Chapter Text
The fog had crept in low and stubborn, hugging the cobbles like something that did not wish to be noticed. Emmrich Volkarin preferred it that way. London hid its sins in layers- mist simply spared him some uglinesd.
Gaslight trembled along the street in soft halos. Somewhere far off, a factory whistle coughed into the night. The smell of coal smoke clung to the air, mingling with the metallic sweetness he had long ago learned to accept as how the city tastes.
Blood. Fear.
He slowed before the alley mouth, gloved hand resting on the silver head of his cane. The constables had already circled the place off in their usual fashion. One of them murmured something about mages but Volkarin barely heard it. The dead always spoke louder than the living.
And tonight, they were already whispering. Threads gathering here as one was severed recently.
He felt it in the delicate tightening behind his eyes, in the faint pressure along his veins. The city’s pulse shifted when death arrived.
At the center of the alley lay the body.
Well worn cotton, cheap dye, work-roughened hands. A woman who had likely spent her days scrubbing or stitching. Now she lay on wet stone as though the city had simply... misplaced her
Beside her knelt a boy.
No- young man, technically, as Emmrich approached him... But the impression remained. He was small and wiry, shoulders too narrow for the oversized jacket clinging damply to him. Suspenders hung crooked. His sleeves were rolled high, revealing forearms smeared with blood, crimson to the wrist. Red hair blazed against the gloom like a fire.
The lad looked up the moment Volkarin stepped closer. Blue eyes. Wide. Bright with tears he was trying and failing to keep from spilling.
“I didn’t do it!”
The words came out raw and breathless, the accent thick and unmistakably Irish. As if the city had not already judged him guilty for that alone.
Volkarin stopped a pace away, studying him in silence. Scotland Yard had been very certain. Caught kneeling over the body. Hands soaked in blood. No witnesses willing to swear otherwise. Case practically gift-wrapped.
How convenient.
“Manfred” Volkarin murmured softly.
At his side, the skeleton crouched with the eager attentiveness of a devoted hound - but he was more than assistant. A friend. Emerald lenses glowed faintly in the night as Manfred tilted his skull toward the corpse. Bone fingers, wrapped in elegant glove, hovered delicately above the woman’s throat, never quite touching.
A ripple moved through the air- subtle, invisible, unmistakable to Volkarin. The dead stirred like dust disturbed by a passing footstep. Sudden death startled threads around.
Ah. There it was.
The boy’s gaze flicked to the skeleton and widened further, horror momentarily overtaking panic. Reasonable. Most men did not take comfort in the presence of the deceased being repurposed into assistants.
Volkarin, however, found the living far more unsettling.
“You were alone with her” he said quietly.
The boy shook his head immediately, curls slipping across his face.
“I- I found her. I swear it on me mum! I was cuttin’ through the alley after shift and a beer and... and... and...” His voice fractured. “She was already like this.”
Volkarin crouched slowly, coat folding neatly around him as he lowered himself to the stones opposite the young man. Close enough to see the tremor in his hands. Close enough to feel the frantic, chaotic pulse of his fear.
“What do you sense, Manfred?”
He let his attention drift toward the body instead. The whispering spirits gathered eagerly, brushing the edges of his awareness.
Who then, he asked in his mind.
Violence. Sudden. From behind. Not the boy.
Manfred hissed lightly. Volkarin’s lips pressed into the faintest hint of a smile. Scotland Yard would be displeased.
He rose again, smooth and unhurried, cane tapping once against the stone. The boy watched him as though awaiting the swing of an executioner’s axe.
Volkarin met his gaze. And for the briefest moment, allowed doubt to show.
“Well” he said mildly, “how fortunate.”
The lad blinked, confusion cutting through his terror. Volkarin turned his attention back to the alley, to the fog, to the unseen shape of the truth just beyond the reach of ordinary sight.
“This” he added softly, “is not nearly as simple as they hoped.”
