The bright panels of light above hummed faintly in the basement archive of the BPA headquarters, their glow muted against the walls lined with cabinets so old their paint had dulled into the colour of parchment.
Dust clung to the air, disturbed only by the low turning of ceiling fans that did little but push a stale scent of old paper and cold stone from one corner to another.
Sera Weber stood where light pooled over a desk, her hands resting neatly on a folder thick with yellowed reports. She had the posture of someone carved straight backed, unhurried with every breath measured.
Her light brown hair was pulled into its habituat long ponytail. It was softened only by the circular reading glasses that reflected the pale light above. Storm grey eyes lingered on the file before her, sharp and steady, the kind of gaze that disarmed without having to glare.
Across from her, Marianne, the archivist of the station where Sera had been working in, sat hunched over tea, steam curling through the dimness. Marianne had been here longer than most agents had been alive, almost like a permanent fixture of the underground vault where past crimes were kept.
Her face was lined with the age of a woman who had seen too many stories end the same way. And her voice carried the same rasp of smoke.
"You're wasting your youth chasing shadows," Marianne murmured to her, tapping one crooked finger against the file that Sera had dropped. "This case has lingered for thirty years. The Stillman. He's a scar that refuses to fade, and no one, not even special ego users like yourself, has come close."
Sera didn't lift her head. Her thumb brushed over the corner of the file with no image. "If no one has come close, they're not trying hard enough," she said evenly, "and someone has to eventually."
Marianne's laugh was short, almost pitying. "Always the same tone with you. Always so certain. But tell me, girl, why this? Why him?"
Finally, Sera looked up. The lenses of her glasses caught the light, obscuring her eyes for half a second before they glinted clear again. "Because what others call impossible, I think is just unfinished. I don't want to be remembered as just a woman with a very convenient edge. I want to be known as more than a competent detective." Her voice carried no heat, but it did weigh with conviction.
"People say the search for a face for The Stillman is one that cannot be solved. That is why I will solve it."
Marianne shook her head. "Proving yourself to who? It means nothing. You'll break your back and all the world will give you is another case to solve. And for some reason I feel there will be many more, it's like there's a dark presence in the air."
Sera's gaze held for a moment. Then, with a small nod, she gathered the files into her leather satchel. "Perhaps. But I've already set my mind to it."
___
She had to take a train to Brumália, she would have liked to try out that infinity train, but it cost too much and she didn't feel she needed luxury now.
When she arrived she quickly flagged down a driver and was on her way to a hotel in a quieter district not too far from the inner city.
The drive to her hotel took her past landscapes that seemed half-tamed, half-feral. Forestry in the south of Ostara grew larger than in the rest of the nation, each tree trunk thicker than columns in the capital, each leaf broader, as though the land itself hoarded excess.
Botanists claimed it was the fog, the strange, unnatural mist from the great waterfall above the city. The vapours were heavy with minerals, saturating soil and root, reshaping flora into versions of themselves that looked exaggerated.
By the time her driver reached the hotel, a solitary building crouched on a steep hilltop that twisted upward for forty long minutes, night had bled violet across the sky.
The structure loomed like a forgotten sanatorium, pale stone, iron balconies, narrow windows glinting faint light. Though well-kept, its emptiness was palpable.
Few cars. Minimal chatter of guests. It seemed more like a place of rest than a waystation for the lost.
Her room was clean, sparse. A brass bedframe, a writhing desk, a single flowerpot tucked into the corner of the room. Its leaves were arched high, unnaturally long, the tips brushing the wall as if straining toward something unseen.
She touched one lightly, its surface slick with condensation, and thought of the forest swallowing roads outside.
The television buzzed faintly in the corner. She turned it on long enough to hear the clipped tones of another broadcast, Dario Kosta, once the nation's strongest Paladin, accused of betrayal, now declared dead.
The anchor's voice wrapped the words in drama, but to Sera it was just another story twisting into myth. She clicked it off, the silence heavier than the noise.
Marriane's warnings echoed. About things getting darker. Did she know this was coming? Doubtful.
But would the death of Ostara's great shield split the country like a wound?
Sera adjusted her glasses and let the thought die. She had never idolized Dario or any Paladin. But she did respect the man's power and all he had done for the nation. But worship… that was a pastime for the masses.
She understood the loss, that the nation had lost its sword and shield in one breath, but she could not mourn a man she never knew.
She unlatched her satchel and began to spread the Stillman files across the desk. Photo's, transcripts, half legible notes from retired officers, all spilled into the pale lamplight.
It had started to rain outside. It was hitting off the windows. It gave a different peaceful look to the outside that Sera enjoyed.
But anyway…
The Stillman.
A name that at a time would mean "man" and now was only meant for "specter".
Police reports described him like a shadow stitched into the country's memory, present but untouchable. At least seventy-four attributed killings, there were rumours that the real kill count could be in the hundreds.
Every scene bore his signature. A photograph of the freshly dead, always left in plain sight. The composition is immaculate, angles chosen with an artist's precision, framing too deliberate to be anything but intentional.
Detectives often admitted, in private, that some of his photographs were cleaner and more exact than their own documentation from forensics. It was a silent taunt saying, Catch me.
Unlike many other killers, Stillman truly had no type. Old men, children, businessmen, doctors, thieves. His killings spanned every class, every gender. His pattern was the absence of one.
No one knew what he may have been fighting for.
His only direct voice was a single letter, mailed to a precinct decades ago. No fingerprints, no DNA. just ink and paper, carrying with it the unsettling intimacy of a man confessing not his guilt but his love and hate.
Analysts and criminologists and any other relevant profession, none of them agreed. They all concurred on one thing, Stillman was patient. Cold and not impulsive. He didn't kill for a spectacle, he just became one. But recognition was useless to him. His legacy was invisibility.
Sera shuffled through the witness statements. Most were worthless, people desperate to graft themselves onto history, crafting lies about sightings, photographs and even confessions.
She read them all anyway.
What mattered though was not the rumours. What mattered was origin.
And the serial killer's origin was Brumália.
At last she unfolded it. The paper was brittle at its edges and sealed in protective film. She had read it before she had left, she wasn't even supposed to take it with her, but she could just lie and claim it was an accident.
The letter read:
["I love the city I was born in, Brumália.
Do you know what loss makes of man? It is a silent architect. It rebuilds you into something unrecognizable brick by brick, until even your own reflection feels foreign. Some drown the weight of loss, others cling to their hollow rituals, but there are those who learn to live beside it, like a living phantom that never leaves the room.
They say time heals, but time is the cruellest witness. It does not soothe, it records every hour that passes without what was once yours is another hour proving you were powerless to keep it. And so loss teaches. It teaches bitterness. It teaches hunger. It teaches cruelty. And those lessons, once learned, cannot be unlearned.
I ask you then, is it the living who shape the world, or the dead who shape the living?"]
***
It had been over an hour since Corbin had stormed out, and still no sign of him.
Ruben had finally stood up. Lea had caught him by the door, her hand brushing his arm.
"Be careful," she said, her voice hushed. "Try to get back before the rain starts. It gets bad here."
Ruben gave her a small nod and stepped out into the cooling air.
The city breathed differently than Branneth. There were no Skye drones overhead or blinking from around corners. Brumália had a very different 'life', looser, less monitored as if the air itself had space for secrets.
He found himself liking it. Streets buzzed with small, human rhythms, a barber sweeping hair from his doorstep, children shrieking in play as they darted past him, their shoes splashing against wet stone.
But eyes lingered on him. Not hostile… at least he thought. Heads turning slightly too long as he passed. Ruben couldn't decide if it was suspicion or curiosity. He let it slide off.
The city felt warmer than Branneth in more ways than one. Couples strolled arm in arm, laughter spilling freely, faces untroubled.
For a fleeting moment, he considered asking one of them if they'd seen Corbin, but he let the thought die.
Instead, he trusted what had rarely failed him, his senses. His nose caught the faintest trace, a scent he knew well. Sweat, smoke, the unwashed tang of his cologne that had the smell similar to burnt wood.
Ruben's pace quickened.
Moments later, he spotted the familiar crown of curls ahead. Relief rose in his chest, but it stalled immediately when he followed Corbin's line of sight.
A balcony. A figure standing there. Long hair, burning red even in the dim Brumálian light. Rosette St. Jon.