---
Monarioli never sleeps, but sometimes it stops breathing.
At two in the morning, a single scream tore through the silence of "Shadow Quarter." It was sharp and sudden, like the ripping of an old silk garment. Within minutes, blue police lights were pounding against the eroded facades of the buildings, turning the narrow street into a distorted theater of clashing colors. The neighbors stood behind their windows, faces pale behind grimy glass, watching in silence. In Monarioli, silence is the only currency that buys you another day of life.
Orpheus did not look at the crowds. He made his way through the yellow tape swaying in the cold wind. His long gray coat flapped behind him, loose woolen threads from the cuffs brushing against his slightly trembling fingers. The cold was not the reason; anticipation was.
"Late as usual, Orpheus."
Irene's voice was sharp, cutting through the low hum of police radios. She stood at the building's entrance, her hand on her holster, her eyes scanning the alley behind him before she looked at him. She was not just a partner; she was his only wall of protection in this city that devoured strangers.
"The city was crowded with ghosts tonight," he answered in a low voice, stepping past her toward the wooden staircase that groaned under every step.
"Save your philosophy for the prosecutor," Irene replied as she followed him. "The victim is inside. And it's ugly. Ugly even by your standards."
The room was narrow, smelling of metallic blood mingled with the dampness of the walls. The victim sat on a chair in the middle, as though waiting for a guest who never arrived. A man in his forties, wearing a cheap suit, his tie pulled so tight it nearly choked him. But his face… his face was a bloody message. The mouth was slit from ear to ear in a perpetual, horrific smile, and the eyes… two dark, empty sockets.
Orpheus stopped. The familiar dizziness crept to the base of his skull. He knelt beside the corpse, his right hand hovering over the cold forehead of the man.
"Don't do it now," Irene warned, noticing the tremor of his index finger around the ring of his father's old watch. "You haven't slept in two days. The 'Echo' will destroy you."
He ignored her. He placed his fingertips on the pale skin.
The world exploded inside his mind.
The "Echo of the Past" was not a clear video tape. It was a chaotic nightmare, fragmented images pounding his consciousness without mercy. He saw shadows dancing, heard a woman's distant weeping, then saw the knife… a small curved sickle glinting under the light of a broken lamp. He did not see the killer's face, only his hand wearing a black leather glove, moving with sickening slowness as it sliced through the skin.
Orpheus felt the pain. Not his own pain, but an echo of the victim's. A silent scream erupted in his mind, tearing through his senses. Then, in a fleeting moment amid the visual chaos, he saw something strange: the killer whispered in the victim's ear, then placed something in his breast pocket before leaving.
Orpheus pulled back abruptly, falling backward gasping, cold sweat soaking his forehead. Silence filled the room, but for Orpheus, the silence was absolute. He had temporarily lost his hearing—the usual price for such an intense vision.
Irene was there, gripping his shoulder firmly, her lips moving but he heard nothing. He closed his eyes, waiting for the world to return. After seconds, a faint ringing began to seep back into his ears, then Irene's worried voice:
"…Orpheus! Can you hear me?"
"I saw him," he said in a hoarse voice. "There were two at first… then the killer. He put something in his pocket. An envelope or a letter."
Irene stepped back, looking at him with a strange expression. It was not pity; it was confrontation.
"Impossible," she said coldly, gesturing toward the victim's body. "We searched the corpse minutes before you arrived. The pockets are completely empty. There was no envelope."
Orpheus frowned. "I saw it clearly, Irene. He put it there after he finished with the eyes."
"Maybe you saw what the killer wanted you to see," Irene replied, walking toward the back wall. "Or maybe your 'Echo' is starting to betray you. Look here."
She shone her flashlight on the wall. There, written very slowly in dark red ink: "One."
"The killer didn't put anything in his pocket," Irene continued, picking something off the floor with metal tweezers. "He took something. Look at this trace."
She showed him a small piece of torn leather, not from the victim's suit, but appearing to be part of an old glove. "I found this under the chair, far from the victim's reach. The killer stumbled or lost his balance here. If he were the 'artist' you think he is, he wouldn't have left this behind."
Orpheus felt a stab of doubt. Had the vision been misleading? Was the pain so intense he had begun to imagine details that never happened?
"The number one…" Orpheus muttered, ignoring her doubts for the moment. "It doesn't just point to the first victim. It points to the beginning of a series."
"I know," Irene said, placing the piece of leather in an evidence bag. "But if you rely on confused visions while the killer leaves physical evidence we ignore, we'll never reach number two."
Orpheus descended the stairs, his steps heavy. Outside, under Monarioli's gray sky, he lit a cigarette. He did not smoke it; he only let the smoke rise to veil his pale face. He felt failure, not because he hadn't caught the killer, but because his only anchor in this world—his ability—was beginning to waver.
Irene stood beside him. She did not bite her lower lip as usual; instead, she was looking at the street with defiance.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"We wait," Orpheus answered, stamping out the cigarette with his heel. "But this time, I won't rely only on my eyes."
Irene looked at him, and in her eyes was a glint he had never seen before. "Good. Because I found something else you didn't see in your 'Echo.' The killer didn't leave through the door, Orpheus. He was still in the building when the first police car arrived."
Orpheus froze. The cold in Monarioli suddenly became harsher.
"How do you know?"
Irene pulled a small device from her pocket—a recording device belonging to the victim. "Because the recording didn't stop until I entered the room. And the breathing heard on it wasn't the victim's."
Orpheus looked at the dark building behind him. The number one was not the end; it was merely an invitation to a bloody party, and it seemed the killer was still watching them from one of those shattered windows.
"So," Orpheus whispered, "the hunt has truly begun."