📍 The Treetop Chamber — Elfior Mansion | Evening
Evani didn't knock.
She pushed the door open and stepped inside, breathing hard, and looked at both of them with the expression of someone who had just heard something they couldn't unhear.
"You need to leave tonight," she said.
Kiyoshi was on his feet before she finished the sentence. "What happened?"
"My father gave the order to kill Sakura." She looked between them. "Kiyoshi stays alive. He plans to use your blessing."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Sakura's hand moved to her dagger. Not drawing it — just touching it. A habit when she was thinking fast.
"Why are you telling us this?" Kiyoshi asked.
"The goddess—"
"No." He kept his voice level. "Why you. Why are you helping us."
Evani looked at him. She was a hundred and four years old and she looked fourteen and right now she looked neither — just someone deciding something.
"Because it's wrong," she said. "And because I want to."
Sakura spoke. "How do we know you're not leading us into it?"
Evani didn't flinch. "You don't. So I'll give you something that removes the doubt." She pressed her right hand flat against her chest. "I swear upon the Elfin Flame — the Forest Flame — that I stand with you and will help you leave Elfior safely."
Sakura went still.
The Elfin Flame oath. She knew what it was — an elf who broke it didn't just lose honour. The flame itself was said to respond. No elf swore it lightly. No elf swore it falsely.
"We trust you," Sakura said.
Evani let out a slow breath. Then, quieter: "I'm sorry. For my father. For my sister. The nobles here — most of them think the same way. It's not an excuse." She paused. "I've wanted to leave for a long time. See something that isn't these trees."
Kiyoshi looked at her for a moment. Then his face settled into something warmer. "If you ever want to — send a message to the Ramiya AMO. Address it to Kiyoshi."
Evani blinked. "That makes me your friend?"
Kiyoshi and Sakura both said it at the same time: "Yes."
Something shifted in Evani's expression. Small but real.
"We move just before midnight," she said, back to business. "Day security is too heavy. They'll be expecting a daytime attempt. Night gives us the path."
📍 The Forest Edge — Elfior | Midnight
Evani led them through a passage in the lower roots of the mansion tree — narrow, forgotten, not on any guard rotation. They moved without light. Kiyoshi and Sakura had their Night Vision active. Evani didn't need it.
They reached the forest without incident.
The trees closed around them, dark and dense. Somewhere above, the canopy blocked most of the quarter moon.
Sakura stopped walking.
"They're here," she said quietly.
"How many?" Kiyoshi asked.
Evani's eyes were already moving through the dark. "Five. B rank minimum. Don't underestimate them."
An arrow came from above — fast, no sound before it. Aimed at Sakura's throat.
Sakura moved but not fast enough.
"Windblades."
Evani's voice was sharp and the arrow split cleanly in two before it reached her.
Kiyoshi turned.
Evani had changed. Not dramatically — her clothing was still intact, her face still hers — but her eyes had gone gold, pupils narrowed to a razor line. Hard curved talons had grown from her fingertips. Brown and white feathers lay flat across her skin like armour. Her legs had restructured into the angular form of a bird of prey, and at her back, small wings — palm-sized — folded tight.
She looked exactly like what she was.
"A rank level-seven," she said. "Beast mode puts me near S level-two."
Sakura was already moving. "No time. They're coming."
"Kiyoshi — three o'clock," Evani said. "Sakura — eleven."
"I see them."
"Me too."
What followed was quick and efficient. Evani took three. Kiyoshi and Sakura took the other two between them. No injuries. No noise beyond what was unavoidable.
They kept moving toward the port.
📍 The Forest Path — Near the City Edge | Before Dawn
They were almost out.
The trees thinned ahead. The first rooftops of the port district were visible through the branches. Twenty more metres and they'd be in the city, in the open, past the mansion's reach.
A figure dropped from the canopy directly into their path.
Nanime.
Her eyes in beast mode were owl-gold — wide, unblinking, the kind that saw through dark and through walls. The small wing at her back was barely visible. She looked calm. That was the worse version of Nanime.
She moved at Kiyoshi first.
Sakura activated Lightning Speed and intercepted — caught the blade on her own, redirected the force — and was thrown ten metres back into the treeline anyway. She hit a trunk and stayed standing, barely.
Nanime didn't look at her again. Her eyes were on Kiyoshi.
"Run," Evani said.
"Evani—"
"Go."
Nanime turned her head slightly toward her younger sister. "You're interrupting something, Evani."
"I know." Evani stepped between them. "I'm not here to argue with you. I'm here to stop you."
Nanime looked at her for a long moment. Then something almost like amusement crossed her face. "You know the rank difference."
"Yes."
Evani threw a windblade.
Nanime caught it with her bare hand. Looked at it. Dropped it.
"Is that all?"
She hit back with her own — Wind Blade, S rank — and the trees on either side of the path came apart in sections. Evani blocked with her dagger and was driven back three steps, her arm shaking.
Kiyoshi watched from the tree line. Sakura had reached him. They both stood still.
Nanime was faster. Nanime was stronger. Every exchange Evani initiated, Nanime ended on her own terms.
Kiyoshi pressed his hands together.
"Goddess," he said. Not loudly. "Please."
The green light came without announcement.
It covered Evani completely — and then it changed her.
Her bird legs returned to elven form. The feathers across her body faded. She looked almost herself again, except for two things that hadn't faded:
Her eyes, gold and sharp.
And the huge wings were like an eagle's wings and eyes with eagle feathers covered her like a dress, her legs and hands were human but had claws like an eagle, and her hair was brown.
her wings, two of them, dark gold, each one as long as a grown man was tall, unfolding from her back like something that had been waiting a long time to open. They caught the moonlight and held it.
Evani rose above the treeline.
Nanime's expression shifted for the first time. Not fear — something closer to recalculation.
She screamed "Storm Blade" anyway.
Hundreds of wind blades from every direction, spiralling inward — the kind of skill that carved through stone buildings. The air itself screamed. The earth around Evani was cut to pieces in seconds.
When it stopped, Evani stood at the centre of it.
Unharmed. Wings folded around her like armour, every feather undamaged.
Nanime was on one knee. Her blade hand was bleeding from the recoil.
She pushed up and launched anyway — blade spinning, full force, aimed to kill.
Evani caught it between her palms. The spinning stopped. Two opposing currents of air rotated around her hands in tight opposite spirals, and the blade simply — halted.
Then Evani brought her wings forward.
The impact sent Nanime into the earth hard enough to carve a trench. She didn't get up.
The forest was quiet.
Evani descended slowly, wings folding. Her rank had reached S level-seven and then held there, a height she had never touched before. She looked at her own hands for a moment as if confirming they were still hers.
Then she looked up at Kiyoshi and Sakura at the tree line.
She raised one hand.
They raised theirs back.
Then they ran for the port.
📍 The Road Out of Elfior | Sunrise
The city was behind them. The road ahead was open. The sun was coming up through the trees in long orange strips.
Kiyoshi said, "Will Evani be alright?"
"She's the second princess, and she just mastered her second transformation," Sakura said. "She'll be alright." A pause. "I don't want to think about reasons right now. We're out."
"We have the thirty gold."
"Good. I want a bath."
"I need actual sleep."
"You sound like an old man."
"Is that so."
They walked into the sunrise.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Sixteen ✦
World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Sixteen
ENTRY 063 — THE ELFIN FLAME OATH
A binding sworn on the Elfin Flame by elves of the Elfior line. Considered unbreakable — not by social custom alone but by the flame itself, which is said to respond to a broken oath. No record exists of an Elfior elf breaking this oath and surviving unchanged.
Evani swore it freely. No coercion. No condition.
ENTRY 064 — EVANI'S SECOND TRANSFORMATION
Evani Elfior's standard beast mode: A7 → near S2. Partial transformation — golden eyes, talons, feathers, small wings, restructured legs. Stat increase: 20% across MP, strength, stamina.
Second transformation, activated by the forest goddess's blessing through Kiyoshi's prayer: full return to elven form except golden eyes, talons, and two large dark gold wings — each the height of a grown man. Rank: S7. The wings are as hard as forged steel and capable of deflecting S-rank wind skills without damage.
This form had not appeared in the Elfior line in history for many generations. Garion called it the lost trait when he saw Tanemi's eagle form. Evani's version is its true expression.
ENTRY 065 — NANIME'S BEAST MODE
Partial transformation only: owl-gold eyes capable of seeing through darkness and solid walls. One small wing at the back. Stat increase: 5%. Rank S5.
The partial nature of her transformation is a limitation of her line, not her rank. Her combat ability far exceeds her beast mode enhancement — she is S4 through skill and experience, not through the beast gift.
End of Chapter Sixteen Codex.