Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTR5V90CVH9DK4C077H6S8Y

Quinn’s boots echoed on the cracked platform as she stepped past the rusted turnstiles. The air tasted of damp stone and something metallic, sharp on the tongue. Broken tiles lay in piles, as if a dozen storms had passed through. World War II posters still clung to grimy walls, yellowed paper peeling at the corners. An abandoned Tube station, but something else had moved in. A flicker of torchlight caught on a splintered stall. Quinn crouched at its edge. A body lay face-down, one arm twisted beneath it. A threadbare scarf looped the neck, but no sign of a struggle—no blood trails, no scuff marks. Just stillness. Ramirez hovered. His trench coat brushed the platform. He tapped a forensic kit. “Looks like a robbery gone sideways,” he said. He pointed at a chalk outline tracing the body’s shape. “Someone found the scene, chalked it up, called us in.” Quinn studied the lines. They weren’t random. They arced with careful symmetry, like the wings of a bird mid-flight. Thin grooves etched into the concrete. Chalk dust clung to the edges. No one hand had drawn them. Too precise. She knelt. Fingers gloved, she swept a faint shimmer from the groove. Tiny flakes of green powder settled on her palm. Not chalk. She dropped some onto a slide. The microscope in the van would settle the matter. For now, she swept the rest up in a flexible scoop. Ramirez shucked gloves. “Bird motif. Taggers strike at night. This place became a hotspot when those videos surfaced. A dozen phones caught the gate opening on YouTube.” He tapped his earpiece. “Town send-up. Kids calling it the Veil Market.” Quinn turned her torch—and froze. A low booth beyond the corpse. Its canopy sagged on one hinge. On its counter, nothing but five empty beakers and a scattering of bone chips. She swept the beam over each jar. One held a tiny brass object half-buried in ash. She strode forward, picked it up. The compass sat heavy in her palm. A battered casing flecked with verdigris. A tiny crack ran across the face, where incised symbols formed a circle around the needle. It wobbled, swung north—pulled away by something unseen. She flipped it to catch the overhead lamp. Protective sigils, she recognised from Eva’s dusty manuscripts: inverted triangles, closed circles. Not common graffiti. Ramirez peered. “That a watch?” He reached out. Quinn closed her fist. “Not a watch.” He shrugged. “Compass. Reminds me of my old Boy Scout kit.” She checked the body. Swept her torch under the scarf. A brass pin held it in place, etched with the same symbols as the compass. Someone had dressed this victim. Someone who cared. Ramirez rubbed his jaw. “So we’ve got shady characters dealing in occult knick-knacks, and someone slipped up.” A shiver crawled down Quinn’s spine. She rose, circled the stall. Light from the van’s floodlamp cut shadows across pillars. She caught flickers of movement—distortion in the darkness. She stepped toward a row of seats welded to the wall. A ghost train rumbled overhead, drowning her boots. A drop of water spattered behind her ear. Ramirez peered across the cavernous hall. “We clear for aura reading? Want your friend from the museum yet?” Quinn turned the compass over. The needle jerked sideways, swung back. It wasn’t seeking north. It pointed down the tunnel, beyond the flickering light. She pressed her thumb on the sigil at the base, traced a thin groove. The brass felt warm, alive. She slipped it into an evidence bag. “The body.” She nodded at the corpse. “No natural marks of violence. No bullet, no slit throat. Rotting cord around the scarf looked violent, but I see nothing to cut it.” She knelt again, flicked away the scarf. Pale skin showed tiny ridges in a pattern—slightly raised lines like burn scars, but no burn. No flesh torn. Ramirez bent. “Rigging for a ritual, then. Or torture. That cord? Resin-coated. Smells like pine.” Quinn phoned for forensics to bag the cord. She snapped photos of the raised ridges. Until she saw the floor beneath the body. A circle drawn in chalk around the victim’s head. A hundred tiny symbols ran the circumference—each no bigger than a coin’s edge. She counted one stroke, two strokes, three, four: fifteen glyphs. Ramirez rubbed the toe of his boot on the platform. “More gang symbols. Same crew names we’ve run on turf wars.” She snapped another photo. “Look at the wear. The chalk looks fresh, but the cuts are old. Someone rehashed the pattern.” She traced a line of chalk with a fingertip through a smear of dark liquid. It peeled away like oil paint, not chalk. “And this isn’t chalk.” He stared. “What is it?” “Powdered bone. Human.” She touched the edge of the chalk circle. “I saw bone fragments in those jars. Someone ground up a body part and used it as marking paint. Ritual or intimidation.” She straightened. “That’s why no blood trails. Body processed elsewhere.” Ramirez exhaled. “Christ.” She patted her worn leather watch. It vibrated against her wrist as an alert. She toggled a message. New forensics report from Northumbria: bone shards in the jars matched the fragments under the body. Same victim. Ramirez raised an eyebrow. “Someone moved bits of him from shelf to body.” She pointed at the wall. The yellowed wartime posters. Someone had ripped out a section of plaster near the ceiling. A hidden recess—bricks behind it stained dark. Ramirez wheeled. Hand on his holster. “You think someone stashed him in the wall?” Quinn climbed a rusted ladder someone had left propped on a pillar. She hauled herself into the recess. Broken wall paint, dust, and the sickly green patina of old metal. A small latch at the back. She pressed it. A panel clicked inward. She knelt on beams. Inside: a curved blade, six bone-white fingers, and a ledger bound in leather. She closed the panel. Dropped down. Pressed the side of her hand to her mouth. Ramirez peered over her shoulder. “Victim moved during the night, hidden behind the wall until they—” Quinn held up a finger. “Look.” She shined her torch on the ledger. Lines written in cramped script, pages stained. A column of names, next to each a date. The victim’s name at the bottom. Next to it: next moon. Ramirez ran a finger down the list. “Payment schedule? Dates of transactions?” Quinn shook her head. “Sacrifice dates. Each name vanished on its date. There.” She pointed at a column of glyphs scribbled over each entry. The same symbols on the compass. Same signals on the scarf pin. “These match protective sigils. Whoever did this used protection marks first.” She tapped the wall. “Victim was hidden. They never meant him to be found.” Ramirez laced his fingers. “Why hide it behind a wall then drag him out? Means they wanted someone like us to catch it.” She crouched by the corpse. Picked up the compass tag pinned to the scarf. The brass felt sticky, as if smeared in amber. She pried at the crack along the face. A sliver of glass gave way. Inside, pressed against the needle, a scrap of paper. She pried it loose. Ramirez watched. “What’ve you got?” Quinn unfolded the scrap to reveal letters scrawled in tiny capitals: “The Market shall open when the compass leads. Bone shall pay the toll.” She let it drop. “Someone planned this. They left instructions.” He exhaled. “Commodity selling souls.” She stood, scanning the pitch-black tunnel. The compass in her hand swung, pointed further down. “The compass wasn’t dropped. It’s bait. They want someone to follow.” Ramirez limped forward. “Chasing ghosts in an abandoned tube?” Quinn slipped the scrap into her notebook. “We don’t chase ghosts. We follow leads.” She shone the torch onto the ledger again. “Look at these dates. Tomorrow night is the full moon.” She traced the last entry. Blank under glyphs. “No mark yet. This one’s still due.” He stared down the dark tunnel. “We interrupt the next sacrifice?” She snapped on gloves. “We stop the sale.” She slipped the compass into her satchel. “And find whoever’s behind this.” She stepped toward the tunnel. Torch cutting through shadows. Ramirez followed. Neither spoke again. The walls trembled with distant clamor. The compass needle swung back and forth, settling on a point. Directly ahead. They walked on. The chalk circle behind them faded into darkness. Bones, ledgers, broken booths, all sealed in a web of secrets no one else had seen—until now.