The frigid mountain wind roared in my ears as my massive crimson wings beat against the dark sky, propelling me downward toward the outer borders of Caria City. I clutched the canvas bundle containing Oksana's severed head tightly against my chest with my lone right hand, my gaze locked on the horizon.
A faint, dangerous sliver of pale gray was beginning to bleed into the eastern sky.
"Damn it, the sun was about to rise."
As a phantom, my raw, unblemished skin was incredibly sensitive to direct sunlight. If those first morning rays caught me out in the open, it wouldn't just ruin my stealth, it would physically scorch my flesh. I needed to get underground, and I needed to do it now. I pushed my core, forcing my blood wings to flap faster and harder, cutting through the thin mountain air like a streak of dark lightning.
As the glowing magical barriers of the Caria City border checkpoint finally came into view, I folded my wings and allowed myself to drop like a stone, plummeting directly into a dense, overgrown thicket of bushes just outside the legal scanning perimeter.
The impact rustled the branches, but I didn't care. The transformation spell was out of the question, I didn't have the time or the energy to turn back into Zenni right now, nor did I want to risk carrying a high-profile bounty head under an academy persona. I had to enter the city as the incognito bounty hunter.
Hissing through my ruined mouth, I quickly pulled out the spare layers of loose, heavy merchant clothes from my travel pack. I threw on a thick tunic, pulled the canvas vest over my chest, and draped the massive, weathered dust-cloak around my shoulders. I took extra care to tightly bind the fabric around my back, pinning my heavy blood wings flat and flush against my shoulder blades. I adjusted the deep hood, casting a pitch-black shadow over my hollow left eye-socket and the jagged, horrific ridges of my Glasgow smile. My pinned, empty left sleeve hung limply at my side, completely hidden beneath the cloak's heavy folds.
I had to be absolutely flawless with this disguise. The reason was simple, and it was entirely my fault. During my frantic hunt and feeding frenzy back in the high mountain passes last week, I had been careless. I had caught a glimpse of a trading caravan hiding in a ravine. A group of human merchants had spotted my silhouette through binoculars, watching me drain the cyclops vanguard. They had seen the winged demon. They had seen me.
The underworld was undoubtedly already buzzing with rumors of the Crimson Phantom roaming the peaks. If the border guards saw even a single feather or twitch of a crimson wing beneath my cloak, the entire bureau will need my head.
Once I was completely covered, I reached into my cloak to ensure my essentials were ready. I checked my leather purse, feeling the cold, metallic weight of my bounty hunter token, the Registry of the Condemned, and finally, the heavy, bound cloth bundle holding Oksana's purple-haired head. Everything was secure.
Breathing heavily through my nose, I stepped out of the bushes, smoothed down my dusty clothes, and casually walked over to join the back of the immigration line. Ahead of me, a long queue of traveling traders, wagons, and mercenaries were waiting in the dim, pre-dawn light to pass through the iron gates. I kept my head low, melting perfectly into the crowd of weary travelers.
The line shuffled forward with excruciating slowness. As the minutes ticked by, the first blinding rays of the morning sun finally breached the mountain peaks, casting a sharp, golden glare across the checkpoint. I instinctively pulled my deep hood further over my face, tensing as the light hit my fabric. Fortunately, the multiple thick layers of heavy merchant clothing did their job perfectly, completely shielding my sensitive skin from the burning rays.
Finally, I reached the front of the queue. Standing behind the reinforced wooden desk was a familiar, towering border officer named Luscious. He looked exhausted, tapping his quill against a ledger as he gave my heavily cloaked, single-armed silhouette a passing glance.
"Toll and status card," Luscious droned, his voice thick with bureaucratic boredom.
Using my right hand, I reached into the folds of my dust-cloak and pulled out a single silver coin along with my official civilian registration card. I slid them across the smooth wood.
Luscious picked up the card, his eyes scanning the magical inscription. He blinked, looking up at me with a sudden flash of recognition.
"Oh, Eirene! You're back from the outer districts. And... wait, you changed?"
Underneath my hood, my lone right eye widened slightly, and I raised an eyebrow, letting out a visibly confused, questioning expression. Because I had no tongue, I couldn't speak to ask him what he meant.
Noticing my confusion, Luscious reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a small, silver-rimmed hand mirror, tilting it toward me.
"Look for yourself."
I stared at the glass. As a phantom, a high-tier demon of the dark, the law of reflection didn't apply to me. The surface of the mirror remained completely blank, showing nothing but the empty stone wall behind me. Realizing my lack of a reflection made it impossible for me to see what he was talking about, I let out a soft, raspy exhale… a mute, frustrated grunt and gestured to my face, silently asking him to clarify.
Luscious chuckled, shaking his head as he pocketed the mirror.
"Right, I forget you don't care for mirrors. What I mean is, Eirene, I didn't know you got a tan. You look different."
I froze. I slowly pulled my right hand out from the cloak and looked down at my knuckles. Sure enough, even in the dim morning light, I could see that my usually pale, pristine skin had shifted into a noticeably deeper, sun-kissed shade.
The realization hit me instantly. It was the scorching, unforgiving desert heat of Sisiphon. While I was operating in that lawless territory, tracking Oksana's cartel under the blazing desert sun, the oppressive climate had clung to my skin and permanently baked a dark tan into my flesh. Even though I wore heavy cloaks to hide from the burning rays, the sheer intensity of the desert heat had still managed to alter my pigment.
It was almost comical. The Archivist back at the central library had been so consumed by the high-stakes underworld intelligence and the impending massacre that she hadn't even registered my changed appearance. But a bored gatekeeper looking at a standard identity card noticed it in an instant.
"Well, travel changes a person, I guess, welcome back to Caria City, Eirene. Keep moving, you're blocking the line."
Luscious muttered, stamping my status card with a heavy thud and sliding it back to me along with an entry permit.
I snatched the card and my makeshift bounty bundle, nodding curtly to him before stepping through the heavy iron gates. Slipping back into the cool, shadowed alleys of the capital's lower districts, I gripped Oksana's head tightly. I was officially back inside the city walls, sporting a new desert tan, and it was time to deliver the final proof to the library vaults.
I slipped away from the border gates and melted into the long, cool shadows of the capital's morning streets. My first instinct was to head straight to the Luminous Knight Bureau Association to submit Oksana's head and formally claim my massive bounty.
But when I arrived at the grand plaza, the towering iron doors of the Bureau were tightly shut. I stared at the locked entrance, a mute sigh of frustration slipping past my lips. Of course it was closed. The sun had barely crested the horizon, and the daytime staff wouldn't be arriving for another hour or two.
With no other choice, I walked over to a secluded stone bench across the plaza, pulling my heavy dust-cloak tightly around myself to shield my tanned skin from the growing sunlight. I rested the canvas bundle containing the Drug Lord's head securely on my lap, preparing for a long, tedious wait.
As I sat there, scanning the quiet plaza, my lone right eye suddenly locked onto a figure walking near the fountain. I froze, my breath catching in my throat.
The boy was wearing a dusty, travel-worn tunic, looking around the towering spires of the city with a mixture of profound awe and absolute terror. He had the exact same messy hair, the same height, the same sharp jawline, he was identically similar to the face I had been wearing for the past week.
It was Zenni. The real Zenni.
A wave of strange, silent relief washed over me beneath my hood. He had actually kept his promise. After I had ambushed him in that alleyway back in Sisiphon and stolen his identity to infiltrate Oksana's academy, I had handed him a heavy bundle of gold coins and told him to flee the territory to start a fresh life somewhere safe. I never expected that his journey would lead him straight to the heart of Caria City.
He looked utterly helpless. As a boy who had spent his entire life in the brutal, suffocating slums of a cartel-run district, the sheer scale of a clean, massive metropolitan city like Caria was clearly blowing his mind. He kept adjusting his collar, looking at the giant marble structures as if he expected them to collapse on him.
Clutching a small leather pouch, likely containing the survival coins I had given him. Zenni walked hesitantly toward the Bureau doors, realized they were locked, and slumped down onto a bench on the opposite side of the plaza. He, too, was waiting for the Bureau to open. Based on the anxious way he kept checking his pockets, I knew exactly what he was here for, he needed to register himself, get a legal status card, and officially cement his existence as a free citizen of the kingdom.
I leaned back into the shadows of my bench, pulling my hood down even further so he wouldn't catch me staring with my single eye. It was a bizarre, ironic twist of fate. The real Zenni was sitting just fifty paces away from me, completely oblivious to the fact that the silent, scarred phantom across the plaza had just used his name to burn a drug empire to the ground, and was currently holding his former master's severed head in a bag.
I stood up from my secluded bench, keeping my lone right hand firmly clamped over the canvas bundle containing Oksana's head. Instead of staying hidden in the shadows, a strange whim guided my steps across the cobblestone plaza. I walked right up to the fountain and sat down on the stone bench directly beside the real Zenni.
I kept my heavy traveler's cloak wrapped tightly around my frame, the deep hood casting a dark shadow over my scarred face and missing left eye.
Zenni flinched slightly as I sat down, his eyes darting to my empty left sleeve and the ominous, heavy bundle resting on my lap. He shifted uncomfortably, clearing his throat as he looked at me.
"Uh... hello there. Can I help you with something? Who... who are you?"
I didn't answer with a voice. Instead, I let out a soft, gentle smile beneath the shadow of my hood, the sharp, jagged lines of my Glasgow smile softening just a fraction. Reaching into my canvas vest, I pulled out a small scrap of paper and a piece of charcoal. With swift, practiced movements of my right hand, I scratched out a single word and handed it to him.
The paper read: silver-haired girl.
When I had first ambushed him in that Sisiphon alleyway to steal his identity, I hadn't shown him my true, mutilated form. To keep him from panicking, I had shapeshifted into a temporary disguise, a completely different persona I called Miera.
Zenni stared at the paper, his eyes widening to the size of saucers as the realization hit him.
"Wait, you're the girl in the jail cellar back then?! Is it really you?! Wow... you've... you've completely changed. I almost didn't recognize you. You look like you've been traveling through a war zone."
Zenni whispered fiercely, leaning in closer. He scanned my heavy merchant cloak, my deeply tanned hands, and the unmistakable aura of the slums that still clung to me. I let out a silent, raspy chuckle. He had no idea.
To show him the reality of the person who had saved his life and sent him on this journey, I reached up with my right hand and slowly pulled back the heavy fabric of my hood, exposing my face to him in the dim morning light.
Zenni gasped, choking back a scream as he instinctively recoiled against the armrest of the bench. His eyes locked onto the horrific, empty socket where my left eye should have been. He stared in absolute horror at the brutal, jagged scars of the Glasgow smile stretching across my cheeks, and the silent reality of my tongue-less mouth. This wasn't the pristine, healthy Miera he remembered. This was a battle-hardened, mutilated phantom of the underworld. He was utterly surprised, his jaw hanging open as he tried to process the true form of his benefactor.
Before he could speak, a heavy, metallic CLANG echoed across the plaza.
We both blinked, turning our heads toward the grand entrance of the Luminous Knight Bureau Association. The massive iron-reinforced doors were slowly swinging inward, and the early morning light illuminated the bustling main hall as the daytime registrars began to set up their desks. The Bureau was finally open.
I gave Zenni a firm, reassuring nod, pulling my hood back down to completely hide my face from the public once more. I stood up, gripping Oksana's head tightly. His new life as a free citizen of Caria City was about to begin inside those doors, and my final executioner's toll was waiting to be collected.