Some cases are never closed. They just fester… waiting for someone stupid enough to reopen them.
The old freight elevator groaned and shuddered as it creaked upward, rattling against its rusty rails like an arthritic giant. Quinn leaned back into the corner, arms crossed tight over her chest. Her trench coat, once a clean slate of charcoal black, was now dusted with glittering shards of shattered mirror. She picked a piece out of her hair with a grimace.
"I can't believe you made a pact with Mirror Demon Barbie," she muttered, her voice dripping disbelief. "Do you at least get a loyalty card for this stuff? 'Every fifth soul pact, your sixth is free'?"
Asher didn't rise to the bait.
He flexed his hand absently, feeling the phantom tingle of Lirieth's touch still imprinted into his skin. The glowing brand on his palm had faded to a low, sullen heat—like embers refusing to die out. Not active. Not aggressive. But undeniably there.
A warning.Or a promise.Maybe both.
Lirieth was quiet now. Dormant, perhaps. Yet Asher could sense her presence lurking just beyond his thoughts, sprawled out across the landscape of his mind like a cat that had claimed the warmest patch of sun. Watching. Waiting. Smirking.
The elevator jolted one final time and dinged open with a mechanical chirp that felt almost cruel in its cheerfulness.
The city greeted them with all the grimy affection of a lover with too many secrets. Neon signs flickered in the misty darkness, their reflections warping in rain puddles. Trash pirouetted on lazy alleyway gusts. Sirens wailed somewhere far off, a hollow, feral sound.
Noir had never looked this humid.
Quinn's comms buzzed sharply, yanking them back to reality.
She tapped the earpiece, grimacing as she listened. "Dispatch says there's been another one. Warehouse 17, District 4. Same symbol as the masks." She paused. "Burned into the concrete this time."
Asher stepped out onto the wet pavement, pulling his jacket tighter around him. His boots splashed into a small puddle, sending ripples across a reflection of broken neon.
"Public message," he said, voice low. "They're escalating."
"They?" Quinn shot him a sidelong glance as they moved toward her battered cruiser. "Please don't tell me there's a cult now. Because I really don't have the caffeine reserves for a cult."
Asher didn't answer.
Not because he didn't know——but because he did.
The cruiser's interior smelled like cheap coffee, half-eaten fast food, and something underneath it all—an old sadness that no amount of air freshener could scrub out. The scent of late nights and lost causes. Asher didn't mind it.
It smelled like home.
--------------------------------------------
Warehouse 17 — District 4
The moment they crossed the threshold into the warehouse, Asher felt it:The wrongness.
It wasn't just the smell—metallic, acrid, thick enough to stick to your teeth—it was the silence. The heavy, unnatural silence that swallowed even their footsteps. The kind of quiet that predators love.
The scene looked staged. Theatrical.
A wide-open expanse of concrete floor, framed by crumbling support beams and flickering LED torches that threw jittery shadows against the walls. In the very center, tied to a corroded iron pillar, was a man.
Or what was left of him.
His chest had been carved open with surgical precision. Ribs split apart like rotten wood, organs exposed to the stuttering light. It was brutal. Intimate.
Quinn cursed under her breath and turned slightly away, jaw tightening.
Asher didn't move.His eyes were fixed upward.
Above the corpse, burned into the concrete with some kind of chemical fire, was a symbol—a sigil, old and angular, full of spirals that hurt to look at too long. It was the same symbol etched onto Asher's palm… except inverted. And this time, it wasn't inert.
It bled.
Not paint.Not ink.Bled.
Dark, slow-moving rivulets seeped out from the lines of the glyph, pooling at the man's bare feet like an offering.
Asher stepped closer, the torches throwing his elongated shadow over the scene. He ignored the way his stomach clenched. Ignored the way the runes beneath his skin itched.
Details mattered.
The victim's clothes were neatly folded to one side. No ID. No wallet. Hands bound behind him with surgical tubing.
And tucked into the slack, broken mouth—
A photograph.
Asher knelt, careful not to touch anything, and plucked it free with two fingers.
It was old. Creased from being folded and refolded. Water-damaged around the edges.
The photo showed a girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, standing in front of a run-down arcade. Messy hair, wide grin missing a front tooth, hoodie sleeves too long for her arms.
His sister.
Asher's vision tunneled. The background sounds of Quinn moving, the torches flickering, even his own heartbeat—all of it blurred into static.
It couldn't be.It shouldn't be.
She was gone.She had been gone for years.
Long enough that every logical part of him had packed away the grief, boxed it up, labeled it "unsolved accident," and buried it six feet under his memories.
But here she was.
A dead man.A bleeding sigil.And a photo of a ghost he never stopped missing.
-------------------------------
Asher's hands trembled.
Not from fear.From clarity.
The mask on his belt pulsed once—hungry, eager.
And inside his mind, Lirieth stirred.
Her voice spilled into his thoughts, honeyed and sharp, a dagger wrapped in silk:
"Ready to remember what you tried so hard to forget, darling?"
Asher closed his eyes against the rising tide inside him.
But it was already too late.
The past had its claws in him again—and this time, it wasn't letting go.
[End Of Chapter 34]
---------------------------------------
Next Chapter Preview:Chapter 35 – Dead Girls and False GodsAsher is dragged back into a cold case he tried desperately to leave buried—the disappearance of his sister, long ruled an accident. But the deeper he digs, the more twisted the truth becomes. Whispers of dead gods and forbidden rites weave through the city's underbelly… and Lirieth is only too happy to help. For a price.