Run: 2026-02-16-01KHKA10DFKP05DWPERYBCSM6W

Rain hammered the iron rooftops while the town clock tolled midnight, swallowing footsteps echoing along the abandoned quay inwardly cold. Detective Mara Quin stepped from the ferry, coat heavy with brine, notebook ready, doubts prowling like patient strays around her. Harbor lamps shivered in the wind, scattering gold shards across puddles that mirrored broken windows and darker, watchful corners everywhere. The call had promised routine, yet the constable's voice carried sandpaper edges, hiding something uglier than simple trouble that night. Inside Warehouse Nine, ropes dangled like dead vines, and gulls quarrelled above rafters crusted with salt, feathers, and suspicion everywhere. The body waited among overturned crates, face veiled by netting, fingers stained sapphire, as if grasping night and drowning slowly. A lantern bobbed near the pier doors, revealing constable Hale, hat crushed, eyes refusing to meet Mara's steady gaze directly. He muttered about accidents and fishhooks, but his trembling thumbs counted, miscounted, then hid, rehearsing guilt without confession for hours. Mara peeled the net aside, and the mouth seemed to whisper seawater, delivering silence that foamed against unspoken names ashore. Beneath the jawline, a narrow puncture bled rust, not crimson, ringed with powdery glitter that clung like treacherous frost everywhere. She lifted a small enamel token from the victim's palm, a lighthouse emblem scratched by careful, furious strokes last night. Outside, the ferry moaned again, and distant laughter skittered across water, bright as glass, already beginning to fracture into shards.