Chapter 2
TWO
Mira frowned at the laptop screen, her brow furrowing as the distorted figure vanished into the warehouse on the loop.
“How can you be sure? Umbrakynn signatures vary. If he was shielding himself—“
“Because I’ve seen concealment magic. I’ve hunted it.” Dane leaned closer to the screen, broad back rigid with tension. “Umbrakynn suppress visual signatures, not magical ones. They bend light; they don’t create dead zones that eat electricity.”
He jabbed a thick finger at the glitching silhouette. “That’s erasing. The camera is failing because the magic in the area was sucked into a vacuum.”
“Engineered extraction,” I whispered. The term tasted foul and metallic against my teeth.
“And the strength? You saw how he handled her. He tossed a full-grown woman over his shoulder with the ease of a man lifting a coat. He bypassed the physics of leverage entirely; that was raw, clinical power.”
Mira paled, looking from the screen to the sheet covering the body. “If someone is refining the method to the point where they can walk down a street and wipe the sensors just by existing…”
“Then nowhere is safe,” I finished.
The silence was oppressive, filled only by the hum of work lights and the steady heat in my shoulder.
We weren’t looking at a crime of passion or a ritual gone wrong; we were looking at a manipulation of magical power on a scale we hadn’t seen before.
A predator that didn’t just kill, but consumed the environment around it.
“We need this footage,” I said, reaching for the laptop. “If this is what I think it is, we can’t leave it on a local server.”
“I’ve already queued the shard’s spectral analysis for upload to the secure cloud,” Mira said, fingers flying across the keys. “It should be accessible at HQ by the time you get back. But the video file is huge. I’m trying to mirror it, but it’s going to take a—“
Footsteps echoed from the warehouse entrance—brisk, purposeful, and multiple sets.
I froze, eyes locking onto the monitor. The progress bar on the screen crawled, agonisingly slow.
I straightened, stepping back from the workstation. Beside me, Dane shifted, his posture changing instantly from investigator to guard dog—weight forward, hands loose but ready.
Three figures emerged from the gloom beyond the cordon, silhouetted against the greying morning light. The lead was unmistakable—tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a charcoal wool coat that cost more than my flat and looked entirely immune to the grime of Riverforge.
Darian Morrow.
“Detective Lennox. Detective Rowan.”
Darian Morrow’s voice cut through the damp air like a scalpel.
I turned to face him. He stood just inside the warehouse entrance, flanked by two women.
He seemed absurdly out of place in Riverforge—a human in his mid-fifties whose immaculate tailoring and mirror-polished shoes stood in stark contrast to the filthy concrete—but his posture suggested he owned the building, the body, and the air we were breathing.
Chief of the Arcane Compliance Division. The Highspire suits.
Behind him stood Vesper Shade. She moved with the unnerving grace of someone trained to disappear—lithe build, long dark hair, and silver eyes that scanned the warehouse with the precision of a targeting system.
Senior Investigator. Umbrakynn. Ignoring me, she looked at Dane like he was a stain on the floor she hadn’t gotten around to scrubbing yet.
The third figure was younger. Human. Chestnut hair pulled into a loose bun, bright green eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses. Faye Solstice. She clutched a tablet against her chest like a shield, posture hunched as though trying to make herself smaller.
“You can stop logging evidence,” Morrow said, stepping past us, his gaze fixed solely on the sheet covering the body. “This is no longer an MCIU matter.”
“Funny,” I said, moving into his path. “Last I checked, murder was the definition of a major crime.”
“Not when the victim is a magical anomaly. And definitely not when the crime scene creates a dead zone strong enough to wipe the local grid’s sensors.
” Morrow stopped, his dark eyes finally flicking to mine.
They were flat and dismissive. “We’ve been tracking the energy signature for an hour.
We knew about the spike before your dispatch even took the call. ”
He snapped his fingers.
Vesper moved forward, dropping a physical file onto a crate with a dull thud, her eyes were fixed on Dane.
“You’re done here,” she said flatly. “Pack up.”
“You’ve been here two minutes,” Dane growled, muscles bunching. The wolf was close to the surface; heat radiated off him in currents. “You haven’t even seen the body. Or the footage.”
“We don’t need to. We’ve seen the other five.” Morrow gestured to the perimeter. “My team will handle the clean-up. Your cooperation is appreciated, but your presence is… redundant.”
He issued a flat dismissal.
Mira’s knuckles whitened against the edge of her workstation. “I haven’t finished my preliminary —“
“The ACD thanks you for your service, technician.” Morrow turned his back on us, effectively ending the conversation. “Vesper, secure the perimeter. Faye, get the containment unit. I want the evidence sealed before it destabilises any further.”
Morrow’s dismissal sat like lead in my gut.
The ACD had arrived with a speed that bordered on the prophetic, a sure sign that the whispers at HQ were right—Highspire’s grip on the Division was tightening into a chokehold.
They weren’t here to investigate; they were here to sanitise.
Dozens of Calysteri had been reported missing, and likely double that number had vanished without a soul to raise the alarm.
Now six people were dead, and with Talia, the killer had finally achieved the impossible—a clinical hollowing of a soul.
This was a graduation, a predator refining its technique while the bureaucrats focused on ‘containment’ and political optics.
If I stepped back now, Talia’s death would vanish into a classified archive, buried by the same big-fish corruption that was currently paralysing the police force.
The scar continued its constant ache, a stubborn tug of recognition that refused to let me walk away.
I’d spent too many years on the docks to let a suit in expensive wool wave a hand and erase a murder.
This was my city, my case, and the vacuum pulling at my chest told me I was the only one left who actually cared about the light that had been stolen.
Faye hurried past us towards the evidence crate where Mira left the bag, but as she reached for it, her gaze landed on the laptop screen. The video feed was gone, replaced by a high-resolution close-up of the victim’s forearm.
She stopped.
Her eyes darted from the screen to the shard in the bag, and then to the sheet covering Talia’s arm.
“The sigil pattern,” Faye’s voice was barely audible. The colour drained from her face. “It matches.”
She looked up, eyes wide and terrified, meeting mine for a split second before darting to Morrow’s back.
“Chief,” she stammered. “The geometry… it resembles the archived patterns from the old Purge Cases. The unsolved ones. It’s identical.”
The air in the warehouse went dead still.
Morrow spun around. His expression hadn’t changed, but his silence was suddenly razor-edged. “Matches what, Miss Solstice?”
“The ‘Purge Cases’… the cold case,” Faye swallowed, shrinking beneath the weight of his attention. “From twenty years back. The burn mark. It’s a direct correlation.”
My heart gave a hard, irregular beat. ‘Purge Cases’, the name sounded familiar.
“Coincidence,” Morrow repeated, the word rolling off his tongue like a stone. “Yes. Most likely.”
He walked over to her, looming. He kept his voice low, a razor-edged whisper that carried more threat than a shout.
“Speculation is a luxury we avoid, Faye. We process. If you find a correlation in the approved archives, you may file a report. Until then, keep the investigation clear of ghost stories.”
He stared at her until she nodded, looking like she might be sick.
“Pack it up,” Morrow ordered. “And Faye? Take the Detectives’ statements before they leave. I want their arrival times and observations logged before they step off the property.”
He turned back to the body, dismissing her. The lie was smooth, practised; he didn’t even blink. Faye had struck a nerve. He knew exactly what that sigil meant, and he had just silenced her in front of witnesses.
Vesper moved past Dane, deliberately checking his shoulder with hers. She reached for the laptop, her hand hovering over the lid.
“Log them out, Faye,” Vesper said, voice like grinding glass. “And make it quick.”
Faye snapped the laptop shut, killing the glitching image. She turned to us, face drained, and steered us towards the exit as a flimsy shield against Morrow’s icy stare.
Every instinct I had screamed to plant my feet and demand why he was suppressing the evidence, but the terror in Faye’s eyes held me back.
Pushing him now would only crush her. I allowed her to herd me out, keeping my gaze fixed on Morrow’s back—marking him as an obstacle rather than an authority.
The ACD was trying to erase the truth, and I was the only one left to stop them.
“Badge,” she whispered, holding up her tablet with a trembling hand. “I need the transfer codes.”
I tapped my badge against the reader. The device chimed—a cheerful, bureaucratic sound, obscene in the damp warehouse.
“I’m sorry,” Faye breathed, the words rushing out as she hurriedly tapped the screen. She glanced back at Morrow, who was already barking orders at the containment team. “I… I had to. When the Director sees a code like this, he… he closes ranks. He stops listening.”
“He’s burying it, Faye,” Dane said, voice rough. “You know that.”
She hesitated, eyes meeting mine behind the wire-rimmed glasses. The fear there was genuine. “He’s… managing it. That’s what the ACD does.”
She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
“Faye!” Vesper’s voice cracked like a whip from across the warehouse.
Faye jumped. She shoved a digital receipt into my hand.
“You’re processed out,” she said, voice pitching up to a professional, if shaky, register. “Please vacate the scene immediately.”
She turned and hurried back towards the safety of the perimeter without looking back.
“She’s terrified,” Dane murmured, watching her go.
“She’s not the only one,” I said, pocketing the receipt. “If the ACD is this rattled, then the timeline is tighter than we thought. We need to get to the station before Morrow locks us out completely.”
We stepped out into the daylight, and the storm hit us instantly. The reprieve inside the warehouse had been a lie; out here, the rain was torrential, hammering against the corrugated iron roofs of the docks with a deafening industrial roar.
The storm had dragged the sky from morning grey back to slate-black. The river smelled of oil and churned-up mud.
Mira was waiting by the cordon line, leaning against the side of her van, water streaming off her coat. She was furiously packing her kit, slamming lids shut with unnecessary force, ignoring the rain soaking her auburn hair flat to her skull. She spotted us and marched over, face tight with rage.
“They locked me out,” she snapped. “Remote kill-switch. As soon as Faye logged the device seizure, my tablet went black. They scrubbed the local cache.”
“Did the upload finish?” I asked, stomach tightening.
“The shard analysis? Yes. I got the server confirmation a second before the link died.” She grimaced, tossing a useless cable into the van. “But the video… Selene, the file was too big. It stalled at forty percent. We lost the footage.”
I cursed under my breath. We had the data on the metal, but we lost the visual proof of the void.
“It’s not a total loss,” Dane said. “We saw it. We know what to look for.”
“And we know where to look,” I added. “The police archives. Faye gave us the timeline. The ‘Purge Cases’ from two decades back.”
“Then we go to the station,” Dane said, opening his car door. “We pull everything we can find in that window before Morrow realises we’re looking for it.”
I nodded, moving towards the passenger side of the car. I reached for the door handle.
And then I stopped.
The air shifted.
A sudden, vicious hook snagged the centre of my chest.
A pull.
It hooked behind my ribs like a barb, dragging me backward. Gut-deep pain radiated up my left arm to the scar.
My heart stuttered. The sensation was demanding. It wanted me to turn around. It wanted me to find the source.
I scanned the yard. The uniforms near the cordon were talking quietly. The perimeter was empty. Just shadows, shipping containers, and the oily slick of the river.
But the pull sharpened. It wasn’t just eyes on me; it was a tether snapping into place. A pressure, ancient and heavy, slid down my spine.
My breath caught. The hair on my arms stood up.
“Selene?”
Dane’s voice cut through the fog. I glanced over. His hand was on the car door, but he paused, watching me. His amber gaze narrowed, scanning my face, then the empty lot behind me.
“You all right?”
“Fine.” The lie tasted sour. I forced my feet to move, fighting the drag of that invisible tether. “Just… a chill. Let’s go.”
He didn’t buy it. He scanned the shadows between the warehouses one last time, his hunter’s instincts catching onto my tension. But there was nothing there to see. Just the empty morning and the stillness.
I slid into the passenger seat, the heavy door thudding shut to seal us in. But as Dane started the engine, I glanced in the wing mirror.
The warehouse entrance was empty. Just shadows and fog.
But the pain in the scar didn’t fade, and the pull remained—an invisible chain in my chest, dragging me towards something I couldn’t yet see.