Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNG4K2RBY6GAQ6M7JCQ4SCG

The air in the abandoned Tube station was thick with the smell of damp earth, rust, and something else, something metallic and coppery that Harlow Quinn knew all too well. The uniformed officers had cordoned off the platform with the usual yellow tape, their flashlights cutting nervous beams through the oppressive gloom. Their faces were pale, their movements tight. This wasn’t a typical crime scene. Detective Quinn’s worn leather boots made little sound on the grimy tiles as she approached. Her posture was rigid, a habit she’d carried with her from the military, a spine of steel that defied the exhaustion weighing on her shoulders. Her sharp jaw was set, and her brown eyes missed nothing, cataloging the scene with a cold, professional detachment that had taken years to perfect. The body lay near the edge of the platform, half-sprawled as if he’d been trying to climb back up. A man, late twenties, well-dressed in a suit that now looked ridiculously out of place. The cause of death was brutally apparent—a deep, vicious gash across his throat. The pool of blood around him was dark and congealing, stark against the grey concrete. But it was the location that was the real puzzle. Camden Town station had been closed for decades. There was no reason for a city banker to be down here. No way in, unless you knew how to find it. “Detective Quinn.” She turned. Eva Kowalski stood just outside the tape, clutching a worn leather satchel to her chest like a shield. Her curly red hair was a shock of colour in the monochrome decay, her round glasses reflecting the flashlight beams. She was twitching, one hand fluttering up to nervously tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Quinn had requested her presence. When the call came in, mentioning the weird symbols found near the body and the fact that the victim’s pockets were empty except for a small, carved bone token, Eva was the only person she’d thought to call. “Kowalski,” Quinn acknowledged, her voice a low rasp. “What’s your read?” Eva swallowed visibly, her freckled complexion looking wan under the artificial light. “They let me take a quick look before you arrived. It’s… it’s a Veil Market token, Detective. The entry requirement. This place… it’s a location. Or it was. It moves every full moon.” Quinn’s eyes narrowed. The Veil Market. A whisper in the underbelly of the city, a place she’d been trying to pin down for three years. A place that had taken Morris. She glanced at her watch, a habitual gesture, the worn leather strap a familiar comfort. “So he was here for business. Someone didn’t like the deal.” “Maybe,” Eva said, her voice hesitant. She shifted her weight, her satchel—no doubt full of obscure books and notes—bumping against her hip. “But the ritualistic aspects… the symbols chalked near the tracks… they’re not Market. They’re something else. Protective. Warding.” A uniformed sergeant, a young man with a too-eager face, approached them. “Detective? CSIs are ten minutes out. Initial findings are pretty straightforward. Looks like a mugging gone wrong. Probably followed him down here, took his wallet, phone.” Quinn didn’t look at him. Her gaze was fixed on the blood spatter on the wall behind the body. It was all wrong. “A mugging,” she repeated, her tone flat. “Yes, ma’am. High-end watch is still on his wrist. Robbery seems to have been interrupted.” “Or it wasn’t the motive at all,” Quinn murmured, more to herself than to him. She stepped under the tape, ignoring the sergeant’s startled protest. She moved with that military precision, a predator circling its prey. She crouched by the body, careful not to touch anything. The wound was clean. Surgical, almost. Not the work of a panicked thief with a shiv. The force behind it… it would have taken significant strength. The spatter on the wall was a high-velocity mist, but directly behind him. No arterial spray in an arc. He’d been lying down when his throat was cut. Already on the ground. “He wasn’t standing when it happened,” Quinn said, her voice cutting through the murmurs of the other officers. “The blood pattern is all wrong. This was an execution. He was already subdued.” The sergeant frowned. “We found scuff marks over there, near the tracks. Maybe a struggle, he fell, the assailant finished the job.” Quinn’s eyes swept the area he indicated. The scuff marks were there, yes. But they were too neat. Too arranged. She stood and walked over to them, her flashlight beam joining those of the uniforms. The chalk symbols Eva had mentioned were there, faint but unmistakable. They formed a rough circle around the area of the ‘struggle’. Eva had crept closer, peering over the tape. “Those are containment sigils,” she whisperedNot for keeping things out. For keeping something *in*.” Quinn’s mind raced, connecting dots others couldn’t even see. A man with a Market token. A hidden location. Ritual symbols. A kill that was too precise, too strong for a common criminal. She turned back to the body. Something glinted, caught in the fibres of the man’s expensive wool suit coat, near the shoulder. Something that wasn’t blood or dirt. Using a pen from her pocket, she carefully teased it out. It was a sliver of metal. Thin, twisted, with a faint greenish patina. “What is that?” the sergeant asked. Quinn didn’t answer. She held it up to the light. It was brass. A fragment of something old. Eva’s breath hitched. “Detective… can I see?” Quinn handed it over. Eva pulled a small magnifying glass from her satchel, her hands shaking slightly. She examined the fragment, turning it over and over. “Verdigris,” she breathed. “And… and a tiny portion of an etched line. It’s part of a sigil. A very specific one.” She looked up, her green eyes wide behind her glasses, all traces of nervousness replaced by stunned certainty. “This is from a Veil Compass. They’re incredibly rare. Crafted by Shades. The needle doesn’t point north; it points to supernatural energy. Rifts. Portals.” Quinn’s blood went cold. She looked from the fragment in Eva’s hand to the chalk circle on the ground, to the body of the man who had come here to buy or sell something powerful. It wasn’t a mugging. It wasn’t even a simpleMarket dispute. The man hadn’t been attacked for his wallet. He’d been attacked for his compass. The struggle hadn’t been a struggle—it had been a ritual disarming. The killer hadn’t just wanted the object; they had needed to break its power, contain its energy right here, on the spot, with those chalked symbols. The violence was a byproduct. The real crime was theft and desecration. And the killer knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the Market, they knew ritual magic, and they were strong enough to overpower a man and perform a precise, brutal killing as part of the process. “Sergeant,” Quinn said, her voice low and deadly calm. “Cancel the ‘mugging gone wrong’ theory. Get everyone back. I want this entire platform treated as a specialist occult crime scene. No one touches anything until my consultant and I say so.” The sergeant stared at her, confusion and a flicker of doubt on his face. “Occult crime, ma’am? With all due respect—” “With all due respect, Sergeant,” Quinn interrupted, her brown eyes locking onto his, leaving no room for argument, “your crime scene assessment is incomplete. You’re looking at the ‘what’. I’m starting to see the ‘why’. And it changes everything.” She glanced at Eva, who gave a faint, grim nod, the piece of the shattered compass looking like a guilty secret in her palm. Someone out there had a taste for powerful artifacts and no qualms about killing for them. And Harlow Quinn had a feeling this was just the beginning.