Chapter 1: The Armchair and the Archmage

The eviction notice was three days old when Mrs. Chen's husband went missing.

Elara Vance stared at the crumpled paper on her kitchen table—if the corner of her studio flat with a hot plate and a mini-fridge could be called a kitchen. The red lettering seemed to mock her: FINAL NOTICE - £847 OVERDUE. She had exactly thirty-six hours before the landlord changed the locks.

Her phone buzzed. Unknown number. Usually, she'd let it ring, but desperation made her answer.

"Elara Vance Investigations." She tried to sound professional rather than desperate.

"Miss Vance? This is Mrs. Chen from the flower shop on Brick Lane." The woman's voice was tight with worry. "I need your help. It's about my husband, David. He's been missing for three days."

Elara's pulse quickened. A case. An actual paying case. "Have you contacted the police?"

"They won't listen. They say he's probably just... gone off somewhere. But David wouldn't do that. He's been acting strange lately, talking about work troubles. Then Tuesday morning, he left for his office and never came home."

Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Chen sat across from Elara in the cramped flat, wringing a tissue in her hands. She was a small woman in her fifties, with kind eyes red from crying.

"David works as an accountant for Pemberton & Associates," Mrs. Chen explained. "It's a small firm in the City. He's been there twelve years, never missed a day. But lately, he's been... different. Paranoid. He kept checking the windows, double-locking doors. Last week, I caught him burning papers in the garden."

Elara took notes on the back of an unpaid electric bill. "Did he mention any specific concerns? Threats? Problems at work?"

"He said his boss was asking him to do things that weren't right. Numbers that didn't add up. When I pressed him, he just said I wouldn't understand business." Mrs. Chen's voice broke. "But David's honest. Too honest. If someone was making him do something illegal..."

"My rate is fifty pounds a day plus expenses," Elara said gently. It was highway robbery for someone like Mrs. Chen, but she needed the money. "I'll need two days upfront."

Mrs. Chen pressed a hundred pounds into her hands without hesitation. "Find him, please. He's all I have."

After Mrs. Chen left, Elara sat staring at the crumpled bills in her palm. It wasn't enough to save her flat, but it would buy her time. She grabbed her worn leather jacket and headed for the City.

---

Pemberton & Associates occupied the third floor of a Victorian building near Liverpool Street. The receptionist, a bored-looking woman with impressive nails, barely glanced up when Elara introduced herself.

"David Chen? Haven't seen him since Monday. Mr. Pemberton's been asking about him too."

"Is Mr. Pemberton available?"

"He's in meetings all day." The woman returned to her magazine. "You could leave a message."

Elara slipped the receptionist twenty pounds. "What kind of work did David do here?"

The money disappeared with practiced efficiency. "Bookkeeping, mostly. But lately, Mr. Pemberton had him working on some special project. Very hush-hush. David seemed stressed about it."

"Any idea what kind of project?"

"Property acquisitions, I think. Old buildings around London. David kept muttering about something not being right with the numbers, but he wouldn't say what."

Elara spent the rest of the afternoon canvassing David's usual haunts—the sandwich shop where he bought lunch, the tube station where he caught his train home. No one had seen him since Monday. His Oyster card hadn't been used. His bank account showed no recent activity.

By evening, she was back in her flat, staring at her meager notes. Three days of investigation had yielded nothing but dead ends. The hundred pounds was already spent on transport and cheap coffee. Tomorrow she'd have to tell Mrs. Chen she'd found nothing.

Unless...

Elara looked at the business card Mrs. Chen had given her—David's home address in Whitechapel. She hadn't wanted to intrude on the woman's grief, but maybe there was something there. Some clue the police had missed.

The Chen flat was above their flower shop, small but immaculately kept. Mrs. Chen led her to David's study—a converted bedroom with a desk, filing cabinet, and a worn leather armchair by the window.

"He spent hours in here lately," Mrs. Chen said. "Just sitting in that chair, staring out at nothing."

Elara examined the desk. Bills, tax returns, nothing unusual. The filing cabinet was locked, and Mrs. Chen didn't have the key. But something nagged at her about the armchair. It was positioned oddly, angled away from the desk toward the corner of the room.

"Did he always keep the chair like this?"

"No, that's new. Last month, he suddenly moved it there. Said he needed a different view."

Elara walked around the chair, studying it. There was nothing special about it—brown leather, probably twenty years old, worn smooth on the arms where David's hands would rest. But something about it felt... significant. Like it was waiting.

She'd always had good instincts. Street smarts, her case worker used to call it. The ability to notice what others missed, to see patterns in chaos. It had kept her alive in the foster system and made her a decent investigator despite her lack of formal training.

Now those instincts screamed at her to pay attention to the chair.

"Mrs. Chen, would you mind making some tea? This might take a while."

When she was alone, Elara approached the armchair. Up close, she could see that it had been moved recently—indentations in the carpet showed its original position. She knelt beside it, running her hands along the leather.

Her fingers found something odd. A section of the armrest felt different—slightly raised, like something was hidden beneath the leather. She pressed harder, and heard a faint click.

A hidden compartment opened, revealing a small cavity. Inside was a single key and a folded piece of paper.

Elara's hands trembled as she unfolded the note. David's handwriting, shaky and hurried:

If something happens to me, use this key on the filing cabinet. Tell them about the properties. The families don't know. They think their children are safe, but they're wrong. The Conclave is watching. They're always watching.

—D

The Conclave? What the hell was the Conclave?

She took the key to the filing cabinet. Inside were dozens of files, each labeled with London addresses. But these weren't ordinary property records. Each file contained photos of families—children playing in gardens, walking to school, laughing with their parents. Attached to each photo were handwritten notes in David's careful script:

Subject exhibits unusual behavior patterns. Recommend continued observation.

Child demonstrates anomalous abilities. Flagged for assessment.

Family unaware of child's status. Intervention may be necessary.

A chill ran down Elara's spine. David hadn't been an accountant working on property acquisitions. He'd been surveillance, watching families. Watching children.

But why? And what were these "anomalous abilities"?

She grabbed one of the files at random and sat in David's armchair to read it properly. The moment her skin touched the leather, the world exploded into chaos.

Vision struck her like a physical blow.

David Chen, terrified, stuffing papers into a bag. "I can't do this anymore. These children... they don't deserve this." A shadow moving behind him. A voice, cold and cultured: "Mr. Chen, you were warned about the consequences of interfering with Conclave business." David spinning, eyes wide. "Please, I haven't told anyone, I just—" Light flaring, impossibly bright. David's scream, cut short.

Elara gasped, the vision shattering. She was back in the chair, but something was wrong. The air around her crackled with energy that made her teeth ache. The files scattered across the floor were glowing with a soft, silver light.

"What the—"

The flat's front door exploded inward.

Three figures in dark coats swept in, moving with inhuman speed and silence. The leader was tall, pale, with eyes like winter storms. He looked directly at Elara, and she felt those eyes pierce through her like she was made of glass.

"Elara Vance," he said, his voice carrying the weight of absolute authority. "You are under arrest for the unlawful practice of magic."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Elara managed, but even as she said it, she could feel the wrongness in the air around her. The files were definitely glowing now, and the leather armchair felt warm against her back.

The man smiled, and it was not a kind expression. "Miss Vance, I am Lord Alistair Finch, Archmage of the London Conclave. And you, my dear, are an unregistered mage who has just committed a Class A violation of the Statute of Secrecy." He gestured, and the scattered files rose into the air, orbiting around him like satellites. "Echo magic, unless I'm mistaken. Quite rare. Quite illegal."

Elara's world tilted. Magic. The Conclave. The surveillance of children with "anomalous abilities."

She wasn't just a desperate PI who'd stumbled onto something bigger than a missing person case.

She was one of them. One of whatever they were. And she was in more trouble than she'd ever imagined possible.

"Mrs. Chen—" she started to say.

"Is quite safe," Finch interrupted. "Though she will remember nothing of this evening. Memory modification is a small price for her protection, don't you think?"

The silver ring on Elara's finger—the only thing she had left from the parents she'd never known—began to burn against her skin.

Magic was real.

She was magic.

And according to the most powerful man in London's magical community, that meant she was a criminal.