Eiran did not make a habit of visiting strangers’ apartments.
He reminded himself of that as he stood at the base of the narrow stairwell in Hearthfall Row, reading the hand-painted sign nailed crookedly to the wall.
SKYLIGHT HOUSE – 3RD FLOOR
– no running
– no screaming
– yes, you have to be nice
The last line had been added in a different color, the paint a brighter, more defiant shade than the rest.
He huffed quietly through his nose and started up the stairs.
The stairwell was narrow and steep, its stone steps worn concave by decades of use. Someone had tried to brighten the place up—potted plants clung to windowsills where sunlight could reach them, and a string of small glass charms hung from a nail near the second-floor landing, chiming faintly as he passed.
It didn’t feel warded.
That, more than anything else, put him on edge.
Most people in Ardent’s Reach layered protection into their homes whether they understood magic or not—cheap charms, half-effective sigils, something nailed above the door just in case. Skylight House had none of that. No hum of borrowed safety. No background tension in the stone.
It felt… settled.
Like a place that trusted itself to stand.
By the time he reached the third floor, he’d adjusted his coat twice and reconsidered leaving at least once.
Esme’s door was easy to identify.
It was the only one with light spilling from beneath it and a small, crooked frame bolted into the stone beside the handle. Inside the frame was a photograph: Hearthfall Row at dusk, string lights glowing, the street crowded with people who looked tired but alive.
No magic pressed at it. No imprint bled outward.
Intentional restraint.
Eiran lifted his hand and knocked.
Footsteps crossed the apartment, quick and unhesitating. The door opened without a pause.
Esmerée Solace regarded him from the threshold, barefoot, camera strap slung diagonally across her chest like she’d forgotten to take it off. She’d chopped her hair since yesterday—new, sharp, defiant, sharp around her jaw, black as ink, the ends uneven in a way that suggested she’d done it herself. Her eyes—pink, unmistakably so—flicked over him in one swift, assessing sweep: the coat, the gloves, the bone-white construct waiting a polite step behind him.
Then she grinned.
“You came,” she said. “I was fifty-fifty on whether you’d decide this was a trap.”
“I considered it,” Eiran said. “I decided you’d be subtler.”
She laughed, stepping aside and gesturing him in. “Fair. Shoes off unless you like being judged.”
He toed his boots off by the door and followed her inside.
The apartment was small but high-ceilinged, the skylight it was named for stretching across most of the room above them. Evening light filtered down through it, warm and diffuse, catching on dust motes and softening the edges of everything it touched.
The space was… busy.
Not cluttered—intentional. Photos lined one wall from floor to ceiling, arranged in clusters instead of rows. Some were framed, others clipped to wires or taped directly to the stone. A worktable sat beneath the skylight, scattered with lenses, cleaning cloths, and half-labeled envelopes. A couch that had seen better decades was layered with blankets and pillows that did not match but somehow worked anyway.
It felt lived in.
And underneath that, it felt anchored.
“You can put the corpse friend by the wall,” Esme said, nodding toward the skeletal assistant. “He won’t offend anything, will he?”
“He doesn’t offend,” Eiran said. “He observes.”
“Same,” she replied easily.
The construct moved where indicated and stilled, sigils dimming to a low, unobtrusive glow.
Esme headed straight for the kitchen nook, already pouring water into a kettle. “Tea? Coffee? I have something that used to be coffee but might now just be a personality test.”
“Tea’s fine,” Eiran said.
She shot him an approving look. “Good answer.”
He remained standing, eyes drifting back to the wall of photographs. Up close, the difference was unmistakable.
Some images were light—almost airy—moments caught and released cleanly. Others pressed at his senses the way certain graves did: not heavy, exactly, but dense. A few felt wrong in the opposite way—too hollow, like something had been scraped out and poorly disguised.
Esme followed his gaze.
“Yeah,” she said quietly, kettle beginning to heat. “That’s the problem wall.”
“You don’t hide it,” he observed.
“What’s the point?” She shrugged. “Anyone who can see it would notice no matter where I put them. Anyone who can’t just thinks I’m dramatic.”
He stepped closer, careful not to touch. One photograph in particular drew him in: the Hollowfall perimeter in the first days after the collapse. Dust still hung in the air, sunlight slicing through it at sharp angles.
The angles were wrong.
Not in the way disaster made things chaotic—but in the way a carefully altered diagram failed to line up.
“You took these early,” he said.
“Before they locked it down,” Esme replied. “Before they decided what story they were telling.”
“And these?” He nodded to a second cluster—later images, cleaner, emptier.
She leaned against the counter, arms folding. “After.”
Eiran closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “Something’s missing.”
Esme’s smile vanished, replaced by something sharp and satisfied. “Thank you.”
He looked at her.
“No really,” she continued. “Everyone else dances around it. Or says I’m projecting. You said it like it was obvious.”
“It is,” he said. “If you know what to look for.”
She poured hot water into two mugs and carried them over, setting one into his hands. Their fingers brushed—warm, steady.
“I don’t know what they took,” she said, lowering her voice. “But I know it wasn’t debris. Or people. It was selective.”
“Bones,” Eiran said.
Her brows lifted a fraction. “See, that’s the part that keeps me up.”
Silence settled between them—not awkward, not strained. The quiet of two people aligning pieces of the same puzzle from different sides.
From somewhere deeper in the apartment, a door opened.
Footsteps crossed the floor. Light ones.
Eiran felt it before he saw her—the faintest shift, like the apartment exhaled differently when she moved.
Asteria appeared in the doorway, blond hair loose over her shoulders, an oversized shirt hanging off one side, a mug cradled in both hands. Dinosaurs marched across the ceramic in bright, unapologetic colors.
“Esme,” she said, voice warm and easy. “The sink—oh.”
Her gaze landed on Eiran.
They regarded each other for a beat.
No spark. No thunder.
Just recognition deferred.
“Hey,” Aster said, smiling politely. “Didn’t know we had company.”
“Work friend,” Esme said. “Eiran, this is Asteria. Aster, this is the necromancer I told you about.”
“The one with the skeleton?” Aster asked, eyes flicking briefly past him.
“Yes,” Esme said. “The one with the skeleton.”
“Nice to meet you,” Aster said, genuine and unguarded.
“And you,” Eiran replied.
Something in the room eased as she stepped past them toward the kitchen, the subtle tension he hadn’t realized was there loosening. A crack near the ceiling—old, hairline—settled instead of spreading.
Eiran noticed.
He didn’t comment.
Esme watched him notice.
Interesting, her expression said.
Asteria disappeared back down the hall, humming softly.
Esme took a sip of her tea. “So,” she said lightly, eyes sharp. “Still think it’s just structural stress?”
Eiran looked back at the photographs.
“No,” he said. “I think someone’s been very careful.”
Her grin returned—slow and dangerous. “Good. Then we’re on the same page.”
Outside, Hearthfall Row glowed softly under its mismatched lights.
Inside, the pieces were beginning to line up.
Eiran left Skylight House later than he’d planned.
Not because Esme detained him—she hadn’t—but because once he’d seen the photographs, truly seen them, it had taken effort to pull himself away. They’d gone over three more prints together, comparing impressions, aligning gaps. Nothing new had been said, but everything had sharpened.
He stepped back out into Hearthfall Row with the taste of tea still on his tongue and a low, steady awareness humming beneath his skin.
Night had settled in fully now. The Row glowed with its usual stubborn warmth—string lights flickering, windows lit unevenly, the murmur of conversation drifting down from open balconies. Someone was playing music off-key two floors up. Someone else laughed.
Life, carrying on.
Eiran walked slowly, letting the sounds pass through him. The skeletal assistant followed at his shoulder, unobtrusive, its sigils barely lit.
For a few blocks, nothing tugged at his senses.
Then the world… slipped.
Not violently. Not enough that a civilian would ever notice. The street ahead seemed to stretch by a fraction, like a misjudged step on a familiar stair. Eiran stopped short, instincts flaring.
Space didn’t do that on its own.
He closed his eyes and focused, letting his awareness probe outward—not down into bone and echo, but laterally. The stone beneath his boots felt wrong. The distance between two doorways ahead of him didn’t align the way it should.
A thin place.
“Stay,” he murmured to the skeletal assistant.
It halted immediately.
Eiran took one careful step forward.
The street shifted back into place with a soft, unpleasant sensation, like pressure popping behind his eyes. He swore under his breath.
His pocket vibrated.
He drew out his comm unit, already suspecting who it would be.
The name on the screen confirmed it.
CORIN
Eiran answered without greeting. “You felt it too.”
A pause. Then Corin’s voice crackled through, breathless and sharp. “You’re on Hearthfall Row, aren’t you?”
Eiran glanced around, scanning the buildings. “How do you—”
“Because that’s where the line buckles,” Corin cut in. “I’ve been mapping the fallout zones since Hollowfall, and there’s a thread running straight through the Loom like someone stitched the city wrong. It just… tugged.”
Eiran exhaled slowly. “You shouldn’t be doing that alone.”
“Yeah, well, the Ministry asked me to stop noticing things.” There was a dry edge to Corin’s tone that Eiran recognized well. “So I did the polite thing and noticed harder.”
“Corin.”
“I’m fine,” he said immediately. “This isn’t collapse-level instability. It’s controlled. Intentional.”
That word again.
Eiran’s grip tightened on the comm. “Say it.”
“Space around Hollowfall didn’t just break,” Corin said. “It was adjusted. Like someone rerouted stress along preexisting weaknesses. Old tunnels. Old graves. Old fault lines.” A pause. “You were right. Someone used it.”
Eiran’s gaze drifted back toward Skylight House, its skylight dimmed now, blending into the dark. “They’re careful,” he said. “They don’t want noise.”
“They’re also arrogant,” Corin replied. “They think if they don’t name it, it won’t exist.”
“Where are you?” Eiran asked.
“Not where I should be,” Corin said lightly. “But I’ve got maps. Real ones. Not the Ministry’s pretty lies.”
“Send them.”
Another pause. Then, quieter: “Eiran… if they realize someone’s connecting these points—”
“I know,” Eiran said.
He ended the call before Corin could finish the thought.
The street felt normal again. Too normal.
Eiran stood there for a long moment, the city settling back into its familiar patterns around him. Hearthfall Row laughed and breathed and lived, unaware of the subtle lines being drawn through it.
He started walking again, faster this time.
By the time he reached the Ledger House, his course was set.
Inside, the wards sealed behind him with their usual soft resonance. He crossed straight to his desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out the ledger.
A new section went in beneath the earlier markings. He wrote the header carefully, deliberately.
ONGOING PATTERNS
Below it, he added three entries.
Hollowfall — selective removal
Veins-adjacent sites — sigil interference
Hearthfall Row — spatial instability (minor, controlled)
He paused, pen hovering, then added a fourth line.
Entropy-adjacent presence suspected. Civilian. Unaware.
He closed the ledger and locked it away.
Outside, the city slept on bones and secrets.
Inside, Eiran Vale accepted what he’d known since Hollowfall and tried very hard not to name:
This was no longer cleanup.
It was an investigation.
And investigations, in Ardent’s Reach, had a way of drawing blood.