Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8VG787AH70F356T0184YPW

The air in the abandoned Camden Tube station was a physical presence, thick with the smell of damp brick, stale ozone, and something else—burnt sage and cold iron. Detective Harlow Quinn’s footsteps echoed with military precision against the grimy tiles as she descended the final flight of stairs, her torch beam cutting a swath through the absolute black. The bone token, a yellowed molar drilled and threaded on a cord, felt like a lie against her sternum beneath her shirt. She’d taken it from an evidence locker six months ago, a curiosity from a case that had gone nowhere. Now, it was her key. The Veil Market sprawled before her in the vast, vaulted chamber of the disused platform. It was a ghost of its supposed self. Stalls fashioned from repurposed shipping pallets and moth-eaten velvet drapes stood silent and empty. Shattered glass vials gleamed in her light, their contents—glistening fluids, iridescent powders—soaking into the cracked concrete. A ledger book lay splayed open, its pages fluttering in a draft that had no source. The market had been hit, and hit hard. Quinn’s sharp jaw tightened. She clicked off her torch, allowing her eyes to adjust to the faint, sourceless phosphorescence that clung to the arched ceiling like diseased moss. She moved forward, her worn leather watch snug against her wrist. Every sense was tuned, every detail catalogued. A overturned cart spilled what looked like carved finger bones. A glass case was shattered, its velvet pillow empty. The scene screamed burglary, a violent grab-and-run. But the silence screamed something else. “You’re not supposed to be down here.” The voice came from the shadow of a central pillar. Quinn’s hand went to her hip, but she didn’t draw. She recognized the voice, had heard it across an interview table two weeks prior. Eva Kowalski stepped into the feeble light, her curly red hair a dark corona around her pale, freckled face. Her round glasses reflected the gloom, hiding her green eyes. The worn leather satchel was slung across her chest, bulging with books. “I could say the same, Miss Kowalski,” Quinn said, her voice flat. “This is a crime scene.” “Is it?” Eva’s nervous habit betrayed her; her hand rose to tuck a curl behind her left ear. “It’s a disturbance. The semantics matter.” Quinn ignored the comment, her gaze sweeping the area around Eva. The researcher was standing near a stall that seemed less ransacked than… dissected. The wooden counter was split not by force, but along its grain, as if pulled apart by immense, precise pressure. Strange symbols were scorched into the floorboards—not spray paint, but seared as if by a brand. “What happened here?” Quinn asked, stepping closer. She kept her distance from Eva, positioning herself to watch the researcher and the scene simultaneously. “A transaction went wrong. Or right, depending on your perspective.” Eva hugged her satchel. “The stall belonged to a Shade artisan. He dealt in focused ephemera. Guidance tools.” “Guidance tools.” “Compasses. Maps. Things that find what’s lost.” Eva’s eyes finally met Quinn’s, and there was a challenge in them. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you what they really found.” “Try me.” Quinn knelt by the scorched symbols. They were intricate, interlocking circles and angular runes. They made her skin prickle. She’d seen something like them before, in the photocopied pages of DS Morris’s notebook after he’d vanished. Nonsense, the report had said. Stress-induced scribbles. “He’s gone. The artisan. Not fled. Not taken.” Eva’s voice dropped. “Unmade. The energy required… it’s not about theft, Detective. It’s about eradication.” Quinn stood, brushing grit from her trousers. “So your interpretation is… what? A magical assassination? Convenient. Leaves no body, no forensics.” “It leaves that,” Eva said, pointing a slender finger to a spot near Quinn’s boot. Quinn looked down. Half-concealed by a fragment of dark velvet was a small, circular object. She picked it up. A compass. The brass casing was cold, heavy with a patina of verdigris. In the faint light, she could see the face was etched with minute, protective sigils. The needle didn’t point north. It spun in a slow, restless circle. “A Veil Compass,” Eva whispered. “It’s still active. It’s seeking.” Quinn held it in her palm. The cold seeped into her bones. The spinning needle made her dizzy. “Seeking what?” “The nearest tear in reality. A rift. A door that shouldn’t be open.” Eva took a step closer. “He must have dropped it during the struggle. Or it was left behind.” “Why leave a tool?” “Because it’s not a tool to them. It’s a symptom. Or a beacon.” Quinn’s mind raced, assembling the mismatched pieces. The violence was theatrical—shattered glass, overturned carts. But the core of the damage, the split wood, the brand-like symbols, the missing artisan… that was clean. Surgical. The ransacking was a stage set, a blind for whatever this unmaking was. Her eyes traced the path of destruction. It didn’t radiate from a point of entry. It converged on this stall. The other stalls were collateral damage, but this was the epicenter. “They wanted him specifically,” Quinn muttered, more to herself than to Eva. “The rest is noise. To make it look like a random heist in a… a supernatural flea market.” The term tasted absurd in her mouth. “Yes,” Eva said, a note of surprise in her voice. “The Shade was a craftsman. He didn’t just sell compasses. He calibrated them. He could tune them to specific frequencies, specific… doors.” The compass needle in Quinn’s hand gave a sudden, violent jerk, pointing steadfastly at the brick wall at the end of the platform. It quivered, as if straining against an invisible leash. “What’s behind that wall?” Quinn asked. “Brick. Earth. The Northern Line tunnel, eventually.” “No.” Quinn walked toward the wall, the compass leading her like a dowsing rod. The air grew colder. The symbols on the compass face seemed to glow with a faint, copperish light. She remembered Morris’s last call, his voice crackling with panic over the radio: *It’s not a room, Harlow. It’s a throat. And it’s swallowing the light.* They’d found his car, engine running, door open, in a similar forgotten place. No signs of struggle. Just an overwhelming sense of wrongness, and pages of insane symbols in his notebook. She stopped before the wall. The compass needle pointed directly at a single brick, slightly recessed, its mortar crumbling. Quinn pressed her fingers against it. It was freezing. “The evidence didn’t add up,” she said, her voice low. “Because we were looking for a person. A thief. A killer. We were looking for motive in ledgers and loot.” She turned to face Eva, whose eyes were wide behind her glasses. “But the motive isn’t here. It’s *through*. Someone didn’t just kill that artisan. They used him. Or his work. To open something. And this…” she held up the shuddering compass, “isn’t left behind. It’s pointing the way.” Eva was silent for a long moment. “You see it.” “I see that my partner died chasing a shadow that phased through walls,” Quinn said, the words leaving a raw, honest ache in her chest. “I see symbols on a floor that match the ravings in his notebook. I see a tool that points to a solid wall and tells me it’s a door.” She pocketed the compass, its cold weight a new anchor in her coat. “The colleague offering the interpretation of a simple burglary would be wrong. Because they’re missing the one piece that doesn’t fit the material world.” “What will you do?” Eva asked. Quinn looked at the brick wall, then back at Eva Kowalski, this nervous, knowledgeable girl who moved in circles Quinn was just beginning to perceive. “I’m going to find out what’s on the other side. And I’m going to find out who really killed my partner.” She nodded toward the exit. “You’re coming with me. You’re going to explain every symbol, every term. Consider yourself deputized.” Eva didn’t argue. She just adjusted her satchel and gave a slow, grim nod. The market held its breath around them, a crime scene that was finally, terrifyingly, beginning to make sense.