Run: 2026-02-20-01KHYA5N83RS82W6JA39C66YDM

The air tasted of rain and something else—something metallic and faintly sweet, like overripe fruit left too long in the sun. Detective Harlow Quinn took a slow, deliberate breath, adjusting the worn leather strap of her watch. The dampness clung to the arched ceiling of the abandoned Tube station, a cold, insistent weight. This wasn’t a crime scene she’d ever encountered in sixteen years on the force. Not by a long shot. The Veil Market was less a scene and more a disregard for the laws of physics and frankly, decency. “Doesn’t exactly scream ‘police procedural’ does it?” Eva Kowalski muttered, her breath puffing out in white clouds as she adjusted her round glasses. Her red hair, as always, was a defiant halo against the gloom. She clutched her leather satchel tighter, a small fortress against the unsettling energy thrumming beneath the concrete. “No,” Quinn agreed, her voice flat. The flickering sodium lamps cast long, distorted shadows across the platform, revealing stalls crammed with the bizarre and the unsettling. Glass cases displayed shimmering powders and intricately carved bone artifacts. A hooded figure offered vials of viscous liquids to a customer, their voice a low murmur lost in the damp air. This was the Veil Market, a black market for the supernatural, and the victim—Mr. Silas Blackwood, a collector of rare grimoires—lay sprawled amongst a pile of discarded spell components. Blackwood’s eyes were wide and vacant, fixed on a point just above the platform’s edge. A single, precise puncture wound marred his forehead. No signs of a struggle, no forced entry. Just…gone. “The wound is too neat,” Quinn stated, kneeling beside the body. She disregarded the grimy stains on the platform and focused on the details—the way the rain had distorted the reflection of the sodium lamps in Blackwood’s eyes, the subtle shift in the ambient temperature around the corpse. “Professional. Someone who knows what they’re doing.” “Maybe he was expecting someone?” Eva offered, her fingers nervously tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. “He collected esoteric texts, after all. Perhaps a disgruntled scholar?” Quinn grunted, carefully examining a small, tarnished object near Blackwood’s hand—a Veil Compass. It was a miniature brass compass, its face etched with a complex array of protective sigils. The needle, a thin sliver of blackened metal, pointed stubbornly upwards, away from the station’s exit. “This wasn’t here before forensics arrived.” “It’s…interesting,” Eva said, stepping closer, her glasses catching the light. “The sigils are quite old. Definitely Shade craftsmanship. They’re designed to navigate rifts, not just record location.” “Shades,” Quinn repeated, the word a dry rasp in her throat. She hadn’t spoken the name aloud in years. It still held a bitter tang of loss, of DS Morris and the inexplicable nightmare that had ended his life. “The Veil Market operates on their terms. This wasn’t a random robbery.” She stood, her movements economical and precise, a military precision honed by years of training and grief. “Check for residue. Any traces of magical manipulation.” Eva quickly retrieved a small sampling kit from her satchel, her movements swift and practiced. "Already on it. There’s a faint shimmer of…residual kinetic energy. Very minimal, but definitely present." “And the bone token?” Quinn asked, gesturing to the entry requirement listed in the codex. “It’s missing.” “Wouldn’t you think someone trying to get into this place would have left a trace?” Eva frowned, her brow furrowed. “This feels...orchestrated. Too clean. Like a performance.” Quinn walked towards a stall selling dried herbs and arcane ingredients, ignoring the proprietor's overly theatrical greeting. The air here was thick with pungent aromas—lavender, myrrh, something acrid and unsettlingly familiar. She examined a small pile of crushed Beetle’s Eye root, a common ingredient in summoning rituals. It was arranged in a neat, deliberate pile, almost as if it had been placed there after the fact. “Crime scene technicians missed this,” she observed, pointing to a nearly invisible smear of iridescent dust on the edge of the stall. "This isn't Beetle's Eye. It's iridescent Nightshade. Used for…minor disruptions. Illusion weaving, mostly." “So, someone used an illusion to funnel Blackwood here?” Eva suggested, her eyes widening. “But why?” “Blackwood collected grimoires,” Quinn said, her voice tightening. “Dangerous grimoires. Books that shouldn't be read. The kind that attract unwanted attention.” She remembered DS Morris’s obsession with forbidden knowledge, the warnings he’d whispered about delving too deep. “I suspect Blackwood stumbled onto something he wasn’t meant to see.” She turned back to the Veil Compass, turning it over in her fingers. The needle continued to point upwards, unwavering. "The Compass isn’t pointing to a rift," she stated, "it's pointing…upwards. Towards the ceiling." Eva followed her gaze, then knelt down, examining the concrete above them. Scratched faintly into the surface, almost imperceptible beneath the grime, were symbols – the same sigils as those on the Veil Compass. “They’ve been layered. Repeatedly.” “Someone was using this space,” Quinn said, her voice low, “as a conduit. A gateway.” Suddenly, a sharp report echoed through the station, followed by a collective gasp from the vendors nearby. A hooded figure, clearly flustered, was attempting to flee through the crowd, clutching a small, leather-bound book. He tripped, dropping the book, and scattering a handful of shimmering dust into the air. Quinn didn’t hesitate. She moved with a speed born of years of training, tackling the fleeing figure to the ground. The man struggled briefly, his face obscured by the deep cowl of his hood, before finally succumbing to her grip. “Identify yourself,” Quinn demanded, pinning him to the damp concrete. The man choked out, “Lysander… Lysander Crowe…I…I just delivered.” As Quinn secured him with handcuffs, Eva knelt beside the dropped book. It was a small, unassuming volume, bound in dark leather and secured with a silver clasp. She carefully opened it, revealing a page filled with precise, unsettling diagrams and stylized script. “This isn’t a grimoire,” she said, her voice filled with a chilling realization. “It’s a blueprint. A schematic…for creating a portal." Quinn glanced up at the ceiling, at the layered sigils, at the Veil Compass relentlessly pointing upwards. The metallic sweetness lingered in the air, stronger now, and she understood. This wasn't just a murder. It was a calculated act of summoning, a desperate attempt to breach something far more dangerous than a black market for enchanted goods. It was an act of opening a door—a door that might not be meant to be opened at all. The rain continued to fall, washing over the Veil Market, a silent testament to the dark secrets hidden beneath London's cobbled streets. And Detective Harlow Quinn knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that her partner’s death was just the beginning.