The guard and Sky moved through the eastern streets at a fast pace, boots striking stone softened by dust and old ash.
The guard slowed near a narrow side street.
"Here," he said.
The bodies had already been covered. Rough cloth. Seven shapes, laid side by side against the wall of a closed shop. No blood pooling — it had been cleaned, or there hadn't been much to begin with.
Verrith stood a few steps away, speaking quietly to another guard. His posture was rigid, one hand resting near his sword but never touching it.
Sky approached.
"You came fast," Verrith said.
"The guard's good at leading." Sky replied.
Verrith exhaled once. "That's good.Well would you mind listening?"
"Is it related to why you told the guard to bring me specifically instead of a more trustworthy person like Esther or Luminar?"
"Well, yeah I need your help for this case."
"Doesn't Esther, your leader, have the detective skills for this or does she only have good leadership and lacks in these cases where pure reasoning abilities are required?"
"Don't disrespect Esther first." Verrith replied a bit seriously, "but that's not what I want help with. I need your ability to see through lies through body language and micro expressions for questioning."
"You got a suspect in mind?" Sky asked.
"Yeah. A retired veteran," Verrith replied. "His name keeps appearing where it shouldn't."
Sky's eyes sharpened.
"Where?"
"Gate logs. Street watch rotations. Civilian movement tallies." Verrith frowned.
"Not in an official way. He's not assigned. So he's just….out of place."
Sky said nothing.
"He was seen near two of the shops where the murders happened," Verrith continued. "Not during. Before."
"Observing," Sky said.
Verrith nodded. "That's what bothered me."
He looked at Sky now.
"I talked to him."
Sky tilted his head slightly. "And?"
"He was polite. Calm. Too calm, especially when people he knew from these streets died." Verrith's jaw tightened. "And when I questioned him for his reason for roaming around here, he said he was just walking. Remembering old routes."
Verrith reached for something in his inner pocket of his robe that he had made.
It was a simple image of the suspect. It looked like it had been taken from an old camera using a film roll.
"Here, have a look at this guy." Verrith said as he looked at the photo in his hand and tracked his eye back into Sky's face, his left eye not tracking immediately. It had lagged — just enough to notice.
Sky looked at the suspect's face. He looked like a decently built person in his late thirties or forties with dark spots near his eyes.
He looked at the suspect for a bit and turned towards Verrith and asked, "Your eye…"
Verrith blinked once, deliberately. "It's… functional."
"That wasn't the question I was gonna ask."
Verrith exhaled through his nose. "My interpretation healed it enough that it's not unusable. But it didn't restore it."
He turned his head slightly, aligning his good eye with Sky.
"The injured one's blurry," Verrith continued. "There's a gap in the middle. Like something was removed and never replaced. Or to explain in better words, there is a big black spot in the middle and the side is blurry and foggy and colours look less vibrant."
Sky studied him, then nodded. "So your peripheral's fine. Depth isn't."
"I don't really understand what words you used but we should move on now," Verrith said. "This isn't the glaring problem right now."
They stood in silence for a moment.
Then Sky crouched.
He lifted the edge of one covering — just enough to see the wound.
Clean.
Not wide. Not jagged.
He moved to the next. Same.
Then the third.
"Consistent," Sky said.
Verrith watched carefully. "What do you see?"
"Precision," Sky replied. "One to three strikes. Controlled angle. No hesitation."
He stood again, dusting his gloves.
"No panic," he added. "No rage."
Verrith nodded once. "That matches my same thoughts. He's calm. He was also a veteran warrior so the precision of the strikes suited him."
Sky glanced back at Verrith's injured eye again — the way it stayed slightly unfocused when he wasn't actively aligning it.
Sky straightened.
"Well let's go and meet him."
Verrith paused, then nodded.
"Well? Lead the way," Sky said
They turned away from the bodies and walked at a quick pace.
They walked for a while longer before Sky spoke again.
"Back then," he said. "When we first met."
Verrith didn't slow. "Be specific."
"When I said you couldn't even invade the Fiend Rogue with a full team and asked what could you even do by yourself and that you'll die a meaningless death," Sky continued. "That you were helpless. That you needed me."
A pause.
"You didn't get angry or irritated," Sky said. "You didn't threaten me. You didn't argue. You just… accepted it."
Verrith exhaled slowly. "You want to know why?"
"Yes."
Verrith stopped this time.
He turned just a bit to face Sky with his good eye.
"Well, you weren't wrong," he said.
Sky frowned slightly.
"At that moment," Verrith clarified, "I was helpless."
Sky opened his mouth, then closed it.
"You weren't insulting me," Verrith continued. "You were stating a condition. My team was dead. My information was incomplete. My body was damaged. And my judgment—" he tapped the side of his head lightly, "—was compromised."
"That doesn't mean—" Sky started.
"It means," Verrith interrupted calmly, "that if I'd rejected your help out of pride, I would've been lying to myself, and I would be committing the biggest sin of them all. Pride."
He turned away again and resumed walking.
"You were offering help," Verrith said. "You were offering a better chance to complete my mission. You wanted to do me a favour, whether you had other motives or not. Yet I still didn't trust you that well."
Sky watched his back.
"And I don't take offense from someone who evaluates a situation accurately," Verrith added. "Even if they phrase it poorly."
"…So you just let it happen?" Sky asked.
"No," Verrith replied. "I weighed the options."
He gestured vaguely ahead.
"I could refuse you and proceed alone — slower, weaker, and most likely to fail. Or I could accept someone who clearly saw me as a liability but still chose to help anyway."
Sky's eyes narrowed. "That's a strange definition of trust."
"I don't think that's a definition of trust in any form of interpretation," Verrith said. "But I ain't exactly the most literate person."
They passed another corner.
"And there's something else," Verrith added.
Sky waited.
"You said you didn't wanna kill anyone, especially so soon," Verrith continued. "Although I'm not sure why you were doing that and avoiding killing people unless you had no choice but to hold back like the scenario with the pursuit and I won't ask for your reason on why you chose that or why you decided to change your mind near the end and try and kill the pursuer as we ran at the same time."
Sky didn't respond immediately.
"But I feel a bit better and somewhat comforted that you chose my life over the pursuiter's own life," Verrith finished, "Although I'm sure it seemed like he was gonna kill you, I feel like you could have figured out a way out if you gave my life up."
A few steps later, Sky spoke.
"…I wasn't trying to save you."
"I know," Verrith replied.
"That makes it worse," Sky muttered, a bit irritated.
Verrith's mouth twitched — barely.
"Only if you think survival requires dignity," he said. "I don't."
They soon arrived at the suspect's home.
The house was modest but was well maintained.
As they went close to the door, a familiar smell was noted by the both of them.
And soon they rushed in kicking the door in.
The veteran hung from a beam in the main room, boots barely brushing the floor. Knot tied cleanly. Chair positioned deliberately beneath him.
Sky's gaze moved immediately.
Dust patterns.
No signs of struggle.
Everything pointed to a self-inflicted death or in other words a suicide
"This wasn't rushed," Sky said.
Verrith nodded once. "No struggle."
Sky stepped forward, eyes moving quickly.
He soon saw something.
A table with letters stacked, not scattered, them reading:
-
-
-
-
-
"He didn't have the main intention to confess in this message, it was an apology in case he was wrong or if interpreted in another way, self-justification for his crime that he committed because he couldn't handle the odd feeling or insecurity," Sky said.
"I agree," Verrith agreed. "It's….it's unfortunate."
Verrith exhaled through his nose. "He thought he was acting ahead of something."
"Yes."
"Someone else?" Verrith asked.
Sky shook his head. "Nothing concrete."
"Bring a guard and check if he had any person he knew, I'm going to bring the body down and inspect it a bit."
"Sure." Sky replied as he got out.
A sigh left Verrith's mouth as he put the body slowly down on the floor.
He stared at the warrior's tired expression and stared at it for a while before going out, staring at the floor where the man's boots had last scraped.
'A retired warrior, no active duty, no reason to be here — except that he had been.'
Soon the guards came with Sky and with them, they both went inside.
Seeing them go inside, he was silent for a bit, and soon stepped back and turned away.
And walked a couple steps ahead.
His left eye burned faintly.
He closed it.
The gap was still there — a black center where detail should have been. He had already learned to ignore it, learned to move his head instead of his gaze. So far it didn't bother him too much, other things had bothered him for longer.
But today, it did.
'Clean strikes.' That thought returned, uninvited.
Not the wounds, not the suicide.
The sequence.
The veteran had been observed near the victims — 'yes.'
He had the skill — 'yes.'
He had the motive — 'something like one.'
But Verrith replayed the scene in his head, carefully.
The man hadn't been confused, not surprised.
He had been certain.
'Certain that the kingdom was in danger. Certain that someone was preparing to destroy it. Certain that acting alone was necessary. Certainty like that didn't come from nowhere.'
Verrith opened his left eye again.
The world blurred — buildings bending slightly inward, things losing their center if he didn't focus. He adjusted, breathing steady.
"Seven people," he muttered quietly.
Seven precise kills.
No hesitation.
And then a suicide — fast, decisive, no attempt to flee.
'It feels so weird.'
He walked a bit and leaned towards the wall.
'Something or someone must have fed him confirmation. Reinforced his suspicion. Then his vigilance turned into certainty.'
Verrith exhaled slowly.
He didn't have proof. Not even a clear name.
"Hey so what do you think we should do with the property since he has no one relatives or anyone he knows." Sky said, pulling Verrith out of his thoughts.
"Let's inform Esther first then deal with it."