Greyveil's Hollow Docks reeked of salt and rot. Once, warships had launched from here, black steel cutting into the ocean. Now, it was a graveyard of rusted hulls and half-sunken barges, the kind of place where secrets sank deep and never floated back up.
Detective Aric Vale walked the narrow planks with his coat collar raised, the matchbox from the stranger heavy in his pocket. "The files aren't gone. They're buried." Her words gnawed at him with every step.
The docks were alive despite their ruin. Ragged fishermen shouted prices for their catches that were more bones than flesh. Children with soot-stained faces darted between crates, eyes sharp for pockets to cut. A crippled veteran sat on an overturned barrel, selling war medals for a bite of bread.
Each face was a story. Each story was another reminder—the war might have ended, but no one here had escaped it.
At the end of the pier, a shadow waited. The woman from his office, scarf still masking half her face. She didn't wave, didn't smile. Just gestured for him to follow.
Aric's hand brushed against the revolver hidden under his coat.
She led him into a broken warehouse where the walls still bore scorch marks. Inside, a fire crackled in a rusted oil drum, around which a small circle of people gathered.
That's when Aric realized—she wasn't alone.
A gaunt activist girl, no older than twenty, her voice raw as she handed out smudged pamphlets.
A crippled veteran with one leg, polishing a knife as though it were the only thing keeping him alive.
A thin, sharp-eyed street thief, flipping a coin with practiced grace, eyes always calculating.
And the woman herself, who finally pulled her scarf away to reveal tired but unyielding eyes.
"This is the Circle," she said. "We don't trust each other. But we all lost something to the same lie."
The activist stepped forward, fire in her eyes. "Your sister knew. She died because she was close. If you're really her blood, you'll help finish it."
Aric stared at them. A ragged band of survivors, liars, and broken souls. Each with scars. Each with motive.
He should have walked away. He should have burned the pamphlet, closed his door, and kept to cheap whiskey and simpler cases.
Instead, he found himself saying, "Show me what she found."
The warehouse went silent. Then the veteran tossed a folder onto the firelight. Stamped with the government seal, half its pages were charred. But not all.
On the visible sheet, Aric read a line that made his blood run cold:
"Civilian losses reclassified as 'resource reallocations.'"
The war hadn't just been fought. It had been rewritten.
And his sister had died for trying to correct the record.