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“That’s a strong word.”

“Accurate word,” Sully added.

The laugh that almost escaped me felt strange in my chest. Rusty. Unused. Dangerous.

So, I did what I had always done when feeling too much became a liability. I started working the case.

I dragged the oil rig sketch closer and forced myself to stop looking at it like a grave marker.

Magic had built the cage. Magic had opened the door. Magic had dragged me into Hell.

But Magic did not build an offshore drilling platform.

Everyone looked at me.

“Someone paid for the steel,” I said. “Someone shipped the equipment. Someone falsified the manifests. Keevandrie may have designed the trap, but she didn’t operate an oil company.”

Guy’s eyes sharpened. Bernie went still in that distinctly dangerous way scholars did right before they found the rotten beam holding up the whole house.

“Before the explosion, I copied supply numbers,” I continued. “Shipping codes. Company markings. Official-looking seals stamped where they shouldn’t have been. I knew something was wrong before I knew what kind of wrong I was standing in.”

“Those reports should have gone back to the Dragon Guard,” Guy said.

“And the Texas Rangers,” I said. “Assuming the copies ever made it into the archives. After a century, I’d wager they’re ash by now.”

Carrick’s answer came immediately. “They’re not.”

The words hit me harder than they should have.

Carrick’s voice softened by half a degree. “Knox MacAllen was presumed murdered in the line of duty. His final investigative packet was archived in both Texas Ranger and Dragon Guard records. I can access the Guard’s copy.”

For one breath, I could not speak. My own investigation had outlived me.

“Pull one identifier,” I said, my voice rougher than I wanted it. “Not the whole archive. Not yet. Give me one thing I can chase.”

The communication spell hummed. Light shifted above the table, collapsing Carrick’s diagram into a thin column of text and symbols pulled from a century-old manifest record.

Most of it was ordinary industrial noise. Freight weight. Hull reinforcement. Pressure valves. Steel lattice sections. Then Carrick enlarged a single mark stamped beside one shipment of “subsea stabilizers.”

A crescent hook through a three-pronged crown.

Bernie’s entire face changed.

Guy saw it. So did I.

“What?” I asked.

Bernie stared at the old shipping mark as if it had reached across a hundred years and wrapped one cold hand around her throat. “That belonged to one of my father’s operations.”

Silence took the room by the throat.

I already knew the name before Guy said it.

Fogarty T. Petersen.

I looked at my brother. “The same bastard who put you in Arrhythmia?”

Guy’s expression went flat. “Yeah.”