We left the industrial sprawl behind, architecture shifting from the iron ribs of the docks to the cold geometry of the Skybridge District where Headquarters sat. Glass and steel rose around us like teeth, neon bleeding weak colours into the storm. The air tastedflatter here, emptier; magic didn't cling to these buildings, it slid right off. Dane noticed the shift too—his muscles tightened the moment we crossed into the district. Shifters hated the sterility, but Calysteri felt it differently: like someone had muffled the world.
To drown out the lingering burn in my shoulder and the questions crowding my mind, I fixed my attention on the rain-washed window. Tucked between two towering monoliths of steel and tinted glass, a crumbling Calysteri shrine sat forgotten on the wet pavement. A single, struggling candle cast a weak orange glow against the weathered stone, a fragile spark fighting the downpour. It stood as a stubborn reminder of the tales Eamon used to tell me. He spoke of an Aurathen before the concrete, a time when gods walked the earth and people built grand temples to sustain the world's magic through sheer devotion. Now, the shrines stood abandoned, and the city's magic thinned out a little more each year. It left behind nothing but a fading residue in the bloodlines of the few who remained.
The history books had long lost the truth of how that magic originally divided among us. Today, humanity claimed the vast majority of the city, running the modern sprawl with mundane authority while keeping a cautious, well-armed distance from the gifted minorities. The Calysteri carried our emotional attunement like an exposed nerve, a quiet legacy passed through the generations. The Varkyn channelled their shifter heritage into strict pack discipline, taking on the protective, brutal roles the city demanded. And hovering at the edges were the Umbrakynn, a shadow-touched people commanding absolute mastery over the dimmest, forgotten spaces.
The drone of the engine shifted pitch, pulling my focus away from the rain and back to the confines of the leather seat.
“Traffic’s clear,” Dane said, shifting gears. “We’ll be at the desk before Morrow even files his report.”
I nodded, watching the rain streak the glass. The pain in my shoulder had dulled to a manageable weight, the residue of the shard fading with distance, but the unease in my gut—the memory of thatpull—refused to settle. Whatever was watching us back there was still out there, and I couldn’t shake the feeling it hadn’t stopped looking.
The MCIU floorsmelled of burnt coffee and printer toner—the grim scent of deadlines and bureaucracy. We wove through the bullpen to the tech bay, where Orin’s station glowed in the dim corner. Four screens cascaded with code, magical field models, and half-eaten sandwich wrappers. Orin sat in the middle of it, his lean frame curved over the keyboard. Blue screen-light etched his skin, casting deep shadows across his jaw, while his dark hair stuck up in every direction. He vibrated with caffeine energy until Dane rapped a knuckle on the metal desk and swiped an untouched pastry from the clutter.
Orin startled, nearly knocking over a can of soda. “Bloody hell! Humans deserve a warning, Dane.”
“Just gave you one,” Dane grunted, already swallowing the stolen food in two bites, his Varkyn furnace of a metabolism demanding constant fuel.
“With violence.” Orin spun his chair around, eyes widening. “You two are back early. Riverforge?”
I leaned against the desk, crossing my arms to hide the tremor in my hands. “ACD evicted us. Morrow arrived before we could finish the prelims.”
Orin grimaced. “Of course he did.”
“Mira managed to upload the spectral analysis of a trace metal found at the scene,” I said. “A shard. But the visual feed failed. She said it stalled at forty percent.”
“I know. I was watching the handshake on the server when it died.” Orin’s fingers flew across his keyboard. “The video file is useless—just digital noise. But I pulled the corruption log.”
He tapped a key. A spiked wall of static filled the main screen, grey and lifeless.
“Look at that,” Orin murmured, leaning in, his nose inches from the glass. “That isn’t standard data loss. That’s a dead zone signature.”
“Define that,” Dane said.
Orin spun his chair around. “It’s a vacuum, Dane. Usually, magic leaves a fingerprint—a heat signature, a vibration. But this is an inversion. It devours ambient magic. It swallows physics, too—battery life, electricity, radio waves. Whatever killed that girl drained the entire street along with her.”
“So it’s an artificial void,” I said, the memory of the warehouse stillness pressing against my ears.
“It’s a black hole,” Orin corrected grimly. “And to create one that stable? You’d need an immense power source. Or a very specific catalyst.”
Heavy footsteps approached. The Head of the MCIU, Marcus Hale, marched across the bullpen towards us. Nearing sixty, he anchored a department full of volatile magic. Greying hair framed a face weathered by decades of service. His piercing eyes held an intensity that could still a room without a word.
“Riverforge,” he stated, stopping beside Orin’s desk.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “ACD claimed jurisdiction before we even cleared the threshold.”
Marcus folded his arms. “On what grounds?”
“High-priority energy fluctuation,” Dane said.
“With Talia Merrin, there are now six bodies in total,” I said, squaring my shoulders against his intense stare. “Six Calysteri drained and dumped in the last month. The ACD has been quietly sweeping them up, calling them anomalies. But the last victim was different, sir. She was a void. And she was branded.”
I took a breath, playing the card that I knew would get his attention. “And that brand meant something to them. One of Morrow’s analysts—Faye Solstice—panicked when she saw it. She slipped up and said the sigil’s geometry was an exact match for the ‘Purge Cases’ from twenty years ago.”
“Sir,” I said, gripping the edge of Orin’s metal desk. “Morrow is burying a serial killer to protect his stats. If we walk away now, we’re effectively helping the ACD hide a slaughter. The silent disappearances have turned into bodies. This is an escalating pattern, and I refuse to be the one who hands them the shovel.”
He studied me for a beat too long—weighing, measuring. “You believe this connects to the older cases.”
“Orin,” I said, turning to the tech. “We need you to look them up.”
