"Everyone, please step behind the tape!" Officer Martinez shouted as he rolled out the barricade tape.
Still, the crowd surged forward, more people squeezing in and forcing him to physically push them back. Morning traffic crawled along the street bordering the nearby park, engines humming as commuters made their way to work while students in pressed uniforms hurried past on the sidewalks. The smell of fresh coffee drifted from a corner café, mixing faintly with the metallic scent coming from the alley.
Their curiosity was natural—but that didn't stop Martinez from growing irritated.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted someone ducking under the tape.
Here we go, he thought, steeling himself to deal with what was most likely some idiot convinced he was clever enough to slip past unnoticed.
"I said get back!" he barked.
The man didn't even glance at him.
Sergeant Doakes noticed him too. He quickly stepped beside Martinez, giving him a reassuring pat on the back.
"It's alright. He's with us. Let him through."
Martinez studied the man skeptically, struggling to imagine how someone like him could possibly work for the department.
His name was Silas Locke, a magic crime investigator currently under contract with one of the city's powerful Houses. His dress shirt was stained and wrinkled, his tie hung crooked and half undone, and a trench coat draped loosely over his suit despite the mild morning air. The heavy scent of smoke clung to him, and in his hand he thumbed open and closed a worn flip lighter while staring past Martinez, eyes fixed on the blood-stained alley ahead.
Martinez trusted his superior—and frankly, he was relieved it wasn't some random lunatic. He stepped aside.
"Silas… you got here fast," Doakes said, a hint of curiosity in his voice.
"Wasn't sleeping," Silas replied.
He approached the three bodies as forensic technicians worked to zip them into bags. Doakes waved one of them away while Silas crouched for a closer look.
They were from completely different worlds.
Doakes was a detective—he gathered evidence and solved crimes.
Silas investigated magical ones. Wherever he appeared, reality itself had already been wounded… or was about to be.
The bodies lay in the narrow alley between the café and a shuttered antique shop. There were no signs of struggle, no overturned trash, no defensive damage to the surroundings. The men had not fought back.
Each bore puncture wounds.
Not from a bullet, and not from any conventional blade. The wounds were narrow, clean, and impossibly precise. The heart, throat, and spine were all pierced. Each puncture had driven cleanly through layered defensive enchantments, the faint shimmer of broken warding still lingering like evaporating heat.
They had died instantly.
There had been no fight.
Silas hovered his hands inches above the wounds, his expression tightening as he concentrated. He wasn't touching them—he didn't need to. He could sense it.
All magic carried an aura. Silas possessed a rare, innate talent that allowed him to perceive it, something that had shaped the course of his life from the very beginning.
His face went cold.
Doakes felt it immediately and shivered.
"Is… is it him?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"Who else would dare kill three of Blackthorne's men like this?" Silas replied quietly. "I need a smoke."
He scanned for somewhere quieter, somewhere away from the restless murmuring crowd. A bench nearby caught both their eyes.
They sat.
Silas thumbed his lighter and, almost absentmindedly, a cigarette appeared between his lips. He lit it. Another materialized in his hand, which he extended toward Doakes.
"I really don't need this right now," Doakes muttered.
Silas started to pull it back.
"Give me that," Doakes corrected. "I meant this whole mess." Doakes grinned.
Silas exhaled slowly.
"I know. Whoever this is, he's kicking a hornet's nest. The Blackthornes are already accusing the other Houses. If they retaliate—"
"Please," Doakes cut in, rubbing his face. "Don't let there be a war before I retire."
Silas gave a faint, tired smirk.
He complained often about the workload, about how the city never seemed to stop demanding from him, and yet it was the only thing that truly held his attention. He spent sleepless nights chasing leads, surviving on coffee and nicotine, telling himself it was dedication to the job when in truth it also helped keep his mind away from things he preferred not to remember.
Silas knew instinctively the killer wasn't from the other Houses.
But he still couldn't find him.
Magic always left a trace—though some magicians were better than others at covering their tracks.
This was different.
It was as if the spell consumed itself, leaving behind only the faintest echo of its aura.
Silas stared back toward the alley, flicking his lighter open and closed. A pressure built in his chest, and a thought crept in—one he hated.
What if I never solve this?
He had spent the entire night racing across the city chasing dead ends. No rest. No food. Only coffee and nicotine keeping him upright. His eyes were bloodshot, and his eyelids felt heavy.
As he exhaled and his head began to dip—
He felt it.
A jolt of adrenaline ripped through him, instantly burning away the fatigue. Every nerve sharpened.
A faint ripple passed through his awareness, subtle but unmistakable.
There it was again.
A sensation. Familiar.
He focused, scanning.
Doakes watched him, confused.
A girl—no older than sixteen—had just walked past them.
She wore a neatly pressed high school uniform and carried a pink backpack. Headphones covered her ears as she nodded along to music only she could hear.
Silas stood abruptly. His cigarette fell from his lips.
His eyes widened.
"Holy shit."
Doakes rose immediately.
"What is it?"
"A lead," Silas whispered.
His body moved before his mind caught up. He was already following her.
"I'll catch you up later," he called over his shoulder.
The girl remained completely unaware, strolling casually down the sidewalk. Magical energy shimmered faintly around her—a protective spell.
Silas recognized it instantly.
What stunned him was the aura.
It was identical to the one he had sensed in the wounds.
He studied it carefully as he followed at a distance. The protection was sophisticated, far beyond standard defensive magic. Intricate sigils wove through its structure, patterns he had never encountered before.
By any measure, it was master-level magic.
The mana required would have been enormous.
Yet the girl herself had none.
Not a trace.
Any trained magician could sense another by their mana signature, but she felt completely ordinary.
Silas continued after her, his pace measured, his eyes fixed on the faint shimmer of magic surrounding her. He crossed the threshold of the school gates without thinking, his attention locked entirely on the protective spell woven around the girl.
Then he stopped.
Not because of her.
Because of what he felt.
It was subtle at first, like a ripple brushing across the surface of his mind, but within a heartbeat it deepened into something far more invasive. It was as if an unseen presence had reached into his thoughts, sifting—searching—not forcefully, but thoroughly, probing for intent, for purpose, for threat.
Silas' expression hardened as his awareness snapped outward. He looked around, no longer focused on the girl alone, but on the grounds themselves.
The entire school carried the same aura.
Faint traces threaded through the air, embedded in the pavement, clinging to the walls, woven into the very space between structures. Some strands were weak, barely perceptible. Others were stronger. Together they formed something vast.
The entire campus was under protection.
And anyone who stepped onto its grounds entered the magician's territory.
Their presence known. Their intentions weighed.
Silas felt the spell move across his mind again, slipping through the mental barriers he had spent years building. Not breaking them—simply bypassing them, as though they had never been there at all.
He remained still, listening—not with his ears, but with that deeper sense that had guided him through countless investigations.
Then, for the briefest moment, something shifted.
A faint disturbance rippled along the edge of his awareness, so subtle it might have been mistaken for imagination. It did not feel like an attack, nor a warning. More like… acknowledgment.
As if something, somewhere within the spell, had noticed him.
And then—
Nothing.
No pressure. No retaliation. No tightening of the magical field. The vast presence woven through the school returned to stillness, indifferent and unmoving, offering no sign that his intrusion had mattered at all.
Silence.
Silas frowned slightly.
That, more than anything, unsettled him.
A careless caster would have reacted. A cautious one might have tested him. But this… this felt deliberate. Controlled. As though whoever stood behind the spell had noticed him, understood him… and chosen not to act.
Which meant one of two things.
Either Silas was not yet considered a threat.
Or the caster was confident enough that it didn't matter.
Neither possibility sat well with him.
For a brief moment, fear surfaced. If the one who cast this spell chose to act, this lead could vanish instantly.
But the thought didn't hold.
He steadied himself, reasoning through it.
Whatever—or whoever—was being protected here was not something that could simply disappear overnight. Not a spell of this scale. Not protection woven this deeply into the grounds, into the girl, into everything. Whoever stood behind it had invested too much, rooted themselves too firmly.
They could not flee at a moment's notice.
That realization calmed him enough to think clearly.
Information.
He needed more of it.
The school. Its students. Its faculty. The families connected to it. Every name, every record, every thread that might lead back to the one responsible—for the spell on the girl, for the spell on this place… and for the deaths of the Blackthorne men.
Whoever had woven this spell was close.
And now, they knew he was here.
He drew in a slow breath.
Then began chanting.
A communication spell formed around his wrist as faint arcane markings flickered across his skin. He organized the information rapidly, deciding what mattered most.
"Silas, what do you have?" a voice asked from his wrist.
He raised it toward his mouth, eyes fixed on the building as the name finally escaped him.
"I found a lead, sir. I need everything you have on Valemont High School."