Run: 2026-02-20-01KHYABA5FNNYJX84CCZWY1EGS

Detective Harlow Quinn ducked through the rusted metal grate marking the abandoned Camden Tube station’s secret entrance. Her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair caught on the grate’s jagged edge; she tugged it free without a flinch. The bone token in her right pocket pressed into her palm—seized from a suspect two nights prior, the only key to the Veil Market’s current lair. Her sharp jaw set. Military precision guided every step as she descended the cracked concrete stairs, worn leather watch on her left wrist ticking in time with her boot falls. The station’s air clung to her throat: a mix of burnt sage, rusted iron, and the faint, cloying sweetness of banned alchemical reagents. Faded graffiti of occult sigils crawled up the tunnel walls—marks she’d never seen in 18 years of metropolitan service, but ones that pricked at the back of her mind, a faint echo of her partner DS Morris’s unexplained death three years prior. She’d spent months poring over Morris’s case files, looking for a crack in the “unexplained” label the department had slapped on it, but every lead had died in a dead end until the Veil Market’s vendor turned up dead. She reached the platform. A collapsed wooden stall leaned against the rusted track barrier—its planks splintered as if hit by a sudden blast, nails protruding like broken teeth. A man’s body slouched in the stall’s shadow, his fingers curled around a crumpled piece of parchment etched with more sigils. Forensics officers hovered at the platform’s edge, their gloves glinting under the faint glow of their headlamps; Harlow waved them away with a sharp gesture, her military bearing leaving no room for argument. Eva Kowalski stood by the stall’s remains. Her curly red hair spilled over her shoulders, round glasses slipping down her freckled nose. She tucked a strand behind her left ear—her nervous habit—before her green eyes locked on Harlow. Her worn leather satchel, bulging with ancient history books and restricted British Museum archives manuscripts, rested at her feet, its strap frayed from years of hauling research materials through London’s streets. The Oxford-educated master’s holder had been assigned as Harlow’s occult consultant three days prior; Harlow had resisted the pairing until the crime scene’s supernatural echoes—burnt sage, sigil graffiti, a body with no visible cause of death—became impossible to ignore. Forensics found no bullet holes. No blade wounds. No poison traces. Harlow knelt beside the body. She pried the man’s curled fingers open with a steady hand, her military training keeping her movements precise even as the parchment crumbled into fine dust at her touch. The dust caught the headlamp’s glow, swirling into a faint spiral before vanishing into the station’s cold air. His palm bears bruising. Like he grabbed a piece of molten metal. Eva’s voice cut through the station’s silence, sharp and sure despite her nervous hair tuck. The Veil Market’s vendors deal in enchanted goods that burn to the touch if misused—even something as simple as a sigil-etched parchment can sear skin if handled without the right charm. Harlow stood. Her sharp jaw tightened, the muscle in her cheek twitching as she connected the bruising to Morris’s body—he’d had similar faint bruising on his palm, a detail she’d written off as a workplace accident at the time. The compass on the ground. She nodded to the brass object half-buried in splintered wood. Its casing bore a thick patina of verdigris, its face etched with the protective sigils she’d seen in Eva’s research notes on the Veil Compass—a tool crafted by a Shade artisan to point toward the nearest supernatural rift or portal. The compass’s needle stuck straight up, not swiveling toward the station’s hidden rift—a detail Eva had mentioned earlier, noting the rift’s constant hum and its role as the Veil Market’s anchor point. That’s a Veil Compass. It should point to the nearest rift. This station’s rift is ten feet from us, tucked between the track and the barrier. Eva tucked another strand of hair behind her left ear. She knelt, her satchel’s strap catching on a splintered plank; she tugged it free with a quiet huff before brushing wood shavings from the compass’s face. Her round glasses slipped again; she pushed them up with a finger, her freckled cheeks flushing slightly with frustration. Someone scratched the core sigil. The one circled in my notes—its the anchor for the compass’s attunement. Harlow leaned in. She spotted the faint, deliberate scratch across the compass’s central sigil— a thin, deep gash that cut through the sigil’s curved lines, something she’d missed on her first scan of the scene. Her military training kicked in then, her mind cataloging every detail: the scratch’s 45-degree angle (matching the splintered planks’ edges, as if made with the same broken piece of wood), the dust on the compass’s surface (a fine, greenish powder that didn’t match the platform’s rust-colored dust), the way her worn leather watch’s ticking slowed when she moved closer to the rift’s hidden spot. You’re saying the scratch disabled it. Made it useless for finding an escape. Eva stood. She lifted a book from her satchel—its cover bound in cracked black leather, its pages marked with neon pink post-its and faded pencil notes. The book’s title, Ancient Sigil Tampering: Case Studies from the British Museum Archives, stared up at Harlow. Break the core sigil, and the needle locks. No rift detection. No escape route. The Veil Market moves every full moon, and vendors rely on the compass to find their way out before the rift shifts—if they can’t, the rift’s surge can crush stalls or burn anyone caught in its path. Harlow’s mind raced. She connected the dots: the man was a Veil Market vendor, trying to flee a sudden rift surge. Someone had scratched his compass’s core sigil, disabling his escape. He’d grabbed the sigil-etched parchment in a panic, burning his palm. The rift’s surge had collapsed his stall, killing him with no visible wounds. But forensics missed the scratch. They wrote off the bruising as a fall against a hot pipe. Harlow’s sharp jaw set. She pulled the bone token from her pocket, its smooth surface now vibrating faintly against her palm— a reaction she’d not noticed until she stood close to the compass. You didn’t mention the token’s reaction. Eva’s green eyes widened. She stepped closer, her book still open in her hand. The bone token is a key to the market, but it also resonates with active rifts. If it’s vibrating, the rift’s still unstable—someone’s tampered with it too. Harlow’s boot kicked a piece of splintered wood. It skidded toward the track, hitting the barrier with a sharp clink. The man’s parchment. It crumbled. Why? Eva flipped through her book. She stopped at a marked page, pointing to a faded illustration of a crumbling sigil parchment. Enchanted parchment disintegrates when its bearer dies in a rift surge. It’s a failsafe to hide market secrets—vendors use it to keep their stock lists and client names from falling into the wrong hands. Harlow scanned the tunnel walls again. She spotted a faint trail of verdigris dust leading from the compass to the station’s far exit—thin, almost invisible, but noticeable to her trained eye after she’d focused on the compass’s patina. Her military precision guided her steps as she followed the trail, her boot falls quiet against the concrete. This dust matches the compass’s casing. Eva followed. She tucked hair behind her left ear again, her green eyes fixed on the dust trail as she walked. Whoever scratched the compass left a trail. They didn’t bother to clean it up—maybe they were in a hurry, or they thought no one would notice a greenish dust trail in a rusted tube station. Harlow’s watch ticked faster as she reached the exit, the metal door’s surface covered in faded graffiti. She spotted a faint scratch on the door’s handle—same 45-degree angle as the compass’s sigil scratch, same deep gash made with a sharp, splintered object. Same tool. Same hand. Eva leaned against the door. She pulled another book from her satchel—The Shade Artisans: Creators of Supernatural Tools—its pages dog-eared from constant use. Your partner’s case. Did they find any scratched sigils? Any verdigris dust? Any bone tokens? Harlow’s sharp jaw tightened. She’d never considered that angle. Morris’s body had been found in an abandoned warehouse, no visible cause of death, a faint bruise on his palm—details she’d replayed a hundred times, but never with the lens of sigil tampering or supernatural tools. No one checked for sigils. No one knew to look. The department wrote it off as a random mugging gone wrong, but there was no stolen cash, no missing badge—nothing to support the theory. Eva’s green eyes softened. She closed her book, tucking it back into her satchel. That’s the missing link. The same person— or group— that tampered with your partner’s case is tampering with this one. They’re using sigil damage and rift surges to kill without leaving evidence. Harlow knelt. She ran her finger along the door’s scratch, her military-trained hand feeling the sharp edges of the gash. The bone token in her pocket vibrated harder, its hum matching the faint rift pulse she could now hear, a low thrumming in her ears. They didn’t just kill this vendor. They disabled his escape. Same as they did to Morris. She stood. She scanned the exit’s surroundings again, spotting a faint sigil etched into the door’s frame—another mark she’d missed earlier, its lines scratched and faded but matching the ones on the tunnel walls. Her deduction clicked into place: the killer was a regular at the Veil Market, someone who knew how to tamper with sigils and rift anchors, someone who’d been targeting vendors and anyone who might uncover their scheme—including her partner. Eva tucked hair behind her left ear. She lifted her satchel, slinging it over her shoulder. We need to check the restricted archives for more cases of sigil tampering and rift-related deaths. Harlow’s sharp jaw set. She pocketed the bone token, her watch ticking back to its steady military beat. First, we track the verdigris dust trail. It leads to the station’s street entrance. Whoever left it is still in Camden.