The path in front of her twisted through the mist like a snake hunting its prey. Evelyn tugged her coat tighter, her breath fogging in the sharp bite of the wind. The forest pressed in on her, gnarled trees clawing at the sky, their shadows stretching long and mean. She struck a match, lit a cigarette, and let the glow warm her face for half a second before taking a drag. The smoke coiled in her lungs, dulling the static hum of magic brushing at her senses. It was temporary relief, but better than nothing. Her boots crunched on the frost-bitten trail, the sound swallowed quickly by the heavy quiet of Eldermist’s woods.

The cottage emerged from the fog in slow, shifting pieces, as though the mist didn’t quite want to let it go. Bioluminescent vines clung to its walls, pulsing faintly in shades of blue and silver, their glow too deliberate to be natural. Evelyn stopped just short of the door, the cigarette now a smoldering nub between her fingers. She studied the place, her gaze tracing the strange, seamless marriage of wild nature and carefully woven magic. She crushed the cigarette against the sole of her boot and slid it into her pocket. She raised her hand to knock, but the door opened before her knuckles even brushed the wood, the sudden movement setting the vines along the frame into a faint shiver.

The elven sorceress leaned in the doorway, deep violet eyes on a background of tiny shimmering stars. Her robe shimmered like something stolen from a dream, faint threads catching the light with an uncanny glow—moonlight pinned in fabric, or so it seemed. She didn’t rush; her movements spoke of someone used to being watched, and liking it.

“Detective Blackwood,” she said, her voice a melody wrapped in caution. Suspicion softened the edges but didn’t dull the blade. “You’ve brought the city’s shadows to my doorstep.”

Evelyn slid her hands into her coat pockets, letting the weight of the elf’s gaze settle on her without flinching. A faint smirk tugged at her lips, her tone easy but deliberate. “And you’ve got enough moonlight here to keep them company, don’t you, Elara?”

Elara’s smile deepened by a fraction, a private joke hinted at but never shared. For a breath, the air between them carried both challenge and acknowledgment, two players stepping into the same game.

“I’m here about something strange. Mind if I come in?” Evelyn asked, breaking the short silence.

Elara stepped aside without a word, gesturing fluidly with one hand for Evelyn to enter. The air inside was warmer than outside, heavy with the scent of old parchment and faint traces of lavender. Candles burned in clusters, their flames steady and unnervingly bright, illuminating shelves stacked high with tomes and objects Evelyn didn’t have names for.

“Nice place,” Evelyn said, her voice low. She tilted her head at a floating orb that shimmered as she passed. “Bit much for my taste, but it suits you.”

Elara shut the door behind her with a quiet click. “Your tastes were not consulted,” she replied, a trace of dry amusement lifting the corners of her mouth.

Evelyn chuckled, pulling a small notebook from her coat pocket as she turned to face Elara. “Fair enough. I’ll skip the pleasantries—I need your expertise.” The elf’s eyebrows arched ever so slightly. “And here I thought this was a social visit.”

Evelyn flipped the notebook open, ignoring the quip. The sketch she had drawn earlier stared back at her: a series of intricate lines forming an unrecognizable sigil. “Found this carved into another sigil at a crime scene,” she said, her tone sharpening. “Layered, like someone was trying to hide it.”

Elara’s expression shifted. The air in the room seemed to grow heavier. She reached out, her fingers brushing the notebook page with a delicacy that contrasted sharply with Evelyn’s bluntness.

“Impossible,” Elara murmured, the melodic quality of her voice giving way to a harder edge. “Sigils cannot overlap without destroying their intended function. To do so is… reckless at best, catastrophic at worst.”

Elara’s gaze snapped to hers, sharp and searching. “Where did you find this?”

Evelyn hesitated a fraction of a second before answering. “Alaric’s workshop. After his murder.”

The mention of Alaric hit its mark. Elara’s shoulders stiffened, her fingers curling quickly away from the sketch in a stiffened motion. For a moment, she didn’t speak. Her gaze dropped back to the sigil, her lips pressing into a thin line.

“I take it you knew him,” Evelyn said, leaning against the edge of a table. Her tone was casual, but her eyes didn’t leave Elara’s face.

Elara’s voice was quieter when she spoke, almost wistful. “Alaric sought knowledge with a fervor that bordered on recklessness. He often strayed too close to forbidden paths.”

“And this?” Evelyn gestured to the sketch. “One of those paths?”

Elara’s silence was answer enough. She exhaled, a slow, deliberate sound.

“Sigils within sigils are... exceptionally dangerous. They collapse the boundaries of their intended purpose, bending magic in ways it was never meant to flow.”

“Meaning?” Evelyn pressed.

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Elara’s eyes darkened, the faint shimmer in them fading like a receding tide. “Meaning whoever created this was either catastrophically ignorant... or dangerously clever.”

Evelyn frowned, scratching a few notes into her note book. “Could it have been Alaric?”

Elara shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t have had the knowledge—nor the recklessness—to attempt this.”

“That leaves someone else,” Evelyn said, her tone flat. “Someone who wanted him dead?”

Elara’s gaze sharpened, her focus snapping back to Evelyn. “Whatever path this sigil marks, you must tread carefully. This isn’t just murder, Detective. This is an unraveling.”

Evelyn smirked faintly, but there was no humor in her eyes. “Careful’s not exactly my style.”

“No,” Elara murmured, her voice dropping. “It never has been.”

The air inside the cottage turned sharp, a cold that bit straight through the lining of her coat. Her shadow stirred—subtle, but there—flattening closer to her boots as if bracing itself. She felt it before she saw anything: a faint tap, deliberate, brushing against the edges of her senses like a whisper with no words.

Evelyn slipped a cigarette from her pocket, rolling it between her fingers. The rhythm calmed her nerves, made her voice come out steady, measured.

“That sigil,” she said, the words clipped enough to cut. “You’re saying you’ve never seen it before? Not once?”

Elara’s violet eyes remained calm, her slender hands now resting lightly on the spine of a book. “I said no such thing, Detective. I’ve seen it before—many times, in fact. But not in the way you’re implying.”

Evelyn raised a brow, leaning forward slightly. “Go on.”

Elara’s sigh was a soft, measured thing, slipping into the quiet like a leaf falling into still water. Her eyes lifted to the glowing runes etched into the wooden beams overhead, their faint shimmer a reminder of boundaries long upheld. “Layered sigils of the kind you described,” she began, her voice clear and deliberate, “are forbidden. Even among my kin, their use is as reckless as it is dangerous. These aren’t mere tools, Evelyn. They’re keys.” Her gaze dropped, locking onto Evelyn with a sharpness that carried weight. “Keys to doors that were meant to remain sealed.”

“And yet, someone had the nerve to pick up the crowbar.” Evelyn’s smirk was faint, fleeting. “Funny, though, how this forbidden magic circles back to you.”

“I don’t deny my past involvement with sigil magic. But I do deny any hand in this atrocity.”

“Your past,” Evelyn repeated, slipping a folded newspaper clipping from her pocket and sliding it onto the table. “Speaking of which.”

Elara didn’t need to glance at the photograph to know what it showed—her own hand clasped with Alaric’s in the triumphant glow of their combined success. The image captured the moment they’d unveiled a golem whose core pulsed with an infused sigil. Beside them, the golem stood motionless, its surface etched with lines that had taken months to perfect.

“That was decades ago,” Elara murmured, her tone measured. “And it was one project, one experiment.”

“One experiment that seems relevant now.” Evelyn’s voice was dry, her fingers idly tapping the edge of the table. “When was the last time you saw Alaric?”

Elara’s gaze shifted, not toward Evelyn but to the chest nestled in the shadowed corner of the room. The light caught the chest before Evelyn’s eyes did, teasing the darkened corner with a faint shimmer. The chest wasn’t just old; it wore its years like a soldier’s scars—wood smoothed and cracked in equal measure, the vertical metal bands holding it together looking less like reinforcements and more like restraints. No lock on the lid, no obvious mechanism to guard whatever lay inside, just those faint, intricate esoteric carvings. They pulsed faintly, a slow, rhythmic glow that moved with the room’s hum, as if the chest itself was breathing along with the magic in the air.

Evelyn tilted her head, studying it for a beat longer than she should have.

“What’s in there?” she asked, breaking the silence with a steady voice that didn’t quite match the curiosity threading through her.

“That’s not your concern.” Elara didn’t look at her, not at first. Her hands moved together in a loose clasp, deliberate, like she was holding back more than she was willing to show. When she finally met Evelyn’s gaze, her tone held firm—not loud, not cold, but with the kind of weight that could pin you to the spot.

“Detective, you’re walking a line thinner than you realize. My patience may be generous, but it isn’t endless.”

Evelyn let the words settle, her eyes flicking between Elara and the chest. She wasn’t sure which one demanded more caution.

Elara stepped closer, her violet gaze locking with Evelyn’s. “If you’re looking for answers, you won’t find them here.”

The soft hum of the cottage seemed to grow louder as the tension thickened. Evelyn held her ground, though her fingers itched toward her cigarette again.

“I think we’re done here,” Elara said, her voice carrying the weight of finality. “You have the information you need to proceed. I suggest you use it...wisely.”

Evelyn pushed off the table, sliding the newspaper clipping back into her pocket. She didn’t bother with a goodbye, only a curt nod as she turned toward the door. The ambient glow of the vines brightened briefly, as if acknowledging her departure.

Outside, the cool night air wrapped around her like an old coat. Evelyn lit her cigarette, taking a long drag as she walked down the path back towards the city. The image of the chest—and the matching symbols—gnawed at her thoughts. Whatever Elara was hiding, it wasn’t small.

The cigarette’s ember flared as Evelyn exhaled, a faint wisp of smoke curling around her in the dim light. Alaric’s workshop wasn’t far—if the golem was still intact, it could hold the key to untangling the mess she was about to wade into. But her thoughts kept snagging on something else, something that wouldn’t let go. The symbols on that chest gnawed at the edges of her mind, as if they were whispering a forgotten truth she couldn’t quite grasp. It was maddening, like a name perched on the tip of her tongue, forever out of reach.

She flicked ash from her cigarette, her lips pulling into a frown as her memory sifted through the scene at the workshop. Symbols and carvings had covered nearly every surface—Alaric’s work was always known as a riot of chaotic brilliance. But the more she replayed it in her head, the more certain she became that she’d missed something crucial. Her mental gears churned, teasing out fragments of what she’d seen: the jumble of runes, the haphazard arrangement of tools and notes, the sharp smell of burnt herbs.

Evelyn tapped the cigarette filter against her thumb, irritated now. A kick of frustration rattled through her brain—_how could I have been so careless?_ The thought pressed in like a splinter, demanding to be dug out.