Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQKDFDHJAGR1DD53GP8HRW

Detective Harlow Quinn paused at the mouth of the abandoned Tube stairwell, her booted feet stirring dust motes in the stale London air. The dim vault of the old Camden station yawned before her, flickering fluorescents overhead casting blotchy pallor across graffiti-scarred tiles. A faint pulse of murmured bartering drifted from deeper in the tunnels—voices too hushed to make out, punctuated by the scrape of crates on concrete. This was the Veil Market tonight: a black market of enchantments and banned lore, shifting like a specter to a new location every full moon. Quinn’s mastiff posture remained rigid, shoulders squared, leather watch snug around her left wrist. She inhaled, tasting damp stone and something more metallic—blood, she suspected, or the echo of it. Behind her, a lanky figure in a threadbare overcoat tugged at a satchel strap. Eva Kowalski adjusted her round glasses, green eyes wide beneath curls of red hair. Quinn didn’t wait for an invitation. She descended the final steps and followed the echoing voices down a corridor lined with metal stalls. Vendors had packed away most wares—brass talismans, phials of writhing ichor, dusty tomes—leaving only six feet of open space around one stall draped in tattered velvet. A yellow police cordon bisected the tunnel; ghostly bodies of uniformed officers stood at its perimeter, nodding when Quinn produced her badge. The body lay face-down in the center of the stall’s cleared zone. The man’s cloak—a midnight blue weave that somehow absorbed ambient light—had parted to reveal a suit stained in blossom-shaped splatters of crimson. Quinn crouched, scanning. The tunnel roof curved low here; steel girders arched overhead. Faint runes, drawn in chalk, traced an inverted triangle around the corpse. Blood had pooled along the chalk lines, darkening them. She dropped to one knee, fingers poised over the mahogany floor tile. The man’s hair shone black, damp in places that weren’t blood. She touched the nape of his neck: skin was warm but slipping cool under bruising. Ligature marks circled like a noose. “He was strangled,” Quinn said softly, standing and brushing dust from her trousers. She flicked her jawline against stubble of frustration—another ritualistic murder? She met Eva’s gaze. “Your binding-runic theory doesn’t hold. These chalk marks look staged.” Eva’s lips parted. She tucked a curl behind her left ear, nervous habit, and pressed forward. “But Detective, look at the charcoal inlay. That sheen—it’s nightshade root powder, consecrated under a lunar eclipse.” She tipped a small sample vial from her satchel, the dust settling into filigree on her palm. “Whoever did this meant to summon or bind a spirit. The noose was part of the rite.” Quinn stood, arms folded. She watched vendors and buyers drift past the cordon beyond, their eyes flicking but their voices hushed. In three strides she reached the man’s shoes—Oxford brogues polished so dark they were almost black. Tiny flecks of verdigris powder speckled the laces, dull green. She knelt again and pried one shoe free, revealing a brass compass face stitched into the sole. The petite disc lay flush, its needle quivering toward the back wall. “A Veil Compass,” Eva murmured as Quinn popped the casing open. The brass was mottled with green patina. Sigils etched across its face shone in the flickering light. The needle spun wildly, then locked pointing at a jagged seam in the tiled wall. Eva’s glasses caught the reflection. “It’s attuned to supernatural energy—picks up rifts and portals.” Quinn’s chest tightened. DS Morris had carried one of these once. The compass had gone mad just before he... Before he vanished. She bit the corner of her lip and traced the compass needle with her gaze. The seam it aimed at was narrow, nearly invisible where two tile edges misaligned. She leaned in. “Eva, help me.” Gently, Quinn pressed her fingertips against the tile seam. A click sounded, a panel shifting inward. Dust motes swirled beneath her fingers as the wall slid open just enough for her to peer inside. A flicker of shifting color—violet and black streamers, like oil on water. The hum of energy thrummed against Quinn’s chest. She straightened. “See that? Not a spirit bound here. Someone’s using a portal.” She gestured to the runes scrawled around the body. “They staged the chalk to cover up murder. This wasn’t ritual. It was a setup to distract from the real crime.” Eva’s brows knitted. “But why?” she whispered. “If they wanted to open the rift, why kill him? And leave him here, obvious?” “Because,” Quinn said, rising, “he was the distraction. The real target was whatever lies beyond this portal. They needed time—enough to stabilize the breach. The corpse forced us to look at the runes, not the wall.” She walked the perimeter of the cordoned zone. Three yellow tags marked pieces of charcoal and iron filings along the tile edge—evidence collected by junior officers. None had noticed the seam. Quinn’s watch beeped softly; she checked the screen: five missed texts from CID Headquarters, three more from a number she didn’t know. She ignored all of them. Her gaze snapped to an overhead duct. A faint trail of fine powder led up and out of the stall. She followed it, elbowing past uniformed officers. Eva trailed her. “That dust—verdigris? From the compass casing?” “More like slag from the portal’s energy discharge.” Quinn nodded at the powder tracing up the wall, swirling into a ventilation grate. A moment later, a draft sighed back, cold and distant. Quinn jammed her gloved hand into the grate and felt ridges of metal coil inside. “They ran cables or tubing through here to siphon energies. Maybe to power an alchemical engine aboveground.” Eva pressed closer. “But that requires equipment—someone hauling generators into the market, unseen by vendors?” Quinn licked her lips. “Or someone who traded for it here. Only place that deals in banned contraptions.” She turned, scanning other stalls. Most lay empty; a few lingering merchants squared shoulders at the police cordon, their eyes flicking between Quinn and the body. She cleared her throat. “Open the perimeter. I want every stall searched for cables, for arc generators. And tap into ventilation camera feeds. See who entered here last night.” Eva bit her lip. “This isn’t just murder. It’s smuggling supernatural energy. If the breach grows—” “I know.” Quinn fitted the compass back into her breast pocket. The brass warmed against her chest. “And I’m not letting it.” She paused at the body, knelt again, inspecting the chalk. The lines converged at a single point on the man’s spine. She traced that arcane crease with a fingertip. “Whoever drew these wanted to pin the focus on the spine—to claim the corpse was animated postmortem.” Eva’s breath caught. “Like a revenant.” “Exactly.” Quinn looked up at her friend’s pale face. “A diversion. The real crime is the portal. And this man—he was a courier. Knew too much, or maybe carrying something through. They silenced him.” Eva tapped her satchel anxiously. “What do we do?” Quinn rose, brushing dust from her knees. “Get me a list of every item sold at the Market tonight. Names, descriptions—especially alchemical devices. And cross-reference with any known missing equipment from private collections.” She reached into her coat and extracted a small bone token, polished smooth. “This grant me access. You’ll need one, too, if we’re going deeper.” Eva’s eyes widened at the token. “You carry one?” Quinn flipped it in her palm. “I got this from Morris’s locker. We never found where he took it. Now I know why he kept it.” Thunder rumbled somewhere aboveground. The market’s fluorescent lights flickered. Quinn looked back at the rift behind the displaced tile panel. Violet tendrils of energy rippled in the seam. She felt a cold itch at her scalp. Her partner’s disappearance bloomed in her memory: the same hum, the same shattered tile edges. She pressed a finger to the compass in her pocket; the sigils on its face gleamed faintly. “You ready?” she asked Eva. Eva nodded, swallowing. She tugged her satchel upright. “Let’s close that rift.” Quinn holstered her professionalism and squared her shoulders. “And find whoever’s behind it. Let them bring supernatural forces into the city. I’ll end it.” Above them, the corridor lights stuttered out, plunging the Veil Market into partial darkness. Voices hushed, footsteps retreated. In the gloom, two women moved toward the silent breach—one with the precision of a soldier, the other with the knowledge of ancient rites. Between them lay a fracture in reality and the truth of a murder buried beneath misdirection. Quinn took a deep breath, felt the weight of the compass and the bone token against her chest, and stepped forward.