Devon Duncan gazed up at a ceiling tile within his cubicle. It was. A Monday, perhaps a Wednesday. Time felt like a thing, similar to cold gravy. His report on cross-border weapons trafficking was still a blinking cursor on a dull screen. Burnout his manager referred to it as. A neat term, for the sensation of his mind being a off station emitting static he couldn't fully catch.
Pamela Pauline's voice pierced the fog. "Duncan. My office."
Her voice lacked any urgency showing routine irritation. Devon leaned away, from his desk his body feeling weighed down as if on loan. Pamela stood behind a desk a file already spread open. She didn't raise her eyes when he came in.
"Brussels " she stated, pushing a photo across, to him. "Renowned thinker. Kale Kane. Discovered in his flat motionless. Vital signs steady but non-reactive. A frozen figure."
Devon lifted the picture. A gentleman, in his sixties sitting in an armchair his eyes open yet vacant. An odd calm look adorned his face.
"Local police described it as an incident. Then they discovered… this." Another image. The floor of the room blanketed with a dust coating. Within the dust a drawing had been crafted. Not letters. Forms. Intertwined spirals, angles, a pattern that strained his eyes to trace it. It stretched over the planks, like a spectral mandala.
"Symbols suggest a cult connection. That's your area of expertise." Pamela at last turned to face him. Her stare was steady evaluating his waning focus. "Head to Brussels. Examine his papers, his associations. Determine if this is a collapse or something, with… extensions. A brief evaluation."
Devon gave a nod, a gesture. Tentacles. An allegory. He sensed a corroded awakening—the shadow of his own inquisitiveness. It was preferable, to the stillness.
Kale Kane's flat emitted the scent of books and musty air. The entrance was covered with police tape arranged in a cross pattern. The markings, in the dust had been meticulously protected beneath a polymer layer. They were complex, meticulous exuding a frantic intellect. Devon knelt down disregarding a local cop.
"No indication of a fight " the officer remarked. "No evidence of breaking in. The coffee cup was cold. He simply… sat there."
Devon's gaze followed a languid bend within the pattern. It resembled not much a writing as a removal. The mark of something missing. Rising with knees creaking he looked around the space. Volumes on phenomenology essays on weariness. Then on a section of wall, by the window one solitary word scribbled with that same dust-covered fingertip.
BELPHEGOR.
It was solitary. A title. An assertion. A mark.
"What's that? Someone?" the officer inquired.
Devon remained silent. He pulled out his phone. Snapped a photo. The word, bathed in the dull afternoon light appeared to soak up the sounds, around it.
His following destination was an office at a university. Javier Jeffrey, an Oxford fellow focused on iconography and arcane mathematics had been an occasional contact of Kane's. He was a figure, with energy pulsating beneath a facade of scholarly composure. Devon presented him the pictures on his laptop.
Javier's expression shifted immediately. The easygoing interest disappeared, substituted by a concentrated focus. He leaned in toward the screen his breath misting its corner.
" heavens " he murmured. "It's… it's logical."
"Do you know this?"
"Not exactly no. Yet its design… it's not artwork. This is a syntax. A language composed of forms." Javier's finger lingered on a crossing line. "This curve here is a recognized emblem for 'entropic peace', in some hermetic writings.. This configuration… it's original. It resembles a sentence.. An equation."
"An equation for what?"
Javier reclined, his gaze, with scholarly curiosity. "For calmness. Observe its movement. There's no edge, no harsh insistence. Each corner fades into stillness. It doesn't accumulate. It… dissipates." He turned to Devon. "Belphegor. In the demonology of the Middle Ages that's a demon.. Not of anger or desire. Of laziness. Of inactivity."
"A demon " Devon echoed, evenly.
"A metaphor!" Javier exclaimed, his tone increasing with enthusiasm. "Kane's final piece was a commentary, on ' action'—the concept that our perpetual hectic activity merely conceals profound systemic nihilism. What if Belphegor serves as his opposing myth? An embodiment of a intentional retreat?"
Devon considered his cubicle, his own stillness. A deliberate retreat. It seemed like an expression, for his exhaustion.
"Could this literally attract someone?" he inquired.
Javier gazed more at the expansive pattern displayed on the monitor. His interest was now mixed with a hint of fear. "Certain languages are spoken. Others are written. Some... Are visual.. Once they're observed they can't be ignored. They alter perception. If this counts as a language Detective then it's one that doesn't convey. It determines."
Prior to departing Devon got an email. Anonymous sender. No text. Only a file attached: a scanned weathered page appearing to be from a grimoire. A rough woodcut illustration of a horned entity resting on a throne encircled by geometric shapes. The caption below stated: Belphegor: He who uncovers and discloses, the inertia, at the core of all existence.
And below that, in a modern, typed font: For the full text, seek the closed stacks. Royal Library. Ask for Sari.
Devon stood on the street, in Brussels with a drizzle starting to fill the air. The mental noise had vanished. It was substituted by a icy flow. This wasn't a health episode. It wasn't a collapse. Kale Kane hadn't collapsed. He had reached a destination.. Someone or something had left a signature in the dust.
He glanced at his reflection, in the glass of a store window—a weary man wearing a creased coat clutching a phone displaying a demon's name. The contradiction murmured softly to him. Could this be sloth? This careful complex dismantling of the mind? It didn't seem idle. It felt like a methodical kind of uprising.
And he was now its reluctant detective.