Mark.

Crimson, blood, scarlet; colours that intermingled along the intricate, needle-thin lines that etched and carved a living Sigil into the brickwork’s flesh. Breathe, the no-name symbol did, and like a living being, it had impulses. Slight twitching, flashing, swirling and mingling of its macabre colours. Like a living being, it had cravings. A single directive as clear and straightforward as the lines which cut through its host surface.

To the passing human eye, it was mere graffiti. Vandalism painted on an unlucky wall—the crime itself rather than a symptom. To the Aether-sensitivities of a Spirit—an impossibility in this case—passing by with similar apathy, the Sigil proved worthy of no more attention. Again, vandalism, yet perhaps using a paint with magical properties. The marking of a criminal organisation or a message hidden in a mural. Alarming, yes, but nothing to trifle with. It was someone else’s problem.

Yet, in part, the apathetic eyes of the theoretical passerby Spirit were correct. The convulsing lines each carried a meaning, like a brushstroke in a painting, a letter in the alphabet, or a key in a code. Each line was unique, and no two Sigils held the same directive. Each indecipherable tapestry would be born, live, and die at the whim of their artists, leaving nothing behind but singes of mystifying glyphs.

Mere breadcrumbs as to the artist’s identity, if they could ever even be considered so revealing.

And to the eye of such a profoundly talented and well-read artist, the markings on the Sigil would prove no less cryptic. After all, it was a mass jumble of lines, more akin to the unknowable machinations of nature than something drawn by a steady hand. Like staining a canvas with oil, there was no control in the detail, yet there was in the application.

The artist would contemplate the Sigil’s shape, size and position. They would recognise the chosen brick wall, tile or cobblestone road as not a convenient canvas but a location worthy of marking. From there, it would be a matter of finding a motive, weighing the likelihood of a Sigil being one of warding or of sabotage. If experienced, they may predict what directive the Sigil would execute once its craving for Aether began—what colours the Sigil would take when it bloomed into its full, sublime majesty.

Yet most artists would not go so far as to investigate unless intrigued to the point of irritation. Making predictions based on the Sigil alone was paramount to playful fantasy, requiring leagues too much imagination for a serious investigation. Artists were well-versed in their art but equally well-versed in other artists. Yet in almost every situation, artists would only ever make sure they were clear of the vicinity for whenever the Sigils activated.

And so, by the third week of winter 1941, no artist was setting foot in the vicinity of the Gruppur & Sons Armour Co. factory in Trepidite, the capital city of Demitore. In the human-dominated country, thick with the smog of diesel engines, not a single citizen could see through the ruse of simple vandalism. No one, until the floodgates opened.

Set.

The girl tapped her heel, the crease along her leather school shoes growing more pronounced as she continued. She could not suppress her need to vent and so could not keep her feet under control, unlike her father. His legs—long and slender—hid behind the fabric of his jet-black trousers. They were still, unlike hers. Still as the statues she took for granted, flanking her school’s main gates.

She looked up at his mask, a habit she had picked up from many years of making human friends at school. She could tell everything about a person’s feelings by their face, although, at times, it was harder and, at times, easier.

A Beak’s mask did not hold such significance, for it was merely a tool for communicating with humans. Beaks did not face each other to communicate, and the adults did so only out of habit—a holdover from a time when masks produced only scrawl that would appear across the bone-white surface. The little girl, gifted with a voice box on her second birthday, did not develop such habits, and had been scolded for never looking anyone in the eye. She had learnt since, having the practice so much as beaten into her until perfection.

She only needed to focus on another Beak to communicate with them. They were shadows, after all. Shadows, by definition, were never afforded the right of expression. Yet, even as she held her father’s hand, and the shifting darkness of their two palms weaved between each other, she could not sense what he was feeling.

Still. Like a statue. Even if he had a human face, the girl doubted it would help her much.

And as sterile as her father’s expressions was their environment. She had recognised the hospital, a strangely alabaster, uniform place she had once visited when her Aether intake had grown slack. The place was uncomfortable purely by association, yet her latest visit did little to quell her prejudicial contempt, if at all.

She sat by her father in a hallway of what was the underbelly of the institution. Foot traffic was markedly lower, the lighting dimmer and the already sparse décor almost non-existent. There was no life afforded to the space, only a profound solemnity.

She straightened her uniform with one hand, patting down the white blouse and checkered skirt almost out of habit. Keeping it straight, tidy, and without wrinkles was almost an obsession of hers. She checked her hair, making absolutely sure every strand was tied back perfectly. Another habit she had developed when she was younger and only refined after making friends with humans. Somewhere down the line, the constant vigilance had shifted into routine. She felt irritated, almost sick if she went too long without performing the ritual.

She was jealous of other Beaks, whose hair would never grow, fray or mangle, forever staying as perfectly sculpted silhouettes. She was special in that way, having to cut her nails and maintain her weight.

Her Aetherologist had called it a defect. She was jealous of other Beaks.

Foot traffic. It was not hard to hear in such a dead corner of the hospital. Two sets. Strong yet out of sync echoed down the hallway and squeaked against the polished floor. Her father stood, and she found herself standing, too. They were police officers; the girl recognised them by the badges they produced from their overcoats. Excalan Metropolitan Police. A Detective Inspector and a Detective Constable. She recognised the ranks, at least superficially, from a novel she was reading.

“Mr and Ms Mallorine, I presume,” the Detective Inspector said in a low voice as he removed his fedora, holding it against his chest. Far from the grizzled, hard-boiled image she had always held of the title, the man standing before her was well-groomed and clean-shaven. Even his shoes were polished to a shine that defied the dull lighting.

Her father nodded. “Yes. Gerteul Mallorine. My daughter, Crestana.” His voice matched the Policemen in volume, his luxury voice box emulating the policeman’s solemnity with none of the distress the girl could feel in herself. She held it in, even contemplating turning her voice box off before she could let go—for it to express her.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the Detective Inspector said. “This won’t take too long; we just need to record an official statement as procedure.”

“Yes, officer,” her father said. “I understand.” He sounded tired more than anything else. The Detective Inspector nodded to her father, then turned to her and gave an identical gesture. He led the way further down the hall, and the girl and her father followed closely behind the Detective Constable. Four sets of footsteps now echoed across the sterile underbelly, yet more made it feel no more merry. They brought with them a stark reality check, undeniable confirmation rather than any meaningful consolation. They were always bearers of bad news, and the girl did not envy their job.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Each door they walked past was more or less identical to the administrative wings above ground. A distinct lack of natural lighting aside, the offices were clean, professional and sometimes almost inviting. The nature of their work almost made the girl forget that the pathologists who called the basement floor home differed very little from the doctors above. Even when surrounded by death, they filed paperwork, ate lunch and bantered all the same as anyone else. The only thing that differed was the pulses of their ‘patients’.

The detectives paused at a certain door, leading to an exceptionally cold room, even colder in appearance. The girl did not see much beyond the door apart from the tiled walls, stainless steel benches, and a lone operating table in the room’s centre, a mass lying atop it underneath a white sheet. The Beak behind it, draped in a white overcoat almost looked like death itself. She knew what lay there and couldn’t bear to take her eyes off it until the Detective Inspector blocked her view. She looked up at his face in response, almost forgetting to communicate in the way humans understood.

The Detective Inspector cut her off before she could speak. “We only need one person to identify the body. You don’t need to enter if it’s too much to handle.”

The girl froze. Equal parts 'yes' and 'no' cancelled out any coherent thought in her head. She wished for someone to make her do it, force her to walk into the room and take the burden of choice from her shoulders. Enter and grieve like a child or refuse for the sake of composure. Unlike her father, she knew she could not have the best of both worlds.

“Thank you, officer,” her father said in her steed.

Wait here.

And so, she waited, standing beside the Detective Constable as her father followed the Inspector inside. Their footsteps echoed horribly, and the room emanated the same soft whirring as any other domestic FrostBox. None of the grandiose a funeral afforded death; none of the ritual or symbolism. Just corpses. Heaps of flesh.

For a human, the face of the flesh still bore a harrowing resemblance to the once-living person. Once one removed a Beak’s mask, the heap of swirling black flesh meant nothing to anyone besides only the closest friend or family.

“Thank you for coming, Mr Mallorine,” the pathologist’s mechanical voice said. “I’m sorry we’ve had to meet in such a way, but…such is the case with this job.”

“Thank you for your work,” her father said, expressing little more than the formality itself. Over the whir of the magic coolant, the girl barely heard the removal of the cloth covering as it draped to the floor. And after a prolonged silence….

“Yes. That is my wife, Regela Mallorine, and that is the serial code of her mask.”

The girl’s emotions slipped, and her voice box expressed it as a sharp exhale, as though she had been winded. Out of the corner of her vision, she could see the Detective Constable react but ultimately do nothing. She thanked him silently as she attempted to reassert her composure.

“Thank you,” she heard the Detective Inspector say. “Please, take your time.”

“What has the coroner ruled?” her father asked them as she clutched her abdomen and tensed her body, refusing to let herself slip.

“Suicide,” the pathologist said. “There are obvious traces of aggressive Aether compounds in her body, and a handwritten addition to her will was left in her personal effects.”

The girl keeled over, racing to turn off her voice box before it could weave her outburst into something verbal. The Detective Constable by her side kneeled beside her.

“Hey,” was all he could say, his inexperienced face twisting into concern and confusion. He did not know how to help, and his help, his pity, was the last thing she wanted. The pathologist kept going.

“The coroner has also ruled that she…hung herself before the poison took effect and has called for further investigation into her motive.”

The whirring of the coolant was all she could hear besides the faint whispers of her voice box. It was still on, taking her emotions and twisting them into a shaky breath. She listened to it, listened to herself, listened to the unbearable state she had devolved into. She could not even turn her voice box off and grieve like a normal Beak, the way her mother would have ordered. The mother who always hated how her hair grew and her body fluctuated. The hypocrite who now lay as a heap on a cold steel table, hanging herself like some human. Perhaps, it was all out of spite.

Ready.

“—which marks what seems to be an end to the three-year-long Help & Labour power struggle which followed the end of the Workar Empire’s collapse. The sudden disappearance of well-renowned Workar CEO and disillusion of the company, left in its wake a major power struggle to corner the domestic-use market. Well respected for their disapproval of illegal kidnapping methods in favour of voluntary training and in-house production, the reputation has only recently been matched by the combined effort of the Tereka and Brikkil families and their newest business venture. As the last vestiges of the landmark tower are scrubbed of all ties to the historic business, one can only wonder if, and how, the legacy will last. In other news—”

The man turned down the radio and leaned in his chair, watching the snow fall beyond his window from a thoroughly overcast sky. Like a child with too much paint, the grey masses gave the world a blotchy, uneven overcoat. Such was winter. Even with the advent of modern technology, the cold kept most people off the streets and in their homes, huddled around a smoky campfire or a smoggy heater. Ironically, only when it snowed on the coldest days would the populous venture out, have fun, and regain a modicum of the spirit that spring would soon reinject into their cities.

The man looked around his humble room on the seventeenth floor of a humble downtown Trepidite inn. Humble for a hotel room was a bed, a bathroom, and a chest of drawers, barely large enough for a single person sitting tens of metres above the concrete street below. Humble for a hotel meant being only one of many lessees in a building at least twenty storeys high, peppered with uniform windows and metal pipes like glowing pores and popping veins, bursting with steam and leaking smog. Humble for a building meant being connected to the grid by a myriad of streaking electrical cables, flanked by bridges and railways suspended in midair, rattling with the traffic of trams and trains through the entire district in perpetuity.

Humble for a district meant not being afforded the privilege of glamorous billboards nor the honour of being bathed in blinding spotlights from below as did the city’s uptown. Those same spotlights instead traced the dark ceiling as snow and ash fell from the sky in equal parts while the streets relished in its bottom-feeder society. Individual lights from neon signs, faulty streetlamps and grimy windows made up for the spotlights’ absence, advertising bootleg products and shady services. Humble for a human city meant that such a way of life, from gold-laced sidewalk to overflowing gutter, did not extend as far as the eye could see. Yet.

The man could easily recognise Trepedite as a human city—one of abundance and excess, efficiency and greed. A well-oiled, churning machine that spread and spread, from austere lights and pearly towers that seemed to pierce the grey ceiling to the grit and grime which still somehow triumphed over nature itself. It was every bit a human city, but Demitore was still a middling nation. An older frontier for the species itself but new for the new-age human living condition.

And so, it was ironic that the man in question had travelled to the hive of human activity to meet a Spirit.

“Friend of yours wasn’t he, that Wesper guy? …Provenance?”

The man turned back to his guest. A skeletal figure hidden under a ragged corduroy suit stood by the door, head concealed in a tattered, fraying cloak. In the dim light of the glorified prison cell, one could not help but dismiss him as another figure of the streets. Almost like camouflage, his guest was one with the grim labyrinth, his appearance expertly encouraging assumptions of a lowly status and his mannerisms masterfully reinforcing them.

Only Provenance had the opportunity to notice the inconsistencies between the shape of his guest’s feet and his shoes, or the way his teeth seemed to glint more prominently in the light. The phrase he had fallen to in describing the figure was simply that it was ‘best not to look at him for too long’.

“Yes,” Provenance replied, collecting himself from his daydream and turning away from the ashen grey sky. “Good colleague of mine. I gave him his last job three years ago, right before he died.”

“How did that end up?” his guest asked, and Provenance smiled, not wholly enthused on reminiscing. Noteworthy or not, the past was the past. He only found value in the past insofar as it affected the present. Beyond that, the history of such a misbegotten reality was hardly worth his time.

“Well, we all have our failures,” he warned, sighing while a bulleted summary of their conversation scrolled through his head, wrapping up his guest’s report into a neat abstract he tucked away in his memory. “I don’t wish to see your campaign fall short, so please, do tread with caution in the city that killed my friend.”

A final warning. Less of a formality than Provenance was used to delivering, for he meant every word.

“I’ll take that in stride, friend,” his guest said, turning for the door. “Until utopia begins.”

“Until then.”

Blow.