Chapter 1: The Star-Stained Corpse

The rain hammered Everglow's streets like bullets from heaven, each drop exploding against the neon-slicked asphalt in tiny bursts of pink and blue light. Detective Jade Hawkins pulled her leather jacket tighter as she stepped out of the patrol car, her amber eyes scanning the crime scene with practiced weariness. At twenty-eight, she'd seen enough corpses to fill a cemetery, but tonight something felt different. The air itself seemed to whisper of wrongness.

"Another glamorous evening in paradise," she muttered, her breath forming small clouds in the cold air. Her canine teeth, slightly too sharp for human comfort, caught the streetlight as she spoke.

The Twilight District's usual chaos had been cordoned off by yellow tape and stern-faced officers. Above them, the city's magical towers scraped the sky, their crystalline peaks pulsing with arcane energy that powered everything from street lamps to coffee makers. Below, in the shadows between worlds, the real work happened.

"Detective Hawkins." Officer Martinez approached, his expression carefully neutral. She caught the slight widening of his nostrils—the telltale sign of someone trying not to breathe too deeply around her. Half-trolls had that effect on people. "Victim's in the alley. Fair warning—it's messy."

Jade nodded curtly and ducked under the tape. She'd grown up fighting for respect in every room she entered, her grey-tinged skin and imposing six-foot frame marking her as different before she even opened her mouth. The thin scar cutting through her left eyebrow—a souvenir from her childhood in the Troll Warrens—served as a reminder that she'd earned her place through blood and determination.

The alley stretched before her like a wound between buildings, narrow and dark despite the magical street lamps. But it was the body that made her pause.

Ambassador Silvianus Moonwhisper lay sprawled against the brick wall, his elegant elven features frozen in an expression of absolute terror. That alone wasn't unusual—death rarely came peacefully in this city. What made Jade's enhanced senses reel was the pattern carved into his flesh.

Runes. But not just any runes.

The symbols writhed across the ambassador's pale skin like living things, shifting and changing as she watched. They pulsed with a sickly purple light that made her stomach churn, and when she breathed in through her nose, the scent hit her like a physical blow.

Void-magic. Illegal, dangerous, and supposedly impossible to perform without killing the caster.

"Christ," she whispered, crouching beside the body. Her enhanced troll heritage let her see what others missed—the magical residue that clung to everything like invisible fingerprints. This wasn't just murder. This was an abomination.

"Bad one, huh, Hawkins?"

She turned to see Detective Morrison approaching, his perfectly pressed suit and carefully styled hair marking him as one of the Bureau's golden boys. His human features wrinkled in distaste as he got closer—whether from the corpse or her presence, she couldn't tell.

"Worse than bad," she replied, standing to her full height. Morrison had to crane his neck to meet her eyes, a fact that clearly irritated him. "This is void-magic, Morrison. The kind that tears holes in reality."

"Void-magic?" Morrison scoffed. "Come on, Hawkins. Just because you grew up in the Warrens doesn't mean every crime is some mystical conspiracy. Probably just gang violence with some flashy special effects."

The dismissal stung, but Jade was used to it. In Morrison's world, half-breeds were good for muscle work and intimidation, not actual detective work. She bit back her retort and focused on the corpse.

"Look at the pattern," she insisted, pointing to the shifting runes. "These aren't tattoos or paint. They're carved into his soul, not just his skin. And that smell—"

"I don't smell anything except dead elf and your imagination running wild." Morrison's voice carried the casual cruelty that Jade had endured her entire career. "Besides, word from upstairs is we're wrapping this up quick. Ambassador was probably dealing with some unsavory types. Case closed."

Before Jade could respond, her radio crackled to life. "All units, Captain Reeves wants Hawkins back at the Bureau. Priority one."

Morrison's smirk widened. "Looks like you're being pulled off the case, Hawkins. Don't worry—real detectives will handle it from here."

Jade's hands clenched into fists, and for a moment Morrison's face went pale as he remembered exactly what those fists could do to solid concrete. But she'd learned long ago that losing her temper only proved their point about her being a monster.

"Fine," she growled, turning back toward her car. "But when this comes back to bite the Bureau in the ass, don't say I didn't warn you."

She was almost to the alley's mouth when it happened.

A sound like breaking glass filled the air, followed by a wet, gasping breath. Jade spun around to see Ambassador Moonwhisper's corpse sitting up, his dead eyes now glowing with the same purple light as the runes covering his body.

Morrison stumbled backward, his hand fumbling for his sidearm. "What the hell—"

The corpse's mouth opened, revealing teeth that had turned black as coal. When it spoke, its voice carried the sound of distant stars dying.

"Jade... Hawkins..."

She approached slowly, every instinct screaming at her to run. But she was a detective, damn it, and this was evidence.

"I'm listening," she said, surprised by how steady her voice sounded.

The thing that had been Ambassador Moonwhisper fixed its burning gaze on her. "They... know... about... you..."

"Who knows? What do they know?"

The corpse's lips curved into something that might have been a smile. "Cipher..."

The word hit Jade like a physical blow. The runes on the corpse's skin flared brighter, and then the entire body began to dissolve, flesh turning to ash and blowing away on the rain-soaked wind. Within seconds, nothing remained but an elf-shaped outline in dust and a lingering scent of void-magic.

Morrison stood frozen, his weapon half-drawn and his face paper-white. Around the alley, other officers began to gather, drawn by the commotion.

"Did... did you see that?" Morrison stammered.

Jade looked down at the spot where the ambassador had lain. Her enhanced senses could still detect traces of the impossible magic that had animated the corpse, but she knew no one else would be able to smell it. They'd think she was crazy. Or worse, they'd think she was involved.

"See what?" she said quietly. "All I saw was you jumping at shadows, Morrison."

But as she walked away from the crime scene, one word echoed in her mind like a tolling bell: Cipher.

Whatever that meant, whatever the ambassador had died trying to tell her, Jade knew her quiet night was officially over. In a city where humans and magical beings coexisted in uneasy harmony, where technology met ancient power on every street corner, someone was playing with forces that could unravel reality itself.

And somehow, they knew her name.

She climbed into her patrol car, rain still drumming against the windshield like urgent fingers tapping out a warning. Through the glass, Everglow stretched out before her—a sprawling metropolis of gleaming towers and dark alleys, of magical lights and mundane shadows. Somewhere in that maze of possibilities, a killer with access to void-magic was preparing their next move.

Jade started the engine and pulled into traffic, her reflection catching in the side mirror. Amber eyes stared back at her, weary but determined. She might be an outcast in both human and troll society, might be the kind of detective nobody wanted to partner with, but she was still a cop. And cops didn't walk away from murder cases, especially when the victim whispered their name from beyond the grave.

The radio crackled again. "Detective Hawkins, report to Captain Reeves immediately."

"On my way," she replied, but her mind was already working the case. Void-magic. A dead ambassador. And a single word that felt like a key to a door she wasn't sure she wanted to open.

Cipher.

The rain kept falling, washing the city clean of surface sins while darker secrets festered in the shadows below. And Detective Jade Hawkins drove through it all, a half-breed cop in a world that didn't want her, carrying the weight of a mystery that had already claimed one life and marked her as its next target.

The night was just beginning.