A Pass to Life

"Another day had come to an end..."

Eve leaned against the balcony railing, the sunset painting her face red. Some servants saw her and whispered among themselves.

They said the Phoenix family's princess had finally grown up. There was sorrow in her eyes, like a girl in the throes of adolescence, fretting over love and yearning for a beautiful romance with handsome young men... Like hell!

Eve slammed her fist against the railing, then angrily went back to her bedroom. She didn't want to keep listening to the servants gossiping about her downstairs.

Something had to be wrong with her life! What handsome young men? The only male she'd met was that lunatic, Lorenzo.

What worried her was the Secret Blood coursing through her veins. According to Lorenzo, the Phoenix family had to have some connection to Fiends. The so-called Secret Blood needed to be purified through alchemy, and supposedly no one outside the Demon Hunter Order knew how to do that. A mystery hung over the Phoenix family.

Eve wanted to talk to her father, too, but the butler said Duke Phoenix had left for the Platinum Palace after checking on her, and he hadn't returned since.

Lying on the soft bed, Eve stared up at the chandelier. Its warm light filled her entire field of vision.

More than a week had passed since that crazy night, and Eve could barely remember how she'd made it home. She'd tried to keep it a secret, but she was so exhausted that she'd passed out right at the doorstep.

When Eve woke up, she was already lying in her familiar bedroom. Her wounds had been treated, guards stood outside the door, and through the window she could see that the previously empty manor now had many soldiers carrying firearms.

The butler said Duke Phoenix had been furious—enraged, even. After he left, security at the manor had been raised by several levels, and Eve had been confined to the estate. She wasn't allowed to go anywhere until Duke Phoenix came home.

It seemed her father really was angry this time.

Ah... what a pain.

Eve could already imagine the conversation when he came back. He'd probably marry her off to some godforsaken island, only this time he'd be much more forceful about it.

Hugging the blankets, Eve rolled over. She didn't want things to end like this. She wanted to represent the Phoenix family in taking her place in the Hall of Honor. And, if possible, she wanted to find out what was going on with her Secret Blood.

Like an old friend reappearing after years apart, the nightmare she'd almost forgotten had returned after that crazy night.

Eve kept thinking of the scene from the nightmare. A woman screamed and struggled, suffering terribly. As she writhed in pain, her life was drawn out of her body, until at last the monster tore her apart.

The memory of the nightmare was so abrupt that even Eve couldn't tell whether it was real. Human memory really was unreliable. It was like words written in the sand, destined to be swallowed by some rising tide—only to wash back ashore years later, as if in a cruel joke.

The light in the room flickered. Eve turned to look at the chandelier overhead. There seemed to be something wrong with the wiring. After flickering a few times, it went completely dark.

A broken light was perfectly ordinary, but Eve felt something else now. She tensed without realizing it, staring into the darkness.

That was how these things worked. Whenever they came, all the light retreated.

Footsteps sounded around her.

Eve reached for the cabinet. A silver revolver lay on it. It was Shrike's weapon, which Lorenzo had forgotten to take back after that night. Eve had kept it.

It was loaded. Just as Eve was about to do something, a black shadow had already enveloped her.

She had no strength...

She couldn't summon any strength at all...

Eve's breath stopped. She knew the thing was right behind her. She wanted to run, but she had no strength left, as if her body had frozen solid in an instant.

It slowly walked past Eve. Each footstep struck her heart like a heavy hammer. By the moonlight coming through the window, she could make out only a vague, hideous shape. Then countless eyes appeared before her.

It was a face covered in eyes. Something ominous kept spilling from its scarlet pupils. It seemed unable to see Eve, its eyeballs rolling wildly as it searched for something. But in the next instant, they all turned toward her.

It saw her and let out a bone-chilling laugh.

"I see you..."

The voice sounded right beside her ear, so clear and real.

Her frozen body finally moved. The silver Death Knell pointed straight at the Fiend's face, but just as Eve was about to pull the trigger, the light returned.

Everything disappeared.

Eve held up Death Knell, aiming at the empty space ahead. Her familiar room stood there, as if everything that had just happened had been nothing but an illusion.

The eerie, loathsome darkness had vanished.

Eve dropped to her knees, drained of strength. Large beads of sweat slid from the tip of her nose as her lungs heaved, gasping for fresh air.

She rubbed her eyes hard. Everything around her felt strangely unfamiliar. It might have been an illusion, or it might have been something else.

Spirit Sight.

The familiar yet strange term surfaced in her mind. Lorenzo had told her about it when they parted: as her connection to the darkness grew stronger, Eve would see strange things, and those strange things would see her, too.

"What... is happening?"

She slowly got to her feet, feeling the whole world sway. Holding her forehead, she finally collapsed onto the bed. The mental strain this time far surpassed anything she'd experienced before. She felt like a little boat adrift in the tide, about to be overturned by the next wave.

An inexplicable fear took root in her heart. Eve knew the defenses at Phoenix Manor were indeed strong, but against Fiends, they were useless. Those monsters had already seen her, and she had no idea what to do.

She sat up. After thinking for a long while, her gaze fell on the cabinet.

A business card lay there, still and silent. The words on it seemed to hold a strange power.

"Miss, please don't make this difficult for us."

The guards looked at Eve in her nightgown. Beneath her pure white dress was a delicate openwork pattern. Her smooth neck rose like a swan's, and her long hair spilled over her shoulders, giving her an indescribable allure. She looked like an elf stepping out of the moonlight.

The two guards at the gate were flustered. They rarely saw Eve like this. Usually, she carried herself with a heroic air. Even in a dress, she had an aura that warned people to keep their distance. But now, the cold tiger was like a little cat. Anyone who caught that delicate fragrance from so close would feel their heart tremble.

"I want to go for a walk."

Eve spoke gently, an unusual thing for her.

"The Duke ordered that you can't leave until he returns."

"I just want to go for a walk."

The girl opened her eyes wide and looked at the guards. Her crystal-clear eyes were like gemstones. Anyone would find it hard to refuse her—and if they did, they'd feel a strange guilt, as if they'd done something wrong.

All this time, Eve had hidden her charms. She had a flawless figure, but always kept it covered with steel and a uniform, using them to scare off the marriage-minded crowd with ulterior motives.

As the Phoenix family's princess, she was a young noblewoman of Old Dunling whom every eligible young noble wanted to meet. But every meeting ended in disaster. To protect her dreams and freedom, Eve turned each encounter into an accident. After she took an earl's son for a wild carriage ride through the streets, leaving the poor boy with a broken leg, no one had dared show interest in her again.

She was a Phoenix no one could tame. Anyone who approached her recklessly would end up as ashes beneath her feet.

"Is even that not allowed...?"

As she spoke, Eve lifted the hem of her dress slightly. The guards froze in place, their thoughts interrupted. They seemed to expect something, staring blankly at her.

But the next moment, a breeze stirred. There was a dull thud, and one of the guards felt dizzy. His vision spun, and he toppled to the ground. He tried to say something, but his consciousness slipped into darkness. In the last thing he saw, Eve was swinging a chair leg at the other guard.

It had all been an act! Every bit of it!

The other guard was practically on the verge of a breakdown. The little brat had been up to something from the very start. Who could have guessed how she'd taken a chair leg apart and hidden it under her dress?

The chair leg loomed larger in his eyes. He only had time to raise his gun and block the attack, but Eve abandoned her swing and punched him hard in the stomach. He gagged reflexively, and then the girl raised the chair leg again and brought it down with a vicious blow.

"What... happened?"

Another guard came around the far end of the corridor. The sound of someone getting knocked out had caught his attention. The two faced each other awkwardly from opposite ends of the hall.

A young, beautiful girl stood barefoot beneath the light, her red hair blazing like fire. How lovely... if only she weren't holding a chair leg, with two unconscious colleagues at her feet.

She gave him almost no time to think. The girl gripped the chair leg with both hands, drew a breath, held it, and arched her body. Then she hurled it with all her strength.

Another dull thud rang out, and the guard fell stiffly to the ground, still clutching the Iron Whistle he'd never managed to blow.

Looking at the three unconscious guards, Eve smoothed her disheveled hair and let out a long breath. From the act to the attack, everything had flowed seamlessly.

Fiends might be a bit of a problem, but taking down a few guards was easy. The frail girl from moments ago was gone. The tiger was back.

She stripped the unlucky men, tied them up tight, and stuffed them into a closet. Then she straightened her clothes and pulled her hat down as far as she could to hide her fiery red hair. She stuffed a few towels under her clothes to fill out her somewhat slender frame. Unless someone got close, no one would notice the difference.

Finally, she tucked the silver revolver into the holster at the back of her waist. She was all set.

She strode out, only then realizing she'd made things too simple in her mind. Even after nightfall, the manor was surrounded by guards, as if they were protecting the Queen. They wore round iron helmets and held long rifles with bayonets pointed at the night sky.

Suddenly, a long, melodious whistle sounded as a train slowly pulled into the station, steam rising in endless clouds.

Security was far too tight for Eve to get onto the train. And if she didn't leave tonight, even she didn't know when the next train would come.

The Fiends could already see her. She had to find that damn detective.

Just as Eve was at a loss, she saw something. In Lorenzo's words, he called it "a pass to life."

Surrounded by dozens of rifles, Eve shouldered a ladder and swaggered toward the train on the platform. The load threw off her balance, making her wobble as she walked like an obese penguin.

You might not understand the "ladder" gag. It comes from a comedy video called "A Pass to Life," which jokes that if you carry a ladder, everyone assumes you're a worker, so you can enter and leave any place for free.