The jagged, snow-capped peaks of Mount Caria loomed ahead like the broken teeth of a buried titan. The air up here was thin and bitingly cold, entirely stripped of the suffocating lavender perfume and smoke that choked the lower city districts just days prior.
Two days had passed since Chief Anton Kif shoved that wax-sealed folder into my hands. Two days of ignoring the gnawing, leaden weight in the pit of my stomach regarding what Sydney Popov had been trying to tell me about my little sister, Eirene.
"Elias! Can you slow this damn thing down?!" Catherine yelled over the howling wind, her small hands gripping the back of my coat with a white-knuckled intensity.
I didn't answer. I merely tightened my grip on the ethereal reins of my Shadow Horse. The spectral beast galloped soundlessly across the treacherous, icy mountain path, its hooves leaving faint trails of dissipating black smoke in the pristine snow. Patricia sat securely behind Catherine, her eyes scanning the rocky ridges above for any sign of an Immoral Knight vanguard. We were moving at a breakneck, predatory pace. I wanted to reach the high passes before dusk, and more importantly, I wanted to outrun the nagging anxiety clawing at my chest.
"She's fine, Weird Eyes is a Rynd. Her blood manipulation is absolute. If any of those low-life Bronze Coin bastards or slum thugs even dared to scratch her... I'll pull the shadows from their lungs and leave them to suffocate in their own filth." I told myself, my jaw clenching so hard it ached.
Behind me, I heard the crisp, distinct snap of a heavy wax seal breaking.
"Elias, I'm opening it now," Catherine called out, her voice straining against the wind.
She had finally pulled out the official Bureau envelope Sydney had desperately pressed into my palm back at the lobby, the one containing Eirene's heavily restricted files and recent status updates.
"Wait… Catherine, don't… !" Patricia started to warn, but she was cut off.
The moment the thick parchment was pulled from the envelope, a violent, high-altitude gust of wind ripped through our vanguard. The paper caught the draft, violently fluttering and threatening to tear itself right out of Catherine's fingers.
"Ah! Dang it! Elias, pull over! It's flying off! I can't read what Aunt Eirene's status is if the papers are scattering across the whole mountain range!" Catherine complained loudly, her witch's hat swaying precariously as she tried to shield the shifting papers with her elbows.
"Leave the letter! Keep it put away until we make camp! If you drop those files down the ravine, I'm not sending a shadow to fetch them!" barked back, my raspy voice cutting through the gale with absolute finality. I didn't dare slow the Shadow Horse on a cliffside trail this volatile.
Catherine let out a frustrated, dramatic huff but obeyed, aggressively stuffing the creased parchment back into her heavy black robes.
I kept my lone, sharp gaze locked firmly on the mountain path ahead. I told myself I was just being practical. We were in enemy territory, checking a family ledger while riding a sprint into a potential ambush was a rookie mistake. But deep down, beneath the cold, unyielding armor of the Shadow Walker, a dark instinct was whispering something else.
Sydney's face had been entirely drained of color. The Bureau Chief had violently cut her off. They were hiding something about Eirene… something catastrophic enough that they didn't want the legendary, volatile Elias Rynd to discover it while standing inside their own lobby.
My fingers instinctively drifted down to my hip, brushing against the freezing, etched steel of my Death Chant Revolver. The cylinder was heavy, the chamber fully loaded, and my dark magic was coiled like a viper within the lead.
We finally arrived at the snow-dusted ruins of Oakhaven. The shattered stone pillars and collapsed archways looked like ancient skeletal remains against the bleak gray sky. This was the exact perimeter where the Immoral Knight scouts had been spotted the night before, but the battlefield was already entirely dead.
As I pulled the reins and allowed the Shadow Horse to dissolve back into the freezing mud, I noticed a small convoy of traveling merchants parked near the edge of the ruins. They looked thoroughly shaken, their guards holding crossbows with white-knuckled grips. Scattered across the frozen ground around them were the massive, bloated carcasses of several high-tier Cyclops beasts… monsters the Immoral Knights frequently used as heavy vanguard shock troops.
I marched over, my heavy trench coat snapping in the wind, and confronted the lead merchant.
"What happened here last night? Who did this?"
I demanded, my raspy voice dropping into a menacing, low register. The merchant wiped a layer of cold sweat from his brow, his hands trembling as he pointed toward the blood-stained snow.
"W-well, shadow walker... while we were traversing the lower passes of Caria last night, the Immoral Knights' vanguard ambushed us. We thought we were dead. But then, out of absolutely nowhere, a winged demon descended from the peaks and started slaughtering them. I couldn't see her clearly because I was terrified, hiding inside my covered wagon and looking through a pair of high-grade binoculars. I reported it to the Bureau the second we cleared the pass. The guards are calling it the Crimson Phantom."
I walked past him, stepping up to one of the fallen Cyclops carcasses. I knelt down, poking the grey, rubbery flesh with a gloved finger. My sharp, predatory senses instantly flagged something deeply wrong. The massive beast wasn't just dead… its veins were entirely collapsed. It had been completely drained of blood. I pulled back its thick neck folds and found two deep, precise puncture wounds.
Fang marks.
A cold, sudden jolt shot straight through my spine. My mind instantly flashed to a deeply buried memory of Eirene. She possessed the raw mastery of blood manipulation, and I knew the dark, intrinsic nature of our bloodline carried a predatory, blood-sucking capability.
I remembered a few months ago where my little sister devoured that huge ass chimera back from Rebelbub Mountains, she said that it was repleneshing and ties to her blood manipulation spell. Her weird eyes were no joke.
I whipped my head back toward the merchant, my eyes narrowing into slits of pure, volatile intensity.
"The demon... was it a girl?"
The merchant nodded frantically, swallowing hard.
"Yes! If I remember correctly from what I saw through the lenses... that girl was completely exposed, drenched in gore. She had savage fangs, only one working eye, a missing left arm... and fucking massive, blood-red wings tearing out of her back!"
The moment the words left his mouth, a wave of profound, defensive denial washed over me. I stood up, completely dismissing the thought with a cold, sharp shake of my head.
No. That's completely impossible. "You're seeing ghosts, old man," I muttered coldly.
It was utterly ridiculous to even compare that monstrous, mutilated abomination to my little sister. Eirene was supposed to be safe and sound back in Town Allure, living a quiet life far away from the carnage of the capital and the Caria peaks. More importantly, the logic didn't give. The last time I saw my sister, she was entirely whole… no injuries, no scars, and absolutely no missing limbs. And wings? Eirene was a powerful blood mage, but it was physically impossible for her to sprout demonic, crimson wings from her back. This Crimson Phantom was clearly just some rogue, feral actinide beast or an escaped laboratory experiment from the Sisiphon Alchemist Guild that happened to share a similar magic type.
"Thanks for the report," I told the merchant curtly, turning on my heel and walking back toward the girls.
"Elias… That magic... it feels incredibly dense."
"It doesn't matter what it is. Catherine, keep that letter sealed for now. We have a change of priority."
I snapped, summoning the dark aura from the cobblestones as my Shadow Horse materialized from the black mist once again. I vaulted onto the saddle, my face set in an unyielding, icy mask. If there was a savage, single-eyed, winged demon roaming these mountains and slaughtering everything in its path, it was a massive wildcard that could compromise our entire investigation into the Immoral Knights. I wasn't going to let a feral monster disrupt my hunt.
"Mount up, girls, we need to prepare to track this thing down immediately. We're going to hunt this winged demon in an instant and put it down before it crosses our path." I commanded, pulling the reins tight as the horse let out a silent, smoky snort.