Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQS3G970W3T412YENXP7ZY

The air in the abandoned Tube station was thick with the smell of damp limestone, ozone, and something cloyingly sweet, like rotting fruit. Detective Harlow Quinn descended the concrete steps, her boots echoing in the cavernous space. Above, the familiar red circle of the London Underground logo was peeling, faded by decades of neglect. This wasn't a place for commuters anymore. This was the Veil Market. Flickering lights, no more than captured fireflies in glass jars, illuminated a chaotic bazaar set up between the rusting tracks. Stalls of mismatched wood and scrap metal displayed glowing fungi, chattering skulls, and bottles of swirling liquid that promised forgotten memories. It was a madhouse, and Quinn moved through it with the military precision that had been carved into her over two decades of service. Her destination was a stall near the far end of the platform, cordoned off by a shimmering, translucent ribbon of light that hummed with a low energy. A uniformed officer stood guard, looking profoundly uncomfortable. Quinn ignored him. Her focus was on the woman already inside the cordon, kneeling beside the wreckage of a small, overturned table. Eva Kowalski. Quinn recognized her from the file. Curly red hair, round glasses perched on a freckled nose, a worn leather satchel that looked like it contained half the Bodleian Library. The occult researcher. Of course, she’d be here. This was her world. “Kowalski,” Quinn said, her voice flat. Eva flinched, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture Quinn had already noted in the profile. “Detective Quinn. Thank you for coming.” She gestured to the scene. “It’s just as I reported. Silas is gone.” Quinn’s eyes swept the stall. It was a mess. Shattered glass crunched under her soles. A collection of silver rings was scattered across the grimy tiles like discarded coins. In the center of the devastation, a single item lay conspicuously untouched: a small brass compass, its casing green with a patina of verdigris. The face was etched with intricate sigils Quinn didn’t recognize. She knelt, her worn leather watch scraping against her wrist as she reached out but didn't touch it. “Silas Vane,” Quinn stated, more for her own benefit than Eva’s. “The stallholder. Presumed missing.” “Yes. Vanished. Wiped clean,” Eva said, her voice a hushed, reverent whisper. “There’s no residual energy, no trace of a banishing spell. It’s… empty.” “Empty,” Quinn repeated, tasting the word. She saw a crime scene. Eva saw a magical vacuum. “What’s your theory, Kowalski?” Eva stood, brushing dust from her trousers. “It had to be a Shade. One of the Deep Folk. They’re drawn to objects of power. Maybe Silas cheated one in a deal. The stall is wrecked, but look—the Compass is still here. A Shade wouldn't care for it; they’d want the soul, the essence. They would have taken him and left the trinkets.” Quinn grunted, a noncommittal sound. She rose to her feet, her gaze methodically cataloging every detail. The overturned table. The shattered glass. The scattered rings. She walked a slow perimeter around the stall, her eyes fixed on the ground. The floor of the station was layered with grime, but here, the dust had been disturbed. She saw scuff marks, smears, the chaotic aftermath of a struggle. Eva saw magic. Quinn saw a fight. “His soul was taken,” Eva insisted, following her with anxious eyes. “That’s the only explanation. No one just disappears from the Market. The protections are too strong. You can’t just walk out.” “Someone did,” Quinn said softly. She stopped, pointing a gloved finger at a dark streak near the edge of the cordon. “What’s that?” Eva peered at it. “I don’t know. Scorch mark? Maybe from an elemental blast?” Quinn knelt again, closer this time. She pulled a small evidence pouch from her coat pocket and tweezed a tiny, frayed fiber from the streak. It was dark green, coarse, and smelled faintly of nylon. “It’s not scorch,” she said, holding it up. “It’s synthetic rope. Frayed. From a struggle.” Eva frowned, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Rope? What would… that doesn’t make any sense. Who would bring rope here?” “Someone who isn’t a Shade,” Quinn countered, her voice sharp. She stood and walked back to the center of the stall, her eyes now fixed on the Compass. “You said a Shade wouldn’t care for this. That they’d take the soul and leave the trinkets.” “Yes, that’s right. It’s a Veil Compass. It points to rifts. Valuable, but not to them.” “Then why is the stall a wreck?” Quinn asked, gesturing at the chaos. “If this was a clean, magical extraction, why knock everything over? Why the struggle?” She looked at Eva, her brown eyes hard and unyielding. “A thief. A human thief. They wanted the Compass.” “But the protections…” Eva began, but her voice faltered. “Can be bypassed,” Quinn finished. “Or broken. Our perp came prepared. They knew what they wanted, and they knew Silas Vane was the weak link. They probably used the rope to restrain him, to drag him away. He struggled, knocked over the table. The thief got what they came for and then realized the protections on the exit would tag them. So they left the Compass behind. Too hot to handle with the Market’s security alerted.” It was a narrative. A human, messy, greedy narrative. It fit the evidence. The scuff marks. The frayed rope. The overturned table. Eva looked from the frayed fiber in Quinn’s glove to the scattered silver rings, her expression one of dawning horror. The magical explanation was so much cleaner, so much more fantastical. The idea of a simple, brutal mugging in this place of wonder was somehow more terrifying. “But… where would they have taken him?” Eva whispered. Quinn’s gaze drifted towards the dark mouth of the service tunnel at the end of the platform. A place the Market’s pretty lights didn’t reach. “Somewhere they could question him. Find out how to disable the protections on the Compass for good.” She looked back at the small brass object, sitting innocently in the wreckage. The needle wasn’t pointing north. It was spinning, slowly, erratically, as if searching for something that wasn’t there. She had solved the immediate puzzle. This wasn’t a supernatural event. It was a crime. A human crime, in an inhuman place. And that meant the rules she understood still applied. motive, means, opportunity. But as she looked at the spinning needle of the Veil Compass, a cold dread settled in her gut. A human was brave enough, or stupid enough, to commit violence here. To steal from the Veil Market. What else were they capable of? And what, she wondered, had they really taken from Silas Vane?