Chapter 3 #2
“One victim found in an alley off the High Street. The report is… sparse. Most of the data is corrupted. No mention of syphoned power, no magical readings logged.” He glanced at his tablet. “But the photos survived. The sigil is there. It’s the same brand, Selene. Identical geometry.”
“Who ran the investigation?” Dane asked.
Orin shook his head. “That’s the other thing. The signature block? It’s gone. Wiped clean. Whoever worked that case… someone wanted to make sure their name wasn’t attached to it anymore.”
“Wiped how?” I asked. “Redacted?”
“Deleted,” Orin corrected. “But they were sloppy with the metadata. They scrubbed the officer’s name, but they left the Unit Citation code.”
He turned the tablet screen towards me.
MCIU-Taskforce-4.
The blood drained from my face. The noise of the station faded.
“Taskforce 4,” I whispered. The memory finally clicked.
“Does that mean something to you?” Dane asked, watching me closely.
“It was Eamon’s squad,” I said, the words tasting like lead. “Twenty years ago. He was the Sergeant of Taskforce 4.”
Orin looked uncomfortable. “Selene… if the name was wiped…”
“Then he didn’t want anyone to know he was there,” I finished.
My stomach twisted. I remembered the weight of those old files on our kitchen table when I was a child.
If the same pattern was returning, it meant the ghosts my father had failed to catch two decades ago were back.
And Darian Morrow was doing everything in his power to make sure we didn’t find out why.
“We need to process the shard data,” I said, my voice mechanical. “Now.”
Footsteps slapped against the linoleum—wet and fast. Mira stormed into the bay, shaking rain from her coat like a wet dog. Her hair was plastered to her skull, and she looked ready to murder someone.
She spotted us and stopped, wiping water from her face.
“There you are,” she snapped. “I’ve been trying to salvage the corrupted video file, but it’s a mess. Please tell me you didn’t just spend the last twenty minutes fighting with the Chief.”
“Better,” I said. “Marcus just gave us authorisation.”
Mira paused. “He did?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “We’re bypassing the ACD blockage on the shard analysis. Legally.”
The rigid line of Mira’s spine softened instantly, replaced by a fierce, predatory smile.
“Good. Because I want to know exactly what kind of metal burns a hole in the world.” She tossed her bag onto a chair and moved to join Orin at the console.
“Move over, Orin. Let’s see what they’re trying to hide. ”
I was about to follow when the lift doors at the far end of the corridor hissed open.
The sound was soft, but the shift in the room was immediate.
The air pressure dropped, popping my ears. A static charge pressed against the back of my neck—the sensation from the warehouse yard, amplified a thousand times.
I turned.
Darian Morrow stepped out first, brisk and purposeful. Vesper followed like his shadow, silver eyes scanning the bullpen with professional detachment. Faye trailed behind them, clutching her tablet like a shield.
And then—the fourth figure appeared.
Everything in me went still. My breath hitched. The air around me simply vanished.
A man moved through the bullpen with a lethal precision—tall, with dark hair pulled back and features as unyielding as carved stone.
He was Umbrakynn; I knew it the second the shadows in the room began to pool at his feet, thick and viscous as spilled ink.
He dominated the cramped, coffee-stained space, consuming the light, turning the air into a suffocating weight.
Seeing him there was like seeing a shark in a tide pool.
Then my brand woke up with an eruption.
Blinding agony tore through the scar tissue, identical to the pain of touching the shard, but deeper—more personal.
A brand pressed fresh against the bone, the heat vibrating in time with a frequency I couldn’t name.
I reached out, my fingers digging into the edge of a desk to anchor myself against the sheer force of his presence.
His gaze swept across the room, indifferent and cold, until it hit me.
Everything stopped. For a heartbeat, something fractured in his expression—a jolt of recognition that stung like an electric current. Then it was gone, buried behind the ice of his pale blue eyes.
He didn’t say a word. He simply turned with the rest of the ACD team and walked towards Marcus’s office.
I watched the stranger follow them inside, his movements fluid and efficient.
The office door closed behind them with a soft, final click, but the pressure in the room didn’t fade. The burn in my shoulder didn’t ease.
“Selene.”
Dane’s hand closed around my wrist—grounding, steady, dragging me back into my own body.
The bullpen snapped back into focus. Mira was staring at me, eyes wide. Orin hovered over his desk.
“Who—“ My voice cracked. “Who the hell was that?”
“Riven Ashborne,” Dane said quietly. “He’s a Private Consultant. Highspire property.”
“Consultant?” I repeated, the word tasting like bile. “Consulting on what?”
“No one knows for sure,” Dane said, his voice grim. “Rumour has it he answers directly to Korenth Vhail. But whatever his job title is… he’s dangerous.”
Korenth Vhail. The name carried the weight of the city’s tallest towers.
He was the architect of Highspire, the man who dictated the atmospheric pressure of the city’s power.
He ran the district as the source of its gravity.
In Ravenholt, Vhail was the absolute power—the shadow that eclipsed everything else.
This man—this consultant—was his hand. He was the blade sent to do Vhail’s bidding and manage the containment of Highspire’s secrets. As the primary instrument of Vhail’s will, he was dangerous and untouchable.
An icy prickle of static moved across my skin, a warning shot fired from my marrow. Riven Ashborne. The name meant nothing, yet my heartbeat spiked again.
“I’ve never seen him before,” I murmured, rubbing the ache in my chest where the strange feeling was still buried. “Not here.”
“He comes and goes,” Dane said, watching the closed door. “Shadows the ACD on the high-profile cases. Usually stands in the back, doesn’t say a word. Easy to miss if you aren’t looking for him. I guess that’s part of his Umbrakynn charm.”
I shook my head, as if that could dislodge the lingering burn. The pull was still there, a ghost tether stretching through the closed door of the Chief’s office, vibrating with a frequency that felt exactly like my own heartbeat.
Coincidence. It had to be. Because the alternative—the one I couldn’t let myself think about—was something I was entirely unready to face.