The courthouse should have been quiet at this hour, its grand corridors locked in the sleep of bureaucracy. But as soon as I stepped inside, the silence was wrong. It wasn't the heavy quiet of night—it was a stillness laced with dread, the kind that makes your skin prickle as though the walls themselves are holding their breath.
Julian walked ahead of me, his shoes clicking against marble with practiced confidence. I followed, clutching the crime file the sergeant had handed us at the entrance. The words on the front—Rowan Whitfield, deceased—seemed too clinical for what we were about to see.
"Judge Whitfield," Julian murmured, voice low but edged with irony. "He was famous for calling redevelopment seizures 'progress.' I suppose progress finally caught up with him."
I didn't answer. The scent hit me before we reached the chamber doors: metallic blood, acrid smoke, something faintly chemical. When the officer swung the door open, the scene carved itself into my memory with brutal clarity.
Rowan Whitfield sat slumped at his mahogany desk, though "sat" wasn't the right word—his body had collapsed in on itself, blood soaking his robes. His skin was blotched with burns in irregular patches, and the veins under his flesh looked swollen, almost black. His eyes were frozen wide, as though the last thing he'd seen had burned itself into him.
My throat tightened, but I forced myself closer, scanning, cataloguing, breaking the horror into variables. The air was warmer here, tinged with a faint soot-scent that didn't belong in a courtroom.
Julian stayed a step behind me, watching. "I'll never understand how you can stand this close without flinching."
"It's just input," I said softly. "Data in flesh. My mind records before my nerves protest."
He smirked, though his eyes betrayed the unease he wouldn't voice. "One day, Elysia, your nerves will win."
I crouched near the body, noting the pattern of burns. They weren't from flame—too irregular, too internal. "No accelerant, no open fire," I murmured. "This was… inside-out."
Julian arched a brow, stepping nearer. His cologne cut briefly through the iron tang of blood. "Inside-out?"
"His veins are clotted. See here?" I gestured at the swollen skin of the judge's hand. "Massive internal coagulation. But the burns… they suggest a reaction. Heat without flame. Chemical, maybe alchemical."
That word hung between us, heavier than I intended. Julian studied me with those calculating eyes, then leaned down close enough that his shoulder brushed mine. The contact startled me—not because it was inappropriate, but because he did it so deliberately.
"You're whispering like it's a secret," he said near my ear, his tone softer now. "If you keep speaking like that, people will think we're conspiring."
Heat rose under my skin in spite of the corpse at our feet. I pulled back just enough to meet his gaze, refusing to give him the satisfaction of fluster. "We are conspiring," I countered evenly. "Against whoever did this."
He grinned, slow and sharp, like I'd passed some unspoken test.
The chamber door creaked again, breaking the moment. Detective Keir strode in, coffee in one hand, notepad in the other. He took one look at the judge and let out a low whistle.
"Well, that's one way to shut a court," he muttered, then turned to me with a small half-smile. "Analyst. Long night for you already?"
I met his gaze coolly. "Data doesn't keep time."
Keir chuckled, then leaned on the back of a chair, his eyes flicking between me and Julian with unhidden amusement. "You two look cozy. Should I step out?"
Julian shot him a glance sharp enough to cut paper. "Stay if you want to learn what you'll miss."
Keir only grinned wider, scribbling something in his pad. The banter felt almost normal, but the corpse in front of us made the air heavy again.
I focused back on the body. Something glimmered faintly near the desk's edge—a residue, almost like soot dusting the polished wood. I swabbed it carefully.
"There's a signature here," I said. "Whoever did this left a trace. Faint soot. Consistent with combustion, but no external fire. This wasn't poison in the usual sense. This was something… engineered."
Julian straightened, smoothing his tie, the sharp lawyer mask snapping back into place. "Engineered murder. That's a different battlefield entirely. But it leaves evidence, and evidence is my specialty."
Keir scribbled, then looked up at me. "So, Elysia… what do you call this?"
I glanced once more at Rowan's charred veins, the blackened swell beneath his skin. A chill went through me as though the corpse itself whispered the name.
"Pyrothrom Bleed," I said quietly.
The room seemed to tighten at the words. Julian's expression shifted—interest, calculation, something darker. Keir's smile faded.
The case had just become something more than grotesque. It was methodical. Intentional. And it had a name.
Julian caught my eye, his voice dropping low, meant only for me. "Whoever did this wanted us to see brilliance in horror. And we will find them, Elysia. Together."
There it was again—that "together," a word that in his mouth sounded less like teamwork and more like a promise. I logged it, filed it, let it settle under my skin where I'd pretend it didn't burn.
But as I looked at the judge's ruined body, the faint soot still clinging to my gloves, I knew one thing: this wasn't the last corpse.
This was only the beginning.