The hill overlooked the village like a forgotten memory—cold, wind-scoured, silent.
Below, the fencing wound around the base of the slope like a dying serpent. Rusted metal joined rotting timber in a barrier too tall to be casual, too fortified to be innocent. The moonlight glinted off strands of barbed wire twisted into holy shapes, like a cathedral's ribs turned inside out. From a distance, it might have passed for a derelict factory or an abandoned military base. Up close, it was something else entirely—intentional.And somewhere within that fortress of fences lay Pike's house—the very destination Jacko had promised to guide him to from the lighthouse.
Elias Whitaker pulled the collar of his coat higher and let the wind slice through his silence. The mist blew from his mouth like a signal. The lighter clicked open with a sound sharp enough to echo. The flame danced briefly as he lit his cigar, eyes locked on the gate down the slope—huge, wooden, bolted with iron crossbeams too large for any normal use.
Jacko stood beside him, fidgeting, glancing behind them like something might crawl out of the woods.
"This is a bad idea," Jacko muttered.
Elias didn't answer. His eyes were studying the way the lantern near the gate flickered too consistently. Like it had a rhythm.
He'd been digging through records for hours now. Town registries. Census logs. Building permits. What he found wasn't what was there—it was what wasn't. Entire sectors of town zoned but never mentioned. Names on lists with no correlating addresses. The same names that showed up in missing persons reports, just faint enough to be overlooked.
And then there was that night with Maddie.
At the time, it had seemed ordinary. Just a drunk woman with odd timing. But now, in retrospect, everything about it reeked of choreography. The streets had been empty—too empty. No late-night drunks, no porch lights, no echoes of distant arguments. Just Maddie, in clothes far too clean and well-fitted for someone stumbling out of a bar. She hadn't been drunk, not as drunk as she presented. She'd been acting. And not for him—for someone else watching.
Then there was Greaves. The miser. The coin-counting hawk who suddenly turned generous. Started giving Elias leads. Clues. Too easily.
Elias exhaled smoke into the cold and watched it scatter.
They were being fed. That was the word that struck him. Fed a story. A carefully built one. One with gaps just wide enough to make him feel clever for finding them.
The pattern was there—subtle but unmistakable. The bartender exchanging glances with Joseph-the-smuggler. The tailor who fell silent when Elias mentioned certain streets. Then watching Greaves, her eyes darting away when Elias looked. Not a conspiracy of the whole town, but a network within it. A current running beneath the surface.
Some knew everything, others just enough to play their parts. Most probably knew nothing at all—just ordinary people living beside something they'd learned not to question. The ones who did know—they had that look.
He'd seen that look before. On his grandfather's estate. The old man had ruled the Whitaker house like a god with a ledger. Theodore Whitaker. He could still hear the man's voice like a blade across the spine. Don't speak unless you're ready to be measured.
The same look was in their eyes.
Elias pulled out the cigar tin from his inner pocket. A gift from the police chief. The Imperial Standards name still held weight in these parts of Nezro. It clicked open with that familiar snap. He thumbed the sigil carved into the lid—sharp, delicate, and unmistakably old. The same sigil that had appeared on Greaves's watch. On the rusted gates below.
His hand closed around it like a memory.
They're not afraid of me, he thought. They're afraid of what I might uncover.
A breeze swept up the hill. The fencing groaned in the distance. Something metallic clanged softly, once.
He took one last breath and started down the slope.
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