of our modest family home, our ten-year-old sister, Elicia, came running out from the kitchen. Her long hair bounced as she took one look at Eirene's disheveled state.
"Little Ren! Are you okay? What happened?" Elicia cried out, her eyes wide with panic as she rushed forward and dropped to her knees.
Back then, Elicia was still just a child herself. She didn't have her high-tier casting staff or her infinite, passive healing loops. She closed her eyes, focusing hard as she placed her small, trembling hands over Eirene's scratched knees. A faint, fragile glow of divine regeneration flickered from her palms. It was a little bit of magic, but it was pure, slowly knitting the minor cuts closed and soothing the dark bruises left by the stones.
Hearing the commotion, the heavy wooden door to the main room opened, and our mother, Linera, stepped in. She looked down at the dirt on our clothes and Elicia's glowing hands, her face softening into immediate worry.
"Oh, my... what happened out there?" Mother asked, her voice gentle but laced with a mother's protective instinct.
I stood tall, crossing my arms over my chest with all the pride a fourteen-year-old could muster.
"Some kids were throwing rocks. I protected Weird Eyes."
Mother blinked, looking at me for a long moment before a proud, beautiful smile broke across her face. She walked over, resting a warm hand against my cheek, her eyes reflecting the same fierce love that bound our family together.
"Good job, Elias, I hope you will be a good brother someday." Mother said softly, her voice echoing with a weight that would stick with me for the next twelve years.
I looked over at Eirene, who was quietly watching Elicia finish healing her scrapes. Back then, I didn't know about vampires, blood-sucking demons, or the 18 gold bounties that would eventually tear our world apart. I just knew that she was my little sister, and no matter how weird her eyes were, I would always be the one standing between her and the rocks.
***
The heavy, sterile scent of anti-magic incense and burning medicinal alcohol hung thick in the air of the high-security infirmary in the 8th District Bureau. The walls were painted a blinding, immaculate white, a stark contrast to the absolute darkness settling into my chest.
My body was fully healed. The Lifeline Curse that had locked my veins in a vice grip after the clash at the oasis had finally dissolved, leaving my dark mana humming quietly beneath my skin once more. But the physical recovery did nothing to fix the wreckage around me.
Across the room, Catherine lay completely unresponsive in her cot, her face a hollow, ghastly grey after having her life force aggressively sucked dry by the Phantom. Beside her, Patricia, our stalwart Paladin, was tightly bandaged and heavily sedated. Her dense Vanguard armor had been completely shattered, her ribs brutally crushed from the sheer, physics-defying force of Eirene's kicks.
My fingers dug into the edge of my mattress as the horrific sequence of events replayed in my mind.
After Eirene had unleashed those massive, terrifying crimson blood wings and taken to the sky to escape my revolver, she had dropped a heavy, concealed bundle in her frantic ascent. The Bureau investigators had brought the items straight to my recovery ward, leaving them on a metal tray near my bed.
I looked over at the tray. Sitting there was a collection of highly volatile, concentrated poisonous chemicals she had been storing… the tools of a cold-blooded assassin. But lying beside the vials was the true psychological nightmare: the legendary Death Chant Shotgun.
I reached out, my leather-gloved hand trembling slightly as I traced the cold, terrifyingly modified weapon. The bayonet fixed to the dual barrels wasn't standard issue; it was forged from the shattered remnants of a Fallen Angel's longsword. Just looking at the edge made my skin crawl with its localized Anti-Heal Effect, a cursed aura designed to halt divine regeneration entirely. Woven into the receiver was a Mist Blade enchantment, allowing the wielder to phase the weapon through conventional steel armor.
This was the weapon Eirene had been using to slaughter her way through the lower districts. My little sister… the six-year-old girl who used to hold my hand on the way home from school… was carrying a tool of absolute butchery.
"Why? Why did Eirene become a monster?" The question tore at my skull like a physical blade.
The pieces of the timeline didn't make sense. Potentially just four months ago, during the catastrophic events at Rebelbub Village, I knew for an absolute fact that Eirene was still human. She had been a fiercely dedicated adventurer, using a rare but manageable form of Blood Manipulation magic to protect her party from the local incursions. She had been normal. She had been the sister I promised Mother I would protect.
But the physical evidence of her transformation was a living nightmare. I closed my eyes, but I couldn't block out the vivid, terrifying memory of her mutated anatomy in the desert dunes.
To achieve that terrifying S-rank power, she had paid a horrific biological price. I remembered staring at her in the sand… her left arm was completely severed at the elbow, leaving a jagged, raw stump. Worse, a massive, sickening hole had been torn directly into her right flank. Before her dark aura had completely shielded her, I had seen the gruesome sight of her severed hand lying in the dirt and the spilling intestines leaking from her open midsection.
She was surviving on sheer, corrupted vampiric vitality. She had mutated her own flesh, growing demonic appendages out of her spine just to stay alive and keep fighting.
I pulled my hands away from the Death Chant Shotgun, burying my face in my palms as a heavy, dark static erupted from my shoulders. Chief Roman thought I was the legendary hero who had crushed the threat. The world thought she was an ancient, faceless demon. But the truth was a bleeding tumor in my chest: my little "Weird Eyes" had been broken and remade into a predatory nightmare, and as her big brother, I had been four months too late to save her from the dark.
I sat frozen on the edge of the infirmary cot, my leather-gloved hands still hovering near the cold steel of the Death Chant Shotgun. The heavy latch on the thick oak door clicked, swinging open to reveal two figures stepping out of the bright, blinding light of the corridor.
Chief Roman stood at the front, his expression uncharacteristically somber, his weathered hands gripping a heavy, blood-stained burlap bag that leaked a slow, dark moisture onto the pristine floorboards. Walking directly behind him was the high commander himself… Captain Friedrich, the absolute leader of the Luminous Knights. Friedrich's immaculate golden breastplate caught the harsh glare of the magical lamps, his white cape flowing softly as he stepped into the sterile room.
"You're finally awake, Shadow Walker,"
Captain Friedrich said, his authoritative, resonant voice instantly cutting through the lingering silence of the ward. He stopped at the foot of my bed, his sharp eyes evaluating my posture.
"Did the Lifeline Curse completely vanish from your mana veins?"
I pulled my hands away from the tray, forced my breathing to stabilize, and looked up at the legendary captain.
"Indeed. It took me a full day to purge the static and wake up. But you didn't march all the way to the 8th District medical ward just to check my pulse, Captain. Why are you here?"
Chief Roman stepped forward, clearing his throat as he set the heavy, wet burlap bag down on a wooden stool near the cot.
"Well, Elias, we are here to officially deliver the 18 gold reward for slaying the Crimson Phantom, The ledger is balanced, and the threat to Branch 2 has been thoroughly liquidated. Here is your prize." Chief Roman announced, his tone laced with a profound, solemn respect
With a sudden flick of his wrist, Roman tossed a small, high-tier spatial leather pouch onto the white sheets of my bed. I caught it instinctively. It was surprisingly light, but the magical sigils stitched into the leather confirmed its contents: 18 gold coins with a 1.2 cm radius.
My heart completely stopped. A suffocating, ice-cold dread flooded my throat, cutting off my air.
Eighteen million gold.
The calculations in my head scrambled into a horrific, dizzying loop. If the Bureau was paying out the bounty for the Crimson Phantom... that meant a body had been delivered. My mind flashed back to the desert… to Eirene's missing arm, her spilling intestines, her broken, bleeding body. Did she bleed out in the dunes? Did she kill herself to end the misery, or did some heartless mercenary find my broken little sister in the sand, chop off her head, and bring it here to claim the glory?
"No... please, god, no," I screamed internally, my knuckles turning white against the spatial pouch. I wanted to scream, to tear the room apart, to yell at the top of my lungs:
The Crimson Phantom is dead! You killed my sister!
Before the panic could shatter my stoic mask, Chief Roman reached over, grabbed the heavy burlap bag from the stool, and tossed it roughly onto the bed right in front of my lap. The thick fabric made a dull, sickening thud against my legs.
"Open it, Elias," Roman said seriously.
My entire body trembled. I couldn't breathe. I stared at the blood-soaked fabric, utterly convinced that the moment I untied that rough string, I was going to look down into the dead, lifeless, mismatched eyes of my six-year-old sister. My "Weird Eyes." I reached out with a shaking hand, my fingers fumbling with the knot, and violently yanked the burlap bag open, bracing myself for the absolute destruction of my world.
I peeled the fabric back.
I choked back a breath, my eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated shock. It wasn't her.
Resting inside the bag was the severed head of a completely different vampire. The facial structure was entirely male, the skin violently scorched, blistered, and melted off from intense, prolonged exposure to direct sunlight. The fangs were long and purebred, but the skull belonged to an entirely separate demonic entity.
I stared at the scorched face, completely paralyzed by the sudden shift in reality, when Chief Roman's deep voice broke through my daze.
"Elias, Your sister, Eirene, delivered the bounty herself. She walked right into my office a few hours ago, dumped this phantom's head on my paperwork, and officially demanded that the entire 18 gold prize be transferred directly to you. She said you deserved it." Roman said, a proud smile finally breaking across his weathered face as he tapped the side of the bag.
"Wait... Eirene?" The name left my throat as a ragged, breathless rasp. I stared at the scorched, grotesque skull of the male purebred vampire resting in the burlap bag, my mind violently spinning out of control. The relief that it wasn't my little sister's severed head was instantly swallowed by a crushing wave of sheer, unadulterated bewilderment.
Captain Friedrich stepped forward, his heavy golden pauldrons catching the dim magical light of the infirmary as he crossed his arms. His piercing gaze remained fixed on me, analyzing every micro-expression on my face.
"She claimed that while your entire party was completely incapacitated, she tracked the beast down and finished the vampire all by herself, She said she severed its head in the deeper dunes, packed it up, and delivered it directly to the Bureau. Both of you worked together out there to corner it, right, Shadow Walker?" Friedrich explained, his authoritative voice echoing off the sterile white walls.
The air in the room grew suffocatingly thin. The truth was a volatile, radioactive secret burning a hole in my chest. If I told them the truth… that Eirene was the Crimson Phantom, that she was a monstrous anomaly who had grown blood wings out of her spine, and that this scorched head belonged to some random purebred she had hunted down to cover her tracks… the entire military might of the Luminous Knights would deploy to hunt her down. They would execute her, and they would execute me for treason.
I swallowed the iron taste of panic, forcing my expression into a hardened, stoic mask. I leaned into the lie.
"Yes, My little sister finished the vampire. We cornered it together, but her martial prowess was what ultimately delivered the killing blow." I lied, my voice steady, carrying the cold finality of the Shadow Walker.
I gripped the spatial leather pouch containing the 18 gold fortune… the money she had given up entirely just to ensure my family could escape the slums. My knuckles turned white.
"Tell me, Chief Roman, Where does she live right now? I need to have a word with her. Immediately." I said, my voice dropping into a sharp, urgent register as I looked up at the branch commander.
Chief Roman let out a heavy, sympathetic sigh, rubbing the back of his weathered neck as he pulled a set of finalized administrative documents from his coat pocket.
"Well, you might have a hard time getting her back into the field, Elias, She officially filed for maternity leave today. Given her sudden departure, she's probably quitting the bounty hunting business altogether to focus on her situation."
A physical jolt went straight through my spine. I sat completely paralyzed, my jaw tightening beneath my breath.
Maternity leave? Pregnant?
My mind fractured under the sheer absurdity and horror of the revelation. Eirene… the girl who just forty-eight hours ago was bleeding out in the desert sand with her left arm completely severed at the shoulder, her intestines literally spilling out of a massive hole in her right flank… was carrying a child? How could a corrupted, half-vampiric predatory biology even sustain a human pregnancy? Who was the father? And how far gone was she if she was actively hiding in the capital while carrying a developing life?
"She registered her temporary residence in the 3rd District, The residential sector, House 132." Chief Roman continued, entirely oblivious to the psychological storm raging inside my head.
The words hit me like a physical punch to the chest.
House 132.
That was my district. That was the safe house I had secured for my own family. She hadn't run away to some distant corner of the Triangulum Continent; she was hiding right under my nose, utilizing my own shadows to shield herself from the light of the Crown. She was there right now, sitting in the quiet, heavily curtained rooms with Elicia.
I swung my legs over the edge of the infirmary cot, my boots slamming firmly against the wooden floorboards. The lingering weakness from the Lifeline Curse was entirely gone, replaced by a desperate, driving adrenaline. I grabbed my standard-issue duster coat and threw it over my shoulders, checking the cylinder of my revolver with a practiced, mechanical flick of my wrist.
"Chief Roman, Captain Friedrich, protect my girls. Look after Catherine and Patricia until their mana cores and injuries stabilize. I am going to visit Eirene right now."