Юлия Авилкина The Bodiless Shadow

Prologue

The fog in the port city of Avrin didn’t just hide the streets—it deadened sounds, devoured the light of the gas lamps, and left a bitter taste of salt and iron on the lips.

Inside the Main Magical Archive of the Inquisition, it was quiet. And absolutely safe. At least, that was what Councilor Vael believed. The heavy oak door was bolted from the inside with a massive deadbolt. The windows were sealed shut with latches. Sleepy paper dust hung in the air, and all around, they softly pulsated—the threads.

The Councilor saw them clearly: golden, azure, and crimson strings of energy tightly entwining the ancient tomes and slumbering artifacts on the shelves. He himself was woven from the same threads—thick, strong, brimming with life and power. Magic sang within him, granting the pleasant illusion of his own invulnerability.

But in Avrin, illusions are short-lived.

He heard no footsteps. There was no creak of old floorboards, no shatter of broken glass. Just at some point, one of the magical threads in the far dark corner of the room twitched. Then another. As if someone unseen was plucking them like the strings of an out-of-tune harpsichord, shattering the harmony.

Cold slithered down his spine like a clammy snake. Vael slowly turned around.

There were no monsters in the deep shadows between the tall bookshelves. Only silence, which had suddenly become thick and suffocating.

"Who is there?" his voice sounded pathetic and dissolved almost instantly into the gloom.

No one answered. Only a slight, barely perceptible movement of air.

And then came the pain.

It wasn't a knife in the back or a noose around the neck. It was something much deeper, unnatural, and terrifying. Vael's eyes flew open, staring in horror at his own chest. The internal threads—the foundation of his life, the vessels of his magic—suddenly pulled taut to their limit, ringing from the tension.

The one standing in the shadows didn't approach, didn't utter incantations, didn't touch him physically. He was simply watching.

Snap.

The sound was silent, but in the Councilor's head, it echoed with a deafening crack. The first thread inside his body snapped, curling up like a singed hair. Then the second. The third.

Vael tried to scream, but his lungs failed him. His body was paralyzed by shock. The unknown figure was methodically, cold-bloodedly, and terrifyingly cleanly carving out his essence from the inside, severing the connections one by one.

The last thing the Councilor saw before collapsing dead onto the oak parquet was the calm, indifferent gloom between the bookshelves. There wasn't a drop of rage or hatred in it. Only icy inevitability.

Dead silence reigned once again in the locked room of the Archive. Outside, somewhere high above the unseen port, a night airship let out a drawn-out hum. Tomorrow, Avrin would wake up in fear.

Chapter 1: Silent Threads

The sea fog pressed down on the port districts of Avrin like a heavy, wet blanket. It smelled of salt, rotting wood, and rancid whale oil. In the lower city, which the locals simply called Nutra, the fog wasn't just a weather phenomenon—it was a habitat. It obscured the outlines of the crooked streets, muffled footsteps, and hid other people's secrets.

Kaira Vellen stood on the wooden pier, her back leaning against the chilled brick of a warehouse, smoking. The glowing cherry of her cigarette was the only warm spot in the gray gloom.

She looked at the water, but that wasn't all she saw. Above the black surface of the canal, pale, bluish lines flickered faintly—the protective weaves of the port customs. For ordinary, un-Initiated people, they didn't exist. For the Inquisition mages, they sounded like the low hum of a cello, warning of the boundary.

Kaira heard nothing. To her, the threads of Avrin had always remained absolutely mute. She saw magic as a complex, cold blueprint, devoid of emotion and sound. This made her an outsider among the inquisitors, but it was exactly this flaw that made her the best private hound in the city. Where others were blinded by magical resonance or deafened by foreign power, Kaira saw only bare structural connections.

She took one last drag just as a silhouette emerged from the fog.

The footsteps were heavy, measured, shod with military iron. But Kaira recognized their owner not by sound. A veritable golden storm seethed around the approaching figure. Thick, aggressive threads of magic coiled around broad shoulders, betraying irritation and hidden power.

"Your office is locked, Vellen," Magnus Trey's voice matched his aura: rough, low, accustomed to giving orders rather than asking questions.

Kaira flicked her cigarette butt into the water. It hissed softly and went out.

"My office opens at eight in the morning, Handler. It’s a little after three a.m. Normal people are sleeping."

"No one in this city sleeps normally anymore," Magnus stopped two steps away from her. Beneath the folds of his heavy leather duster, one could guess the outline of a holster and the official silver badge of the Inquisition. His face was gray with exhaustion, and deep shadows lay at the corners of his hard mouth. "We have a body in the Upper City."

"The Inquisition investigates Upper City cases itself," Kaira replied calmly, burying her chilled hands in her coat pockets. "Unless one of your own got drunk and fell out of a brothel window."

"It’s Councilor Vael. And he didn't fall out of a window."

Kaira froze. The name hit her like a gust of icy wind. Vael wasn't just a Councilor. He was one of the architects of the modern Inquisition. A man whose power stretched from the port customs to the spires of the Cathedral.

"Gear up," Magnus threw out curtly, turning around. "The airship is waiting at Pier Five. I need your eyes, Vellen. Mine... aren't cutting it there."

The flight on the Shadow’s Herald passed in silence.

The Inquisition’s police airship, smelling of machine oil and expensive tobacco, rose slowly above Nutra, piercing through layers of fog. Kaira looked out the porthole. From this height, Avrin seemed split in two. Below reigned a gloom cut only by dim gas lamps. Above, beyond the invisible barrier of the climate shields, the Upper City glowed. The spires of mansions and the domes of administrative buildings were entwined in a dense web of shimmering threads. There, magic flowed through the streets like water, heating the squares, lighting the parks, and guarding the peace of the aristocracy.

"How did it happen?" Kaira finally asked, her eyes fixed on the golden radiance beyond the glass.

Magnus sat opposite her, leaning heavily with his elbows on his knees.

"Vael was working in the Main Archive. At night. He locked himself in the reading room of the 'Special Records' sector. The guards at the doors were external. The spells on the windows were internal. No one entered. No one left."

"A magical surge?"

"That’s the thing—there was none." Magnus rubbed the bridge of his nose in irritation. His golden threads twitched nervously. "It’s as quiet as a crypt in there. No signs of a struggle, no residual background. My men went in this morning when he didn’t answer a knock. He was just sitting in his chair. Dead."

Kaira frowned. The death of a mage of Vael’s caliber should have caused a resonance felt by half the Cathedral. Severed threads of such power always left behind an ethereal burn—like the smell of gunpowder after a shot in a cramped room. If Magnus felt nothing, then something had occurred beyond the understanding of the standard Inquisitorial school.

The airship moored softly to the docking mast on the roof of the Main Archive. The building was a colossal fortress of dark granite, devoid of windows on its lower tiers. Around it shimmered a containment cocoon—a tangle of protective spells so dense that Kaira’s eyes momentarily watered as she tried to decipher their structure.

They descended a spiral staircase into the depths of the building. Here, away from the city's bustle, a very particular scent reigned: dry paper, beeswax, and old, settled magic. The air was cool and surprisingly clean.

At the massive double doors of the "Special Records" sector stood two pale guards with halberds laced with power circuits. And between them, holding a small kerosene lamp, stood a man in an impeccably pressed gray frock coat.

He did not possess Magnus’s intimidating aura. The threads around him were thin, pale, almost transparent, pressed tightly to his body—the mark of a man accustomed to conserving energy and avoiding attention. He had fair hair neatly combed back and thin-rimmed glasses that concealed watchful, gray eyes.

"Handler Trey," he said. His voice was quiet but very steady, without the slight tremor usually present in civilians when facing the Inquisition.

"Darr," Magnus nodded, making no effort to hide his annoyance. He hated being in the Archive, where his brute force was useless. "This is Ms. Vellen. Private consultant. Open the doors."

Soaren Darr turned his gaze to Kaira. In his eyes, there was neither the condescension nor the distaste with which Inquisitors usually viewed "mute" mages. Only a calm, professional recognition of her presence.

"Good night, Ms. Vellen," the archivist said politely. He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket, each one a complex runic weave. "I’ve lowered the external circuits as the Handler requested. We haven't touched anything inside. Be careful; it’s... rather cold in there."

He inserted a key into the lock. It clicked softly, and the heavy door swung open silently. Soaren stepped aside, clearing their path, and lowered the lamp as if marking a boundary he had no intention of crossing himself.

Kaira stepped into the room first.

The spacious reading room was paneled in dark oak. Bookshelves stretched to the ceiling along the walls, filled with books, scrolls, and sealed tubes. A dormant magical lamp sat upon a massive mahogany table.

And in a high-backed leather chair sat Councilor Vael.

Kaira slowly approached, feeling a chill creep beneath her coat. But it wasn't a physical cold. It was the absence of life.

Vael looked as if he had fallen asleep at his work. His hands rested calmly on the armrests; his head was tilted slightly back. His face bore no mask of horror, no traces of pain.

But when Kaira switched her vision to the ethereal layer, she nearly recoiled.

A person was woven from threads—physical, mental, magical. Death usually looked like their fading, a decay, the turning of bright strings into gray dust. Murder via magic looked like a violent rupture—melted ends, tangled knots, chaos.

But here, there was neither fading nor chaos. Vael’s threads had been cut.

Perfectly, methodically, with frightening surgical precision. Whoever had done this hadn't just killed the Councilor. They had neatly extracted his life from the fabric of existence without disturbing a single neighboring fiber. It explained why Magnus felt nothing. There had been no blow. There had only been an excision.

"Well?" Magnus barked impatiently from the doorway. He hesitated to approach the body, instinctively sensing the "dead zone." "What do you see, Vellen?"

"Exquisite craftsmanship," Kaira replied quietly, crouching by the chair.

She began to examine the floor, millimeter by millimeter. Her gaze slid over the patterns of the Persian rug, the legs of the table, the bottom shelves of the nearest rack. The killer had to have stood here. He had to have been in this room to accomplish such a feat.

Kaira squinted. At the very edge of the rug, where the pile met the polished parquet, lay a tiny, barely visible smudge of gray substance. Ash. But not from a cigarette or paper. It was too fine, almost like pollen.

She didn't touch it. Instead, she traced the trajectory from the ash stain to the bookshelf.

The shelves were packed with perfectly even rows of reference books and ledgers in identical leather bindings. Soaren Darr, it seemed, kept his archive in a state of frightening order. But on the very bottom shelf, at knee level, one of the massive volumes sat differently. It wasn't pulled out or knocked over. It simply sat at a two-degree angle, barely breaking the flawless line of its neighbors.

Kaira slowly stood up. The room had been empty. The doors locked. Magic had recorded no intrusion.

But someone had flicked ash onto the rug and placed a book unevenly on the shelf before erasing Councilor Vael from this room.

Kaira turned back to the doors. Magnus watched her gloomily, waiting for answers. Behind his shoulder, in the dim light of the corridor, Soaren Darr stood quietly, waiting for them to finish their work in his archive.

The question wasn't how Vael was killed. The question was what he had managed to read before they came for him.

Chapter 2: Ash and Ink

Kaira returned to her office just as the night began to reluctantly give way to a gray, sickly dawn. Nutra woke up hard, with the hacking cough of factory chimneys and the clatter of the first steam-powered trams.

After the ringing, sterile silence of the Upper City and the dry air of the Main Archive, the dampness of the lower quarters felt almost tangible. It settled on the wool of her coat, seeped into her boots, and left a taste of coal soot on her lips.

Kaira’s office was located on the second floor above a hardware store. There was no magical heating here—the kind that made the lives of aristocrats so carefree. There was only a potbellied cast-iron stove in the corner, an old leather sofa with a slumped back, and a massive desk cluttered with files.

Kaira didn’t bother lighting the gas jet. The pale light bleeding through the unwashed window was enough. She tossed her coat onto the sofa, shivered in the stale air, and, striking a match, lit the burner under a dented coffee pot. Only when the bitter aroma of cheap beans drifted through the room did she allow herself to exhale.

The silence of the Archive still rang in her ears.

Kaira sat at the desk, pulled a tattered, black-covered notebook toward her, and opened it to a clean page. Her fingers, accustomed to the weight of a revolver, gripped the pencil with ease and confidence.

“Councilor Vael. Main Archive. Special Records Sector,” she wrote in a steady hand.

She closed her eyes, mentally retreating to that oak-paneled room. Before her mind’s eye, the perfect, chilling geometry of death emerged once again. The threads hadn't been torn to shreds, the way they usually were in a clash between combat mages. They had been sliced clean.

Kaira opened her eyes and jotted down: “Surgical precision. No residual background. No evidence of a breach in the external circuits.”

The killer hadn’t just bypassed the security—he’d ignored it.

This narrowed the field of suspects to a chilling minimum. To pull off a feat like this, one had to either possess the keys to the Archive or be capable of slicing the protective weaves as delicately as the threads of a human life.

Kaira drew a thick line with her pencil and began to draft a list.

1) Magnus Trey and the Inquisition. Could the Handler have murdered his own superior? Magnus was crude, blunt, and solved problems with the finesse of a sledgehammer. A surgical incision was not his style. His aura screamed of kinetic force, not precision. But Magnus had people. And he could have motives. Lately, rumors of corruption in the upper echelons had been rippling through Nutra—whispers that certain patrols were turning a blind eye to artifact smuggling for a hefty cut. Vael was exactly the type to have launched an internal audit.

2) The Carvers. A radical order that views magic as a curse distorting the natural order of things. They loathed the Inquisition and everything it stood for. Severing a Councilor from the fabric of existence would be right up their alley—a loud political statement. But Kaira was skeptical. The Carvers were zealots. Zealots love leaving a message: symbols carved into the walls, manifestos, blood. Here, everything was too quiet. Too clinical.

3) Internal Archive Staff. She recalled the meticulous archivist in the gray frock coat. Soaren Darr. He had access. He had the keys. He was in the building. Kaira hovered her pencil over the paper for a moment, remembering his calm gray eyes and the pale threads of his aura.

“Too obvious,” she thought, shaking her head. People like Darr—pedantic keepers of dust—don’t kill Councilors. They live by the clock and are afraid of drafts. He had no motive, no fitting psychological profile. If he wanted to kill Vael, he’d sooner slip poison into his tea than erase him from reality with such a complex magical intervention. Darr was just a useful witness, nothing more.

Kaira crossed Darr off the list and returned to the only two leads she had carried away from the crime scene in her memory.

The Ash. A pinch of gray dust at the edge of the rug. It could have been cigarette ash, but Vael didn't smoke, and open flames were strictly forbidden within the Archive. That meant the killer had brought it in. On the soles of his boots? Or was it the residue of a burnt-out spell?

The book. The bottom shelf. A tome, shifted by a mere two degrees. Kaira rubbed her temples in frustration. Why would a killer capable of the impossible bother digging around on the bottom shelf? Unless he was looking for something. Or... putting something back.

Vael had been reading something right before he died. Something that got him killed. And the evidence had been neatly slipped back into its orderly row to hide the very fact that he’d been interested in it.

The coffee pot hissed, sputtering dark foam onto the hot metal. Kaira set her pencil aside, poured herself a mug of the scalding, bitter brew, and walked over to the window.

Outside, dawn had finally broken. Merchants were already laying out dull cod on wet stalls, and newsboys ran past, shouting headlines about evening galas in the Upper City. The rumors of the dead Councilor hadn't reached them yet. When they did, the city would shudder.

She needed official access to the case. Magnus had dragged her in off the books last night, like a hunting dog to pick up a scent. But to ask questions on the streets, she needed a piece of paper with a seal.

The wait dragged on until noon. Kaira had managed to doze off right on the sofa, boots still on, when a sharp knock at the door made her startle and instinctively reach for her holster.

A messenger in the gray uniform of the Inquisition’s postal service stood on the threshold. He looked incongruously clean in the grimy hallway outside her office.

"Ms. Vellen?" The boy held out a thick envelope with a wax seal and a small cardboard box tied with twine. "Sign here."

Kaira scrawled her signature on the manifest, took the delivery, and shut the door.

Inside the envelope was the expected order, signed by Magnus Trey. The dry bureaucratic language granted "civilian consultant K. Vellen" the authority to request information from individuals lacking the highest magical clearance. No "pleases" or "counting on yous." Just a tool receiving its authorization to work.

Kaira set the order aside and looked at the cardboard box. Pinned to the twine on top was a small note, written in a steady, elegant hand with a slight leftward slant. The ink was dark blue.

“Ms. Vellen. Handler Trey mentioned that you have been tasked with the official investigation. Given the dampness in your district, I felt that an additional visit to the Archive might prove tiresome for you. I have taken the liberty of making copies of the checkout registries from the Special Records sector for the past month, as well as a list of individuals who requested the blueprints for the Archive's lower levels. I hope this saves you time. Sincerely, S. Darr.

P.S. Your coat was soaked through yesterday. There is also a small herbal blend in the box. If steeped with black tea, it is excellent for driving out a port cold.”

Kaira blinked, re-reading the note a second time.

She sliced through the twine with a penknife. Inside the box lay a neat stack of heavy paper, covered in that same impeccable handwriting. Soaren hadn't just copied the registry—he’d grouped the names by date and highlighted in red those whose requests deviated from standard protocol. It was the kind of analytical work that would have cost Kaira at least three days of legwork and wrangling with bureaucrats.

At the very bottom of the box was a small linen pouch that smelled of thyme, dried ginger, and something else—pungent and warm.

Kaira felt a strange prickle of irritation mingled with a begrudging sense of gratitude. She wasn't used to people intruding on her personal space, even with good intentions. The people in her life usually demanded results, made threats, or told lies. No one sent her data summaries to save her time, and certainly, no one ever noticed that she was cold.

“A quiet, pedantic archivist,” she thought, tossing the herbal pouch in her palm.

She dropped the pouch onto the desk, beside the cold coffee pot, deciding there was no way she’d be brewing that tea. It would be a sign of weakness.

But she slid the registry sheets closer.

Kaira buried herself in the pages. Most of the names were unfamiliar—junior researchers, historians, clerks. But on the third page, her gaze snagged on a recognizable surname.

Three days ago, according to Soaren’s summary, a certain individual had requested access to the old municipal utility blueprints and the port's magical distribution schematics. The request was filed by the book, but the "Purpose" column held a blurry justification: “Wear and tear assessment.”

The man who had filed the request was named Einar Larsen. And the man who had officially countersigned and approved it was Councilor Vael.

Kaira tapped her pencil against the desk. Artifact dealers were often interested in old nodes, hoping to find decommissioned or lost junk. But for Vael himself to sign off on a request from a common scavenger? That broke protocol.

She snapped the folder shut and stood up. She had a name and a direction. She needed to hit the streets and find out who this Einar Larsen was and why one of the most powerful men in Avrin was taking an interest in his business.

Kaira pulled on her still-damp coat, cast a glance at the desk, and after a second's hesitation, shoved Darr’s herbal pouch into her deep pocket. Just in case the city decided to rain.

Chapter 3: The First Guest

At noon, Avrin resembled a weary beast trying to shake off its nocturnal torpor. A heavy cargo airship drifted above the rooftops of Nutra with a strained drone, drenching the street in a cloud of steam and the stench of scorched oil. Kaira walked with her collar turned up, weaving through stevedores and street vendors whose voices drowned out the clatter of the trams.

Einar Larsen lived where the solid pavement ended and the rickety footbridges of the "Rusty Belt" began—a district built on old barges and stilts directly over the silty channels. Here, the magic of threads was a rarity. Kaira found the address she was looking for: an old cutter moored to a half-rotted pier, converted into an antiquity shop. Above the door, a sign creaked: “Larsen. Buying. Selling. Memory Repair.”

Kaira pushed the door open. The bell overhead answered with a dry, cracked jangle. Inside, it smelled of dust, old copper, and something sickly sweet, like the scent of rotting molasses. Shelves crowded the walls, cluttered with broken gramophones, telescope lenses, and the empty shells of magical capacitors. No one answered.