There were certain things Lysska had come to both loathe and grudgingly appreciate during her formative years in the lower district of Varkaigrad. After all, it was a place so tangled and treacherous it could twist even the straightest of spines into survivalists or well… corpses.

  The upper-district folk, with their manicured hands and perfumed disdain, had given it a name, dripping with condescension: Shadow’s Warren. A fitting title, she thought, for the district's labyrinthine sprawl of sagging shanties and narrow alleys teeming with those allegedly too poor to afford even the middling misery of the middle district. Here, poverty wasn’t just a lack of coin but a predator that hunted in packs: hunger, despair, and betrayal.

  Lysska adjusted a stray strand of dark hair in the cracked mirror beside her ground-floor window—her perch overlooking the winding streets below. This was her “office,” such as it was, where she offered her services as a self-proclaimed detective. The title lent a veneer of respectability to her otherwise questionable activities, and the coins it brought in weren’t unwelcome either. In Shadow’s Warren, every coin earned came at someone else’s expense. She was simply better at stacking her expenses on other people’s backs.

  Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, the corners of her lips curving into a faint smile, as if she could hear some distant, secret melody carried on the wind. She couldn’t, of course—not literally—but there was always music to the chaos if you knew how to listen.

  The notes were the shouts of hagglers in the market. The scrape of boots on cobblestones. The muffled whispers of deals struck in shadowed alcoves. Lysska had long since learned to play her part in this cacophony, her ears and eyes attuned to it all, not unlike a spider in the middle of its web.

  A volcanic groan erupted behind her.

  “WHISPER! I’M BORED!”

  Lysska turned, slow as a blade being unsheathed, and pinned her “apprentice” with a look that could curdle milk. Vyra—a hurricane in fox-form—was flopped across the moth-eaten sofa, tossing a grubby ball of twine at the ceiling. Her ears twitched with the restless energy of a squirrel.

  “Vyra,” Lysska drawled, voice smoother than a grave digger’s shovel, “how many times must I carve this into your skull? Whisper stays in the shadows. Use it in the light, and we’ll be picking new names in the morgue.”

  “But Whisper’s got flair!” Vyra lobbed the ball harder, narrowly avoiding a hanging lamp that hadn’t worked since the last plague. “Sounds like a ghost who steals secrets. Lysska just sounds like a sneeze.”

  “Ah, yes. Because Vyra—a name that literally means ‘chaos’—is the pinnacle of subtlety.”

  “Exactly! I’m aspirational.” The girl grinned, all teeth and trouble. “You’re just…crunchy.”

  Lysska’s eyebrow arched. “Crunchy.”

  “Y’know. Like a burnt biscuit. All ‘ooh, mystery’ on the outside, but really just bitter and hard to swallow.”

  “Remind me why I haven’t sold you to the circus yet?”

  “Because no one else tolerates your tragic lack of joie de vivre.” Vyra flopped backward, tail flicking like a metronome counting down to disaster. “Also, I’m adorable.”

  Vyra wilted under Lysska’s glacial stare, her fox ears flattening like guilty flags. “C’mon, who’s even listening?” she muttered, picking at a loose thread on the sofa. “The roaches? The ghosts?”

  Lysska’s smile was a sickle. “The roaches are the ghosts. They’ve seen more murders than the enforcers.” She tapped her temple, her voice dropping to a velvet snarl. “Assume every wall has ears, every puddle has eyes, and every shadow’s got a price. That’s how you live past twenty in this gutter.”

  Even as she spoke, her consciousness split like fractured glass. Through the greasy lens of a crow’s gaze, she watched the market square—a butcher haggling over rat-meat, a beggar’s coinpurse vanishing into a urchin’s sleeve. Beneath her boots, another feathered sentinel tracked the slosh-slosh of a pickpocket wading through sewage, while a third crow circled high, mapping the Warren’s jagged skyline.

  Her murder, she called them—not a flock, but a jury of spies. A lucky stroke of enlightenment had provided her with these unseen eyes and ears. Now these were her edge in a world where information was the only currency that mattered.

  Of course, Lysska would never share the full extent of her abilities with Vyra—or anyone else, for that matter. Trust was a double-edged blade in a city like Varkaigrad, where loyalty was a currency spent far too quickly. A hint here, a breadcrumb there—that was enough. Anything more, and trust would curdle into expectation, which inevitably soured into disappointment. And disappointment? That led to betrayal, as sure as the sun rose over the upper districts.

  She reached beneath the counter, pulling out a stack of ink-stained papers that begged for her attention. Records to review, leads to follow, discrepancies to resolve—a detective’s work was never glamorous. Especially in Varkaigrad, where every solved mystery seemed to unravel into three new ones, each more tangled than the last. Care was not just a virtue here; it was a survival skill.

  And lately, something was stirring. Lysska could feel it in the air, in the whispers exchanged in darkened alleys and the wary glances traded across crowded squares. Questions stacked upon questions, each answer revealing another layer of rot beneath the surface. It was the sort of storm that could rip through the city like a wild beast, and Lysska intended to be ready when it hit. More importantly, she needed to ensure the few people she cared about didn’t end up as collateral damage. In a city of millions, it was far too easy to become a nameless casualty—forgotten and useless, swept away in the tide of chaos.

  Her gaze flicked across the room, taking in her office. It certainly symbolized Lysska’s pragmatism and Vyra’s lack of it. Two mismatched, lumpy sofas dominated the center of the room, their stuffing escaping in tufts. The counter by the window served as both workspace and barrier, separating Lysska from the street outside. To one side, a cramped kitchen offered little more than a sputtering stove and a stack of unwashed dishes. Vyra lounged on one of the sofas, her lanky form draped across it like an abandoned marionette, tossing her ball in increasingly elaborate arcs.

  “Do you ever do anything useful?” Lysska asked, her eyes still scanning the papers in her hand.

  Vyra snatched the ball from the air, her ears twitching like annoyed metronomes. “Useful is boring,” she declared, as if sentencing the word to the gallows. “Exciting’s got spice. When do we ignite something?” Her tail lashed—then froze. “Wait! Venom. You promised we’d recruit that poison-happy cinnamon bun!”

  Lysska’s smile was a blade balanced on its edge. “She’s on the menu,” she said, setting down her papers. “But that girl is not a stray you beckon with sausages. Approach wrong, and she’ll fillet your goodwill like a trout.”

  “So… we wait?” Vyra flopped back, exasperated. “Waiting’s just dying with extra steps.”

  “Patience isn’t virtue—it’s bait.” Lysska leaned back, chair creaking like a hanged man’s swing. “She went fang-first at Iron’s crew. That’s either suicidal or strategic. Either way, she’ll circle back. Hungry things always do.”

  Her gaze drifted to the window. Truthfully, Lysska was intrigued. Venom wasn’t just a potential recruit; she was a puzzle, waiting to be solved. Lysska trusted her instincts, and her instincts told her this girl was more than just another street-level brawler.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “She’ll come,” Lysska murmured, more to the shadows than Vyra. “And when she does, we’ll see if she’s a spark or a fuse.”

  Vyra snorted. “You’re insufferably sure. Ever considered a career in fortune-telling? ‘Madame Lysska, Mistress of the Obvious!’”

  “Doubt’s a luxury,” Lysska said, flicking a dried tea stain off her sleeve. “We’re in the discount district, darling. We barter in certainty.”

  “Ugh. Your metaphors need a funeral.” Vyra lobbed the ball at a cockroach scuttling up the wall. “Define ‘exciting,’ then. If it’s not alley shankings or sewer surprises—”

  “—it’s staying alive,” Lysska cut in, voice sharp as a garrote. “Excitement’s a pyre, Vyra. Stand too close, and you’ll burn. Dance too long, and you’ll choke on the smoke.”

  Vyra rolled her eyes so hard her skull rattled. “Drama queen.”

  “Says the girl who named her axe Sparkles.”

  The truth was, Lysska got it. She really did. Vyra’s restlessness was a tangible thing, buzzing around the room like an insect you couldn’t swat. But the past few days? They’d been what Lysska generously labeled as eventful.

  First, there was Iron and his gang, who’d started shifting into their beast forms with a disturbing frequency and even more disturbing recklessness. Subtlety? Not on their agenda. They were picking fights with every other gang in town, trampling on the unspoken rule to keep their chaos under wraps. Then there was that strange incident in the market square—some attack that didn’t add up. And the disappearances? Fifty children gone from the lower district, snatched up like smoke.

  Also the Elven ambassador from Lithrindel, supposedly cozying up to the FrostFang sect’s ruling family—one of the five who held the reins of Varkaigrad. The city was a stew of unrest, bubbling just shy of boiling over.

  And as if that wasn’t enough, shadows from Lysska’s own past had started slinking into the picture. She and Vyra had been running for a while now, fleeing a life they’d both outgrown and barely survived. The organization that had once trained them, molded them, turned them into tools—it was resurfacing. And Lysska had burned more than one bridge with them, running off with a few of their tightly held secrets in the process.

  She shook her head, snapping herself out of it. As long as they kept their heads down and their presence as inconspicuous as a whisper, they could stay ahead of trouble. She had the upper hand here in Varkaigrad. Years of careful groundwork had given her an advantage.

  On the surface, she was just a clever detective. A dogged investigator who knew how to dig where it hurt. But beneath that mask? She was Whisper, a member of a gang that moved like smoke through the city’s underbelly. That name came with its own weight, its own set of complications. Juggling her double life took skill, cunning, and a flirtation with luck. Fortunately, Lysska had all three in spades, or so she liked to believe. Luck, though? That one was a capricious partner.

  “Quiet’s a gift,” she said, quill scratching across a report about the third missing child this week. “Enjoy the hush. The storm’s always louder when you hear it coming.”

  As if summoned by her words, the faint chime of the bell above the office door rang. Lysska’s head snapped up. A figure stumbled inside, hurried and nervous.

  The boy stumbled in like a breathless ghost, no older than fifteen or sixteen. His oversized robe hung loose on his wiry frame, and the round hat perched atop his head didn’t suit him in the slightest. Borrowed? Stolen? Both options danced through Lysska’s mind. Maybe scavenged from someone who wouldn’t be needing it anymore. Another mental note filed away for later.

  But she recognized him—oh, she remembered this scrappy little survivor. She’d helped him once, yanking his sorry hide out of trouble when an Iron Pact enforcer had him cornered for nosing around the wrong places.

  Before Lysska could greet him with some biting remark, the boy blurted out, “Help me!” His voice came in a frantic hiss, and only then did Lysska notice his face—flushed, panting, fear bleeding into his wide eyes.

  Vyra leapt from the sofa, tension snapping through her like a taut wire.

  Lysska’s gaze flicked upward, catching a murder of crows circling in the distance. Through the eyes of the flock, she spotted the threat—a lone enforcer cutting a direct path toward her shop. Well, wasn’t that convenient?

  With a resigned sigh, Lysska turned to Vyra and signed for her to move.

  Vyra grabbed the boy, hauling him toward the back of the office. She shoved him into the farthest closet and slammed it shut. A quick thread of mana sparked to life, activating the runes etched into the doorframe.

  Moments later, the front door swung open with an ominous creak. No knock, no hesitation. A man stepped in, carried by a hovering sword like he had someplace far more important to be. His flowing blue robes screamed self-importance, and the Force spell he used to let himself in announced he wasn’t big on formalities. His face was all hard angles and disdain, carved out of pure arrogance.

  Enforcer.

  Lysska rose, her smile a honed blade. “Welcome to Luminous Inquiries,” she purred, the shop’s lie dripping like honey. “Lost? Robbed? Or just here to admire the décor? How may I help you?”

  The man sneered at her, the kind of expression reserved for something you’d scrape off your shoe. His eyes swept the room, and it was clear he expected to find filth—just by glaring hard enough.

  “Keeping that mouth of yours shut,” he spat, “would be a start.” He brushed past her, his shoulder clipping hers—a calculated insult.

  Lysska’s smile didn’t falter, but internally she rolled her eyes hard enough to rattle her skull. Ancestors, the arrogance. Iron Pact enforcers were a special breed of audacious, especially in the Lower District. Strutting in here like he owned the place, alone, without a hint of backup? Bold move. A move that would’ve had him groveling if she were still Whisper, not Detective Lysska. Too bad for him. Too bad for her, too, because this charade of hers had its limits. Patience, she chided. Detectives don’t disembowel guests. Usually.

  Vyra bristled at his tone, but Lysska placed a hand on her shoulder, steadying her before the girl could snap. Vyra pouted but stayed put.

  “Sir,” Lysska crooned, “let’s not let posture overshadow purpose. What exactly are you hunting?” She flicked her council badge onto the counter, its gilded seal catching the dim light. “Official business, of course. We’re all law-abiding citizens here.”

  The enforcer glanced at the badge as if it were a rat turd. “A boy,” he barked. “Fifteen. Sixteen. Dressed like a gutter-born fool. He came here.” His hovering sword drifted closer, its edge humming with restrained violence. “Hand him over, and I’ll let you keep your tongues. For now.”

  Lysska tilted her head, smile sharpening to a scalpel’s edge. “How magnanimous. But alas, my ledger’s full of missing socks and cheating spouses—not wayward urchins. Perhaps you’ve… misplaced your quarry?”

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” he roared, spittle flying.

  Lysska’s tongue flicked over her lips, her patience wearing thin. One wrong move and this man wouldn’t walk out of here alive. But no—this wasn’t the time. There was too much she didn’t know yet, and her every instinct screamed to tread carefully.

  A flicker of mana rippled through her, and her eyes glowed faintly crimson as she assessed him. His core blazed in her vision—yellow. Mid-yellow, if she had to guess. She frowned inwardly. That explained his overconfidence. New to the district, maybe? Someone who only operated in the cushy Upper District, where danger wore silken gloves. That’d explain the disdain—the utter lack of awareness of just how much peril lurked in these streets.

  The enforcer stalked the room, robes hissing as he upturned crates and kicked aside debris with performative disgust. He crouched to peer under the stove—as if the boy were a lost teaspoon—then flung open the closet door with a flourish.

  Nothing. Just stacks of yellowed case files and Vyra’s half-eaten jam sandwich.

  His jaw tightened, and a frustrated growl escaped him. With a glare sharp enough to slice glass, he spun on his heel and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

  The moment the shop settled into silence, Lysska exhaled, her smirk returning as she glanced at Vyra. “See? Told you the quiet wouldn’t last.”

  The crows above tilted their heads, black eyes gleaming as they watched the enforcer’s figure shrink into the distance. Only when he was well out of earshot did Lysska let out another subtle pulse of mana. The runes on the closet door shimmered faintly before fading away, their magic dispelling with a soft hum.

  The boy stumbled out, coughing and panting like he’d just sprinted through a battlefield. Not that Lysska could blame him—those enchantments weren’t exactly designed with human comfort in mind. Once activated, they sealed off the inside space completely, swapping it for an isolated dimension. Perfect for hiding secrets, less so for, you know, breathing.

  Lysska folded her arms, looking him over with a sharp, unimpressed gaze. “Well, well. We meet again. Although I’d have preferred a reunion with fewer theatrics.”

  The boy opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get a word in, Lysska’s expression shifted. Her eyes glazed slightly, her focus slipping elsewhere, as if she were hearing something beyond the room. A second later, the glassy look vanished, her sharp gaze snapping back to him.

  “We’re going to have a little chat when I return,” she said curtly. “For now, stay here. Lay low. Vyra—entertain our guest.”

  Vyra grinned, producing a deck of cards edged in what looked suspiciously like dried blood. “Ever played ‘Knifejack’? You’ll love Rule Three: Amputations are wild.”

  The boy’s whimper was cut short as Lysska swept toward the door. Her steps were quick, her movements deliberate. “I’ve got urgent business to attend to,” she called over her shoulder.

  The boy blinked at her, confused. “Wait, where are you going?”

  Lysska didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Her thoughts were already miles ahead.

  Miss elusive Venom had finally decided to crawl out of her hole.

  +16 Adv. Chapters on Patreon!!

  Jeremy