The smell of iron and incense was far too familiar to Karel's lungs. It was a combination of aromas that greeted him every time he set foot in the heart of Murniarta's darkness. The smell of blood beginning to dry mingled with the overly smoky scent of ritual, the aroma of death polished to look like the universe's will.
He was inside the belly of an old warehouse, a damp, multilevel concrete structure where the city's dirtiest transactions were usually conducted. Above his head, fluorescent lights buzzed lazily, casting a yellowish glow too weak to fight the darkness that truly lived there. Acid rain fell outside—not heavily, but steadily, like the metropolis's sobs after keeping too many secrets.
Karel bent over. His movements were efficient, wasting no energy. His eyes focused on the object in front of him: the body of a middle-aged man who was now nothing more than an array of expensive clothes covering a failed attempt to survive. He had been a minor capo, a low-ranking leader in one of the local mafia's pockets. Now he was merely a pile of biological evidence that needed to be “cleaned.”
He took a piece of sterile gauze, always tucked into his leather belt. Wrapping the corpse was not an act of mercy; it was protocol. He folded the cloth with perfect precision, hiding the details of the wounds. Those injuries were not ordinary knife cuts. They had a certain pattern—sunken lines resembling claws, yet their structure was too organic, too wild. They were the marks of an entity's bite, or perhaps a Khodam that had lost control because the dose of Tirakat Opium had been wrong.
“Perfect, Karel.”
The voice came from behind him, heavier than the rain pounding on the corrugated roof. It was Raka, their field foreman, a man who always seemed far too relaxed for work this grim. Raka leaned his shoulder against a rusted steel pillar, letting his shadow fall completely over Karel.
Karel only raised his head slightly, not even bothering to look up fully. “It's stable enough, Mas Raka. It's wrapped.”
Raka chuckled softly, the sound like sand scraping across concrete. “Always neat as a machine, you are. Professionalism that makes us feel safe, but also makes us suspicious.” He touched Karel's shoulder briefly, the contact feeling like an assessment. “Don't let your attention to detail blind you to the bigger picture, kid.”
Karel pulled his shoulder away slightly, ignoring the touch. *The bigger picture.* It was a phrase often repeated by people who thought they knew everything, especially in a place like this. They believed they saw it all—from illegal gambling transactions to spirit-summoning rituals. But to Karel, everything was merely a thin layer that had to be peeled back one at a time.
“I see the details, Mas,” Karel replied tersely. His voice was flat, without excessive emotion. “And when you put those details together, they always form a pattern. A pattern of destruction, Mas. There's always a common thread.”
Raka raised an eyebrow, as if intrigued by a metaphor slightly too poetic for this garbage warehouse. “A common thread? This place is full of blood and incense smoke, Karel. Not silk thread.”
Karel lowered his head again, but the corner of his eye still caught something on the corpse—a small scratch on the rib cage that Raka had missed. It wasn't an ordinary Khodam's claw mark. The pattern was more structured, almost like the trail of metal that had once scraped against a particular kind of energy. A signature, perhaps.
“Every lie leaves residue, Mas,” Karel whispered, more to himself than to Raka. “Even an aura of darkness leaves fingerprints.”
Raka laughed again, though the sound seemed slightly forced. “Forget it. What matters is that this problem's over. The turf war is heating up, Karel. Sanjaya Consortium is getting bolder about entering the old zone. We have to be careful. We can't become easy targets just because we're too thorough.”
Karel closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled a breath that felt impossibly heavy. *The turf war.* He knew exactly what it meant. This wasn't merely a struggle over the black market; it was a clash between conventional power structures and entities living on the boundary between the real world and a dimension untouched by business licenses. And he, with all his “cleaning” equipment, was the most effective—and most anonymous—tool for cleaning up the aftermath of that battle.
After Raka left, taking only the smell of cheap tobacco and sweat mixed with lamp oil, Karel finally raised his gaze fully. The warehouse was indeed enormous. Its corrugated roof was rusted, turning the sound of acid rain into a monotonous, soothing, and yet ominous musical backdrop. There was only him, the dying fluorescent light, and the neatly wrapped corpses waiting to be taken to the final disposal site—or perhaps somewhere farther away.
He slowly walked around the pile of bodies. Every corpse had a story to tell, but no one wanted to listen. They only wanted to be picked up, discarded, and forgotten.
His mind began working automatically, like an extraordinarily advanced data-search engine. He processed every angle: injury patterns, the type of fabric used, the direction of the blood flow, even the rhythm of the fluorescent lights' buzzing, as if it too were imitating the heartbeat of a sick city.
Beneath his professional calm lay a thick layer of old wounds. Karel had never truly felt at peace since... well, never mind. Let that mystery remain the blanket he always wore. The wound was too large, too filthy, and too many people had tried to hide it beneath the carpet of luxury or layers of expensive incense.
He stopped in front of a small wooden crate in the darkest corner, where the dead light rarely reached. This crate was different. On its lid, there was more than just a smear of dried blood. Something subtler was there, something that required a highly trained touch and eye to detect.
A shard.
It was a small fragment of ceramic, a pale ivory white, carved with an extraordinarily intricate floral design—a motif completely out of place among the cheap goods dominating the warehouse. Ceramic like this was usually found in well-maintained places, places of historical value, or... places that were extremely expensive.
Karel crouched.