Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMPB4SDD28PM17EWBC1AJTZ

Detective Harlow Quinn navigated the dimly lit corridors of the abandoned Tube station beneath Camden, her sharp jaw clenched as she absorbed the murmur of hushed conversations and the stench of damp earth. A lone technician hovered around the main area, snapping photos and collecting evidence, while Detective Quinn's colleague, DS Natalie Santos, hovered beside her, eyes scanning the space with an air of unease. "You sure you trust her with this, Harlow?" Natalie asked, nodding toward the Veil Market's eccentric crowd. Harlow's gaze flicked toward the market stalls, which seemed to sprout from the Tube station's brick walls like fungal growths. "We need eyes on this, and Santos' insights. She's got a good head for this sort of thing." Natalie wrinkled her nose, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her own behind her ear in a fleeting gesture that gave her away as nervous. "You know I'm with you, Harlow, but I think she's right about this one. This place...it's not what it seems." Natalie indicated a young couple huddled near the edge of the market, watching the investigation with glassy, anxious eyes. They clutched a small, intricately carved box between them, gazing into it as if hoping to find solace within. "What do you see?" Harlow inquired, drawn in by Natalie's tone. Natalie hesitated before squinting at the couple, frowning. "I see a couple in their early twenties, in love or at least in an unhealthy fixated on each other. They're clutching some sort of... offering, for lack of a better term." Harlow's eyes narrowed as she examined the couple more closely. On the box itself, etched into the surface in elegant, curved script, she spotted something that her years on the force hadn't prepared her for: a small, faint sigil that thrummed with power, seemingly in synchrony with the couple's own auras. Sigils at a homicide scene did not scream "abnormal" to Harlow; they screamed "crisis and panic from someone close by, perhaps emotionally close." She made a mental note to ask around about who these folks were. Behind them, her eyes drifted toward the crowd. The mix of hooded, cloaked figures swarmed and intermingled with the more innocuous-looking tourists, with a selection of clearly occult adept inns who lounged about, eyeing the crowd like they might be spotting potential conquests in some dirty alley, instead of a crime scene. "Who's got the brass?" a tall hooded person was calling out, as the air vibrated with an insistent resonance. Across the lot from her, where she spotted a small market stall with some of those odd shapes she swore were brass wind-chimes scattered across it, a couple with their own wind chimes' odd sort of symmetry shook from an expensive looking brass box. Natalie seemed to share her distaste with the layout and composition of these "stalls." She stepped closer, peering at one of these strange-silvershot mosaics. "These symbols, the way the light on them would...seems about more like what you'd see at an alchemist's operation." There was absolutely no missing anything regarding these unusual shapes in the way she would've. "One of my old habits still insists a miasmic connection between the symbols," she said with a gesture toward their arrangement amidst other shiny products to pass time, which seemed to come in an astonishing array, from gems to exotics potions—essences were an assortment of things to get. "Eva thinks it smells like opium" and shook her head at Harlow's stare. "Her research isn't confirmed, for now—okay but a rough sketch is that it has the properties of an empathic lure. Flick one you do something inside you." Harlow shifted her gaze to the victims, searching for confirmation. Harlow’s watch beeps at her wrist and her eyes go to see the green light tell her. Not over, you’re still on the case. "Find out where they sourced this sh—where exactly in this space these items came from," Harlow directed Natalie with a command. Next, one's nose leads out toward a small stall on the far end of the market whose wares appeared surprisingly related: artifacts both natural and enchanted. "Eva, do you remember anything? What specifics did these dealers you're helping give you?"