Eselin stepped into the room without bothering to knock. Her blonde hair was tied back tightly, and rainwater clung to the shoulders of her academy coat. She looked irritated more than anything else, though whether that frustration was directed at me or the situation itself, I could not tell.

"District Captain wants to speak with you, Ace," she said. "She’s waiting outside."

I pushed myself off the floor carefully, my shoulder still aching from the earlier fight.

"Alright."

"Follow me."

I nodded and stepped out of the room behind her.

The corridor outside remained crowded despite the late hour. Guards stood outside Jelda’s room while several teachers attempted to force students back toward their dormitories. Nobody listened very well. Fear had spread through the building too quickly for that.

The students watched me as I walked past. Some looked nervous. Others looked curious. A few openly stared.

Probably because I had chased a murderer through the girls’ dormitory while teleporting around like a lunatic.

Rain hammered softly against the windows lining the hallway while lanterns flickered overhead. Eselin led me around the corner, and that was when I saw the woman waiting there.

Silver hair fell over one side of her armor, and a white cloak rested over her shoulders. Unlike the academy guards, her equipment actually looked used. Scratches covered the metal plating near her arms, and faint dark stains marked the hem of her cloak. Her eyes looked exhausted, as though she had not slept properly in days.

"Ma’am," Eselin said respectfully. "Ace Walker. He’s the one who chased the suspect."

"Thank you," the woman replied. "You may go."

Eselin nodded once before walking away down the corridor.

The silver-haired woman glanced toward the nearby guards, and with nothing more than a small gesture of her hand, they quietly dispersed as well. Within moments, the hallway had emptied until only the two of us remained standing outside the murder scene.

"I’m Sora," she said. "District Captain assigned to Jelda’s case."

"Ace Walker," I replied. "Nice to meet you, Ma’am."

"Sora is fine." She sighed tiredly. "Now tell me exactly what happened. I heard you used Shadow Leap during the chase."

"Yes."

"Multiple times, apparently." She folded her arms. "Most students struggle to control that spell even once."

"I practice a lot."

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"Somehow, I doubt practice explains everything."

I kept my mouth shut.

Sora stared at me for another second before shaking her head.

"Forget it for now. Start from the beginning."

So I explained it. I told her how I saw the masked man in the window beside Jelda’s corpse, how I rushed into the building, and how the chase moved through the dormitory corridors until he eventually escaped using some kind of teleportation spell circle.

"Did you see his face?" she asked.

"Not clearly. He had a beard, I think. Dark one. Square face. About my height or a little taller."

"And his voice?"

"Calm." I frowned slightly. "Too calm."

Sora nodded slowly while processing everything.

"Several witnesses mentioned Jelda believed the attacker might know her personally," she said. "Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

I hesitated briefly before answering. "She told me that during the first attack, the man said, ’I wish I had done this when you were younger, Jelda.’"

Sora’s expression hardened immediately. "So the suspect likely knew her long before coming here."

"Looks that way."

Rain crackled softly outside while silence settled between us for a few seconds.

Finally, Sora glanced toward the closed crime scene door.

"I still haven’t inspected the room personally," she admitted. "The guards wanted statements first."

"Can I help?" I asked. "I’m good at noticing things."

One of her eyebrows rose. "You’re volunteering to walk into a bloody murder scene?"

"I’ve seen worse."

That answer made her stare at me more carefully.

Then her gaze drifted somewhere behind me.

"The guard who carried you to the palace after the arena attack," she said slowly, "was blessed by the God of Death. He is here, as luck would would have it."

Ah. Great.

I already knew where this conversation was going.

"He claimed he saw souls surrounding you," Sora continued. "A disturbing amount of them."

I glanced behind myself and noticed one of the guards quickly looking away the moment our eyes met. He disappeared around the corner almost immediately.

"Is that true?" Sora asked.

"Yes."

"And most of those souls belonged to violent people."

I shrugged slightly.

"That’s what he said."

Sora studied me carefully for a long moment.

"Who exactly are you, Ace Walker?"

"Just an unlucky guy."

A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "That answer sounds rehearsed."

"Maybe because everyone keeps asking me the same question."

She stepped closer until only a small distance separated us.

"Ace Walker," she said quietly, "am I going to discover another corpse a few months from now? Am I going to open another investigation and eventually realize the trail leads back to you?"

I looked her directly in the eyes.

"You wouldn’t find a trail to begin with."

For a second, her eyes widened in surprise.

Then, unexpectedly, she laughed. Not loudly. Just one short laugh covered partially by her hand.

"Cheeky bastard," she muttered.

"I’m not joking."

"That is exactly why your answer concerns me."

Her amusement vanished almost instantly afterward.

"You know what I think?" she asked. "I think you scare me more than the actual suspect."

"I’m not a killer."

"You might be something worse."

I frowned slightly. "That’s dramatic."

"You teleported through a dormitory window to chase a murderer while half the academy froze in panic," she replied flatly. "Normal students do not do that."

"Adrenaline."

"Sure."

Another moment of silence passed between us.

Then Sora finally turned toward Jelda’s room and reached for the door handle.

"Come on," she muttered. "I did not choose this miserable profession so I might as well accept whatever help I can get. Even if that help comes from someone like you. A killer."

"I’m really not a killer."

Sora pushed the door open. "Keep telling yourself that, Walker."

God, this again. Jelda’s body was still hanging from the window, her lower half still inside the room while the rest of her dangled outward over the street below. The top of her head had been split open so badly that bone and brain matter were visible beneath the torn skin, and blood continued to drip in slow, ugly drops onto the pavement beneath the dormitory wall.

Sora shut the door behind us almost immediately and gagged hard, one hand slapping against the wall as she bent forward and coughed a few times. I turned toward her with a faint frown, honestly a little surprised that a district captain could look this close to throwing up.

"You alright, Captain?"

"Fuck," she muttered between shallow breaths. "I’m supposed to be a bard, not a butcher’s apprentice."

"Hmm." I looked back toward the body and then toward the room again. "I, uh, I can start my thing if you want."

"How can you be so calm?" she asked, still avoiding the window and the corpse entirely. "Fuck, how are you so calm?"

I didn’t answer that right away. The truth was not something I wanted to say out loud. Too many nights had been spent imagining ’someone else’s’ death in my head, over and over again, with a level of detail that probably would have disturbed anyone who heard it. Maybe that was part of it.

"No idea," I said at last.

She swallowed hard and nodded, still not looking at the body.

"Do your thing," she said. "I’ll join you when I can breathe again."

I moved toward the corpse and started examining the room carefully.

The first thing I noticed was the floor near the window. There were bloodied bootprints pressed into the wood, one set leading toward the sill and another set turning around near the bed. I lifted one of my own boots and lined it up against the marks. One of the prints matched mine closely enough to tell me the attacker had been around my size. He had definitely been wearing boots, which meant the man I chased had not been alone after all.

Then I noticed the second set.

Smaller. Narrower. Not by much, but enough to stand out. Maybe one or two sizes lower at most.

That immediately made my stomach tighten. There had been another person in here.

"Ah, fuck..." I muttered.

I looked around the room again, this time focusing on the details instead of the body.

The amount of blood made no sense.

Her skull had been split open brutally, and yet there was not nearly enough blood scattered around the room for the wound to have been dealt here. If the killing blow had happened in this room, the walls should have been sprayed red. The bed sheets should have been soaked through. The floor should have been much worse than this.

Instead, the room looked strangely incomplete. Messy, yes. Disturbed, absolutely. But not soaked.

"Not enough blood," I said quietly. "She was not killed here." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Sora’s head lifted slightly at that. "What?"

"I mean it," I said. "If I cut my finger, the amount of blood that comes out would already look close to what I am seeing here. This should be a lot worse. She was moved."

Sora finally turned a little, though she still avoided looking directly at the body for more than a second. "How?" she asked. "Nobody saw anything."

"The man I chased used some kind of teleportation spell," I said. "Maybe he dragged her here after killing her somewhere else and used the same thing."

"That is impossible," she replied immediately. "The dormitory has anti-teleport protection built into the structure. No one can cast that kind of spell inside the rooms."

"Is there any way around it?"

She shook her head at once. "No. Not unless someone from inside disabled the ward, and I have no reason to believe that happened."

So that left a problem.

If no one could teleport into the room, then how had Jelda been brought back here after she was killed? The body did not match the room. The blood did not match the wound. The entire thing felt wrong in a way that made my skin itch.

Maybe the attacker had tried to clean up. Maybe he had been in a hurry and missed something. But that did not fit either. If he had wanted to cover his tracks, he would not have left the body where half the dormitory could see it from the street. He had wanted people to find her. He had wanted the panic. So whatever happened here, it had not been some clean execution.

Something else was going on.