Joseph stepped onto the scene with a measured, confident stride.
The corridor was already crowded—uniformed officers, forensic staff, paramedics—but his presence shifted the atmosphere almost immediately. Conversations lowered. Movements sharpened. It wasn't respect born of rank alone, but of certainty. The kind that came from someone who knew exactly what he was looking at, even when others didn't.
His dark-blue office coat and long Bengie overcoat brushed against the tiled floor as he walked, its tailored edges swaying gently with each step. The deep hue stood out against the sterile whites and dull grays of the hotel corridor, commanding attention without demanding it. Beneath the coat, dark brown cargo pants added a practical edge to his appearance—clothing chosen not for display, but for function.
On his left wrist, a silver watch glinted briefly under the hallway lights before slipping back into shadow. Expensive. Subtle. Intentional.
The badge clipped to his belt caught the eye next.
Joseph's gaze moved calmly across the scene. He took in the bloodstains first—not with shock, but with precision. The angle of the splatter. The uneven drag marks. The way the surrounding officers instinctively avoided the doorway at the centre of it all.
Then he saw Arlo.
The young man stood rigid near the wall, eyes unfocused, skin pale to the point of translucence. His body was upright, but his mind was somewhere else entirely—caught in a loop of memories that refused to loosen their grip.
Joseph approached him slowly.
"Are you okay?"
His voice was steady, controlled. Not soft, but not harsh either. It carried authority without aggression—the voice of someone who had learned that panic only made things worse.
Arlo didn't answer.
His lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. His gaze drifted past Joseph, fixed on something that no longer existed.
Joseph studied him for a brief moment longer, then nodded once.
He straightened and gestured subtly to the officers nearby.
"Get him out of here," he said. "Now."
There was no hesitation. Two officers moved immediately, one taking Arlo gently by the arm.
Arlo's legs moved on instinct alone as he was guided down the hallway. His steps were unsteady, his body responding to commands his mind barely registered.
Joseph watched until they reached the medical staff waiting at the other end of the corridor.
Only then did he turn back to the scene.
The corridor felt wrong.
Not just because of the violence. Not just because of the blood.
There was a residue here—something faint, clinging to the air like a shadow that refused to disperse.
Miss López approached him, her movements brisk and professional.
She was young, but there was nothing uncertain about her. Her crisp white shirt and neatly pressed skirt were immaculate despite the chaos around them. Short hair combed cleanly to one side framed a focused expression.
She held a tablet in one hand, pen in the other.
"No evidence confirms a struggle by either victim," she reported. "No defensive wounds. No signs of prolonged resistance."
She paused, choosing her next words carefully.
"It's as if whatever killed them... did it instantly."
Joseph's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"In a snap?" he asked.
Before she could answer, he snapped his fingers sharply.
SNAP.
The sound echoed down the corridor, too loud in the sudden quiet.
Joseph's eyes narrowed, thoughts aligning behind his calm expression.
"Yes," he said quietly. "That fits."
Miss López hesitated. "Sir... what do you think about th—"
"I think," Joseph interrupted gently, "that we have more than enough clues."
Without another word, Joseph turned and left the crime scene.
The corridor behind him remained alive with motion—officers speaking in hushed tones, radios crackling, forensic teams preparing to document what remained—but he did not look back. His pace was calm, unhurried, yet every step carried purpose.
Outside, the morning light greeted him like an accusation.
It was too bright for a place that had hosted such violence only hours earlier. The sky was clear. The air carried the familiar scent of the city—exhaust, dust, distant food stalls beginning their day. Life, moving on without pause.
Joseph crossed the police boundary and headed toward his car. He acknowledged a few officers with a brief nod, but his mind was already elsewhere.
This was no ordinary crime.
Not because of the brutality.
Because of the precision.
No struggle.
No hesitation.
No wasted movement.
Whatever had done this had not panicked. Had not improvised. It had known exactly what it was doing.
Joseph slid into the driver's seat and closed the door. The silence inside the car felt heavier than the noise outside. He rested his hands on the steering wheel, staring forward without starting the engine.
Something about the scene refused to settle.
Not in a way he could explain.
Not yet.
He finally exhaled and pulled away from the curb, merging back into the flow of traffic. As the hotel disappeared behind him, one thought lingered with quiet persistence:
If this wasn't random... then it was deliberate.
And deliberate meant intent.
Joseph's office was dim when he arrived.
He left the lights off, letting the gray daylight filter in through the window. The familiar space grounded him—his desk, the filing cabinets, the faint ticking of the clock mounted on the wall.
He removed his coat and draped it over the chair, then sat.
For a long moment, he did nothing.
No notes.
No calls.
No reports.
Just thought.
Cases like this did not announce themselves loudly. They whispered. They waited for patterns to be noticed, for connections to be made.
Joseph leaned back slightly, fingers resting against his chin.
"Instant," he murmured.
The word echoed softly in the quiet room.
Whatever had killed those people had bypassed panic, bypassed survival instinct. It had struck faster than the body could react.
Predatory.
Efficient.
Old.
He frowned faintly at that last thought.
Old wasn't a conclusion. It was a feeling.
And feelings were unreliable.
Joseph straightened, reaching for a file, forcing himself back into the present. Facts first. Always facts.
Unseen by him, beyond the walls of his office and far removed from his sealed understanding, the truth stretched backward through time.
|| FLASHBACK ||
THE WAR IN SHADOWS
Long before the rise of cities and civilizations, before streets were carved from stone and nights were broken by artificial light, the world belonged to the dark.
Not the absence of light—but something far worse.
Demons roamed freely across the lands.
They were not mindless beasts. They were predators of intent and intelligence, born of malice, feeding not merely on flesh but on emotion. Fear sustained them. Despair strengthened them. Hope, when it shattered, tasted sweetest of all.
Villages fell overnight. Camps went silent. Entire regions emptied as if swallowed by the earth itself.
Those who survived spoke of eyes that watched from the dark, of voices that slid into their minds and rearranged their thoughts. Demons did not always kill outright. Sometimes, they waited. They whispered. They turned humans into weapons against one another, until the final scream came willingly.
To humans of that age, demons were unstoppable.
Their weapons—swords, spears, shields—were forged for battles they could understand. Against creatures that twisted reality, such tools were laughably insufficient. Steel met shadow and found nothing. Faith met hunger and was consumed.
But demons, in their arrogance, failed to see what lurked beyond human perception.
They were not alone.
Hidden from mortal sight, living parallel to human kingdoms, existed another race—ancient, patient, and powerful.
Vampires.
They had walked the world long before demons made it their hunting ground. Unlike their rivals, vampires did not seek chaos for its own sake. They fed to endure. They ruled in silence. And they despised demons not out of morality, but rivalry.
Two predators cannot share the same night.
When humanity stood on the brink of extinction, its king made a choice that would echo through history.
He sought the Vampire Kings.
The journey was one of desperation—crossing forbidden territories, offering blood and oath alike, standing before beings whose eyes burned with centuries of hunger and judgment.
In his possession was humanity's last secret.
Conjurare. An ancient incantation, passed down through generations of rulers. Not a spell meant for mortals—not anymore. Once, humans had wielded Ourja freely, shaping reality with words and will. But time had weakened them. Their bodies could no longer contain such power.
To attempt Conjurare alone meant death. But the spell's potential remained vast. A weapon capable of summoning forces beyond mortal comprehension.
The Vampire Kings understood its value.
They also understood the cost of inaction.
An alliance was formed—not of trust, but survival.
The war that followed scarred the world.
Vampires Lord led the charge, their immortality and strength tearing through demonic ranks that had never faced equal resistance. Humans followed, driven by terror and a fragile hope that extinction might yet be avoided.
It was not a glorious war.
It was brutal. Relentless. Final.
And in the end—
The demons fell.
Not all were destroyed, but enough were driven into hiding, scattered across forgotten places and sealed realms. The night grew quieter. The screams faded.
The world survived.
Humanity rebuilt.
The vampires withdrew from sight, retreating back into legend as centuries passed.
The War in Shadows faded into myth.
And the world believed the threat was over.
|| END FLASHBACK ||
Joseph blinked.
The dim light of his office settled back into place around him, the hum of the city faint beyond the glass. The ceiling above him was the same plain, slightly discolored white it had always been. The clock on the wall continued its steady tick... tick... tick...
He exhaled slowly and leaned back in his chair, feeling the old leather creak beneath him.
Those stories had always existed on the edges of history.
Ancient. Dismissed. Forgotten.
Yet now, they refused to stay buried.
He stared up at the ceiling as if the answers might be written there, hidden between cracks in the paint.
"Why now?" he murmured, the words barely above a whisper.
His own voice sounded strange in the quiet room.
"Why suddenly... after all these years?"
He let the questions hang in the air.
The clock kept ticking.
Time moved forward, indifferent to wars the world had forgotten and monsters it believed were gone.
But somewhere out there, in a hotel hallway still bearing the echo of last night's horror, the past had left its mark.
And Joseph knew one thing with unsettling clarity:
The shadows weren't done with this world.
Not yet.
To be Continued...