Three weeks.

The festival of Haelish was on the horizon. Savina had just given birth to their beautiful baby girl. He was finally captain of the central precinct — a position he had been eyeing for close to a year now.

Three weeks. It took three weeks to the day for everything to fall apart.

Yesterday, Captain Hyte had been catching up on bookkeeping for the third day in a row. He imagined a much more involved role when he found out he was being promoted. Instead, he had received about double the paperwork and saw half the action he used to. Hyte was practically snoring on the pile of files in front of him by the time the courier stepped into his office this morning.

"Sir," the man began, calling the captain from his stupor. "I hate to interrupt, but it's urgent. You're gonna wanna see this..." And before the captain could blink, the courier was gone. The way he blanched suggested to Hyte that today would be the end of this tedium.

Orrenstead hadn't seen a murder in a decade. Most of the offenses he had addressed in his time as a city guard had been quite tame. A theft occurred every so often, perhaps. Most of the time, he just settled personal disputes about property or money owed. More than once, Hyte had caught himself wishing he had just become a lawyer. Four years on the watch, and he hadn't even dreamed of being in charge of something like this.

"Captain," the guardsman — Armand, the captain remembered — greeted him with a thin frown as he approached the scene. The young lieutenant was a stoic, reliable type. Always on time, never complained, very serious. The other guards weren't always fond of him, but Hyte had come to value his integrity, especially as the new precinct captain. Seeing him frown this way meant something was terribly, terribly wrong. "There's been a murder," Armand continued, "And it isn't pretty. The body's over there." He gestured rigidly behind him toward the plaza. "We're working on crowd control now. The woman who witnessed the crime is over there" — another stiff point to indicate the witness — "and Chief Investigator Lakeleaf is examining the victim now. Aside from you and her, all others have been instructed to vacate the premises per protocol."

The captain was grateful that Armand had arrived before him; he wouldn't have had the first clue of what to do here. Of course Armand had actually read the Codes. "Thank you, Lieutenant. As you were," he said. Armand saluted, then returned to directing people away from the plaza. Nervously, Hyte proceeded toward the body, which was shrouded by a cloth blanket. Stooping beneath the blanket and over the body was who he could only assume was Lakeleaf. He hadn't been given the chance to meet Orrenstead's chief investigator since his promotion, as she always seemed to be busy with one thing or another. "It's a shame we couldn't meet under lighter circumstances, eh?" he said cautiously to the investigator, wary of startling her while she worked.

"You could say that," she replied without surfacing from beneath the blanket. Her voice strained with the focus and delicacy of the task before her. The tone she used told the captain to save the pleasantries. Lakeleaf continued to carefully examine different parts of the victim's body, prodding some firmly and hardly daring to disturb others. When she pulled out from the blanket a moment later, her face was unreadable. She quietly stared down at the tan mound in front of her, removing her gloves slowly. After a moment that felt entirely too long, Captain Hyte dared to speak.

"... How bad is it?"

"Very," Lakeleaf replied. "It's not the damage to the body that's the issue, though. It's the clear motive of the assailant that has me worried." The Half-Elf looked younger than him, but it was always hard to tell with their kind. The way she spoke betrayed the years of experience she had over him. "I don't know the languages of the Abyss, but I can certainly identify them when I see them. Take a look for yourself," she stepped away from the victim, ushering the captain to her spot. "All along her arms and legs, just covered in them..." she trailed off, almost to herself. Despite the warning, he wasn't prepared for what he saw.

The first thing he noticed was her eyes, and the way they seemed to capture her fear and anguish in her final moments. Whatever she saw when she died, he could almost see it through her. When he found the strength to press on, he saw the marks Lakeleaf had indicated, and indeed they covered her exposed arms. He pulled up her skirt slightly to confirm that her legs, too, were in fact lined with these symbols, all carved crudely into her skin. The captain felt sick, but as he stood to turn away, he noticed something beneath the victim. Carefully, he turned the body on its side just enough to examine beneath her.

More writing, he thought. Less neat than the symbols on her body, but in a similar script. A message, maybe?

"Hey, Lakeleaf. Did you see this?" he began just as he noticed Lieutenant Armand approach. "Lieutenant, I thought you said-"

"Sir, another body has been found," Armand cut in bleakly.

"Another body?" an unfamiliar voice called out from just behind the captain. He spun around, moving to draw his mace, only to find Lakeleaf staring across the body at him from several feet away, looking just as perplexed as him.

"What in Myth's green-"

"Oh, right," said the disembodied voice. And then a tall, flamboyantly dressed Celestine stood before the officers. "Hello! I couldn't help but overhear-"

"What are you-!? Sir -er, madam? I'm going to have to ask you to vacate the scene-" Armand began, but was promptly cut off by another unidentified voice calling out.

"What's this all about?" Another two individuals — or one individual and a machine of some kind — were walking toward the plaza as well. They, too, seemed to have circumvented what Hyte had previously believed to be a rather tight line of guards. "We couldn't help but offer some assistance, as it seems something is amiss." The rugged Half-Elf spoke eloquently and with confidence, though he looked like he had been living in a cave for years.

"Look, we appreciate the offer, but we need all of you to get out of here now," Captain Hyte ordered. "We might enlist in the help of you Seekers if it comes to that, but at the moment-"

"-at the moment, it seems you all are struggling to handle even the most straightforward of crimes," Sheva crooned, apparently amused by the guards' frustration. "I've already translated the message you were just investigating, and I can tell you what's going on if you'd just let me."

Armand deferred to the captain with an anxious look, the most emotion he had ever seen him display. Lakeleaf just continued to quietly witness the scene with her hands held behind her back. Hyte took a deep breath. What a day.

"Well, seeing as the issue continues to escalate," he relented, staring vaguely in the direction from which Armand had just come, "I guess we'll have to work with you on this. What do you have for us- uh, what's your name again?"

With an exaggerated bow, the Celestine smiled wide and said, "Sheva Oldran, at your service!" Then stared quizzically at the Half-Elf and machine. "I'm not sure who these two are, though. They're not with me!"

"Ma-" the Half-Elf started, then cleared his throat. "I am Montenegro. This one doesn't have a name," he finished, tilting his head toward the machine.

"The man in the library called me Guardian. You can call me that, if you must," the machine declared.

"Great. Now, Sheva, what in Karoh's name have you discovered?"

"Well, you see-" Sheva managed to get out before a commotion started in the crowd again.

"Look up there!" someone yelled, pointing toward the temple. A dark, robed figure slowly drifted toward the edge of the roof with what appeared to be a body in hand. The person it was holding seemed alive and struggling. There was nothing any of them could do down here.

For the first time in his life, Captain Verok Hyte was truly afraid.

The cloaked figure — who seemed to be a large humanoid of some kind beneath their robes — arrived at the edge of the building. The crowd froze, anticipating what was next. The figure looked to the crowd, then to the person it held, too frightened to utter a sound, and then it laughed. A deep, sinister, blood-curdling laugh. When it stopped abruptly, its cackle echoing through the now-silent city, it seemed to smile right at the captain before it spoke. "It... is time," it said just loud enough for its audience below to hear.

And then the third victim fell.