The address whispered from my lips as I walked, each syllable fading into the winter air, dissolving with my breath. My steps echoed off the narrow cobblestones, the lamps lining the street casting thin halos of jaundiced light across the brick facades.

  Outer Rim. Inner layers. Close enough to the wall that the air smelled faintly cleaner, but not far enough to matter.

  The building finally appeared ahead of me - three stories, old wood framing swallowed by weather-stained brick. It looked… familiar. Almost the same as mine. Same crooked windows. Same peeling paint. Same ghosts hiding in the halls.

  I leaned against the lamppost outside, my flat cap pulled low, and lit a cigarette. The flame sparked against my face, then flickered away. I exhaled slowly, watching the smoke twist into the night before vanishing. My eyes bled faint red beneath the shadow of the brim.

  No detail escaped me.

  Workers trudged past, shoulders hunched, coats threadbare. Men and women, mostly alone, carrying themselves like bodies dragged behind them invisible chains. Lower-middle class, maybe upper-working. One-bedroom lives. The kind of people who lived day to day, paycheck to paycheck, prayer to prayer. No one carried divine resonance. No sparks of power, no subtle glow of gifted bloodlines. Just tired faces, ground down to the bone.

  As the cigarette burned out, I dropped it and crushed it beneath my heel. A wry smile tugged my lips.

  “I should start calling myself Sherlock at this rate.”

  The cracked stairwell groaned under my boots as I climbed. Third floor. Dim hall. The air smelled of damp wood and boiled cabbage. I stopped at the door, numbers scratched away like they’d been ashamed to exist.

  The knock went in the pattern scrawled on the note. Once. Twice. Pause. Once again.

  The latch scraped. The door creaked open.

  A man stood in the shadows of the threshold, his cloak worn thin, hood drawn low to swallow his face.

  We stared. Neither moved.

  Click.

  The bulge in my jacket wasn’t fabric - it was iron. The revolver pressed forward, the barrel nestled just under his ribs.

  “I don’t know you,” the man said. His voice was low, neutral, careful.

  “Correct,” I said evenly. I nudged him back with the gun. “But I’d like to get to know you, if you would be so kind?”

  I stepped in, shutting the door behind me with my free hand, sliding the bolt across. The lock clicked into place. Shadows swirled faintly at the corners of the room, restless.

  The revolver tilted up as I pulled it out of my jacket, steady against his hood. “Sit.”

  He didn’t. Instead, his lips curled faintly beneath the shadow. “You look a bit young to be mugging people.”

  I didn’t blink. “Not mugging. Just information.”

  The man exhaled softly, shoulders easing back just a little bit. “Information’s a trade. I deal in it. For a price.”

  “How much would it cost,” I asked, voice flat, “to reveal who’s been feeding Halrigg his weapons. And his words.”

  A pause. His hood dipped slightly. “That would be against company policy.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The dark bronze iron of my revolver gleamed in the faint moonlight.

  “Even with a gun pointed at your head?”

  The silence was heavier now. He shifted a step back.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said, voice quieter now, more careful.

  My finger tightened on the trigger. I stepped closer. “Don’t move.”

  But then-

  My heel sank. Just barely. A hollow creak groaned beneath me.

  Floorboard.

  I swore under my breath.

  "Fuck."

  And in the same breath, the world turned white.

  Smoke hissed up through the cracks, flooding the room, thick and suffocating.

  My shadows thrashed in agitation as the walls vanished into the haze.

  The smoke clawed at my throat, bitter and stinging. I shoved through, revolver raised, shadows snapping in agitation at my feet.

  Then - a gust.

  The haze split, funneled toward the open window. Curtains thrashed violently in the night wind, moonlight spilling silver across the floor.

  He was gone.

  “Shit.”

  I vaulted the sill, boots skidding against the rooftop tiles.

  There - a darting shadow ahead. Cloak flaring, leaping from one building to the next like the city was his playground.

  I sprinted after him.

  Tile to tile. Beam to beam. The rooftops blurred beneath my boots, frost scattering in glittering arcs. Chimneys loomed, smoke billowing into my face, but I pushed on.

  He was fast. Too fast. His movements weren’t desperate - they were practised. Deliberate. Like he’d run these paths a hundred times.

  I clenched my jaw, forcing my legs to pump harder.

  We vaulted narrow gaps. Dropped onto lower roofs. Scrambled up again. Each movement was reckless, but calculated. He was leading me.

  And then, suddenly - he dropped.

  I skidded to a halt at the edge of the roof. He had vaulted down into the street below, scattering through a small crowd of late-night workers leaving a tavern. Shouts erupted as he shoved past them, weaving through the press of bodies.

  I swore and leapt down after him. My boots cracked against cobblestones, knees jolting from the impact. People cursed, some shouted, but I shoved through, shadows coiling instinctively to clear a path.

  There - his cloak vanishing into a narrow alley.

  I darted after him, my revolver raised for half a second - finger tense - but stopped myself. Not yet. Killing him would leave nothing but a corpse. I needed answers, not another body.

  He turned sharply, slipping into the side door of a cramped house.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  I slammed the door open and barreled inside. A family scattered - a woman shrieking, a man clutching a poker, two children darting behind a table. I ignored them, bolting after the fleeing cloak as it darted up the stairs.

  “Sorry!” I barked over my shoulder, bounding two steps at a time.

  He burst through an upper window, shattering glass, and pulled himself back onto the roofs.

  I followed - glass slicing my palms as I vaulted after him, night wind biting sharp against my face.

  Back on the rooftops now. Higher, faster. The chase climbed toward its crescendo. My breaths burned, boots thundering against shingles as he pulled further ahead.

  And then I heard it.

  A whistle.

  A screech of steel.

  I looked left - and my stomach dropped.

  Train tracks cut through the district, the locomotive roaring forward on top of lower buildings, its stack belching smoke into the stars. The lanterns along its cars streaked like fireflies as it thundered past.

  The cloaked figure didn’t slow. He sprinted toward the edge of the rooftop, cloak snapping like wings.

  “Don’t you dare-!”

  He leapt.

  For a second, his silhouette was suspended against the moonlight. Then he landed atop one of the train cars with impossible precision, cloak flaring as the train carried him forward.

  I skidded to a stop at the rooftop’s edge, gravel scattering beneath my boots. The heat of the engine scorched my face as the train roared below, just out of reach.

  He turned towards me. Just enough for me to see beneath the hood.

  A mask.

  White porcelain. Painted with a sad clown’s face. A single black tear beneath the left eye.

  My breath hitched.

  His hand rose, calm, deliberate. And he pointed - not to me, but towards his side pocket.

  I reached into my coat pocket, confused. My fingers brushed parchment.

  “…What the hell?”

  I pulled it free. An envelope. Marked with the same single black tear.

  By the time I looked back up, he was already vanishing into the night, carried away by the train.

  I tore the envelope open. Jagged script sprawled across the page, uneven, almost childlike:

  The piggies follow the grain trail gleefully, yet stumble to the slaughterhouse unknowingly.

  At the bottom - a crude sketch. A man crucified upside down, mouth stretched impossibly in a silent scream.

  “…What the fuck.”

  My reflection glared back at me from a cracked shop window, eyes rimmed red beneath the brim of my cap. I didn’t understand a single thing that had just happened.

  The letter trembled in my palm, its edges stained with my blood. They were feeding us breadcrumbs. And if my hunch was right, whoever tossed them was leading the herd straight to the slaughterhouse.

  I looked out toward the train’s smokestack, where the rails ran to the city’s outskirts. Moonlight bled through the haze, pretty as a lie.

  Pretty or not, my head was a storm.

  I was being watched.