Юлия Авилкина The Bodiless Shadow

"We were all his followers," Balthazar replied bitterly, pushing away the empty mug. "But after Einar died, the order shattered into pieces. Most gave up, drank themselves to death, or fled Avrin for the continent forever. The scraps that remain... look around, Vellen. We’re just trying to survive in this filth. If someone is avenging Einar now, they are doing it in absolute solitude. And they are simply using our name and old symbols to hide their true trail from the Inquisition."

Kaira nodded slowly. There was a harsh, flawless logic in this. Vael's killer wasn't a public fanatic with a placard. They were a calculating, icy surgeon who masterfully used the old mythology of a defeated order as a convenient screen.

She rose, adjusted her hat, and buttoned her collar. The coins remained on the sticky table.

"Be very careful, Balthazar. If Magnus finally decides this is the work of a reborn Carvers, he won't bother with the nuances. He’ll just unleash his hounds on Nutra again. And this time, they won't leave anyone alive."

"Let him," Balthazar muttered indifferently, turning toward the wall. "We’ve been at the bottom for a long time. There’s nowhere left to fall."

Kaira stepped out of the tavern and back into the rainy, wind-howling gloom.

The meeting hadn't given her the killer's name, but it had given her something much more important: a motive. Ten years ago, Magnus and Vael had cold-bloodedly eliminated a man who had tried to reason with them. And now someone very patient, possessing terrifying magical power, had begun to collect old, overdue debts.

She walked along the slippery wooden footbridges, her tired feet moving mechanically. Dozens of questions swarmed in her head. Where were Einar’s own old reports? Who had access to them? And how did the quiet archivist Soaren Darr—who had so conveniently slipped her the right papers—fit into all this?

Kaira was angry at Magnus, irritated by the weather, and exhausted by insomnia. She stubbornly told herself she needed to get back to her office, dry her boots, and map out a new investigation scheme on the slate board. She replayed Balthazar's words in her head, planning the next day, and only after twenty minutes did she suddenly realize the fog around her had thinned, and under her feet, instead of Nutra's rickety boards, smooth cobblestones thudded evenly.

She lifted her head.

Ahead, through the veil of rain, the gas lanterns of the bridge leading to the granite mass of the Main Archive glowed softly. Her feet, bypassing iron logic and fatigue, had led her to the Upper City. To the man with gray eyes, whose workshop smelled of old paper and warm tea.

Kaira froze in the middle of the street. The rain drummed against the brim of her hat. She stared at the glowing windows of the Archive for a long, long time. Then she pressed her lips together, spun sharply on her heels, and strode back into the darkness of the Lower City, feeling something very fragile and frighteningly unfamiliar stir inside her, against her will.

Chapter 6: Resonance of Silence

Evening Avrin didn't sleep; it simply shed its skin. The fog in the Upper City turned pearlescent, illuminated by the golden lights of the mansions, while in Nutra, it congealed into heavy lead. Kaira stood on the border of the districts, feeling the cold moisture soaking even through the thick leather of her boots.

She should have gone home. Locked the door with all three bolts, cleaned her revolver, and lost herself in a heavy, dreamless sleep. But instead, she found her feet carrying her once again toward the wide staircase of the Main Archive. She was angry at herself, calling herself weak-willed, but the image of the dry warmth of Soaren’s workshop and the smell of thyme stood before her eyes as the only salvation from the encroaching darkness.

This time, the guards at the entrance didn’t even ask for her mandate. They simply stepped aside in silence, watching her pass with strange, almost wary looks. Rumors were already crawling through the Archive: the "mute" seeker was frequenting the archivist, and Handler Trey, it seemed, was in no hurry to lash her for it.

The door to the restoration workshop was ajar. A soft, steady light from magical lamps tuned to a warm spectrum spilled through the narrow crack—Soaren clearly disliked harsh lighting. Kaira stopped at the threshold, hesitating to knock.

He was there. He sat in the same posture, hunched over the table, but this time he wasn't wearing his frock coat—only a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His hands, usually hidden by cuffs, proved to be unexpectedly strong, with long fingers and thin scars on the knuckles—the marks of years of working with paper, chemicals, and sharp scalpels.

"You came after all," he said, without turning around.

Kaira flinched. "How do you know it's me? Do you have mirrors on the back of your head?"

Soaren finally set down his pen and turned. In the warm light, his face seemed softer, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deeper.

"Every person has their own rhythm of footsteps, Kaira. Your gait is that of a predator trying to pass as prey. A very distinctive sound. Come in, I’ve just put the water on."

She entered, feeling the room envelop her in its stillness. There were no screaming Inquisition auras here, no stench of the sewers. Only the smell of old parchment and the faint aroma of fresh tea.

"I was at Balthazar's," she said, sitting on the edge of a heavy chair and laying the folder he had given her earlier on the table. "You were right. The Carvers have nothing to do with this. Or rather, someone very much wants us to think they do. Balthazar told me about Einar. About what happened ten years ago."

Soaren froze with the kettle in his hand. His gaze became vacant for a moment, as if he were turning the pages of an invisible book in his head.

"Balthazar... an old idealist. He still believes in a justice that can be forged from iron. And what did he say?"

"That the Inquisition killed Einar when he came to negotiate. And that Larsen and Vael were part of the deal."

Kaira pulled the blueprints she had managed to take from the dead scavenger from her pocket. She spread them on the table next to the documents from the Archive.

"Look at these red dots. Larsen marked them. These are resonance points. And one of them is right here, directly under the Cathedral. Но there’s a third point... it’s soaked in blood. I can’t make out the coordinates."

Soaren stepped closer. He didn’t take the map in his hands but simply leaned over it, his shoulder almost touching Kaira’s. He smelled of dust and something intangibly domestic, a scent Kaira never carried.

"Let me see," he pulled a magnifying glass in a silver frame from a desk drawer. "If we overlay this plan with the schematic of the old city sewers..."

They worked together for over two hours. A special kind of "working silence" settled in the workshop, the kind that only exists between people who understand each other without unnecessary words. Kaira dictated sparse data from the reports; Soaren cross-referenced them with ancient land registry books. Several times their hands accidentally brushed over the papers, and Kaira found herself no longer pulling her fingers away as she would have with Magnus or anyone else from the Inquisition.

She watched him surreptitiously. Soaren worked with the documents as if they were living beings. He touched the yellowed pages carefully, almost tenderly, smoothing out folded corners with his long, ink-stained fingers.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked suddenly, just as they finished verifying the fifth sector. "You realize that if Magnus finds out you’re digging through 'closed' funds without an order, your career as an archivist will end tonight. In the best-case scenario, you’ll just be thrown out."

Soaren set down the magnifying glass and looked at his hands. His face in the warm lamp light seemed calm, almost serene.

"My career, Kaira, is a service to the truth. It sounds pretentious, I know. But in this city, where everything is woven from lies and magical illusions, paper is the only thing that doesn’t know how to lie. If there is a black hole in history, it means someone cut it out. And I... I really dislike it when books are missing pages."

He raised his eyes to her.

"Besides, you are the first person in years who looks at these archives not as a wastepaper warehouse, but as a key to life. That... is winning."

Kaira looked away, feeling a strange lump form in her throat. She wasn't used to hearing such words. In the world of the Inquisition, she was valued for her utility; in the world of Nutra, she was feared for her origins. But no one had ever said that her interest in a case could be "winning" to them.

"The third point..." Soaren leaned over Larsen’s map again, frowning. "It’s the Old Port district. The very edge of Avrin, where the city walls meet the sea. But the coordinates... The blood soaked too deep into the parchment. See? The stain covers the numbers themselves."

Kaira leaned in. The brown crust on the paper was thick. The killer (or Larsen himself in his death throes) seemed to have deliberately erased the most important part.

"Is there any way to restore it?"

"Possibly," Soaren rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I have chemical reagents that can bleach the blood without damaging the ink. But it's a painstaking process; it will take time. I doubt I’ll manage before tomorrow evening."

Kaira nodded, gathering her things. Inside her, disappointment and a strange relief fought for dominance—she had a legitimate reason to return here again.

"I'll go there tomorrow anyway. Look around the sector. The Old Port is large, but if something is resonating there, I... I’ll see it. In my own way."

She stood up, putting on her hat and checking if her revolver slid easily from its holster. A familiar ritual that brought her back to reality.

"I’m used to a cruel city, Soaren. We’re old acquaintances."

She had already taken hold of the doorknob when his voice made her turn back.

"You know..." Soaren stood by his table, gathering the tea things. "I finished reading that fragment you brought me today. Larsen wrote that in silence, there is sometimes more meaning than in the loudest song."

He looked at her—openly, without a shadow of fear or professional curiosity.

"You aren't 'mute,' Kaira. You simply speak a language that this city has forgotten how to understand. Don't let them convince you otherwise."

Kaira said nothing in response. She simply nodded and stepped out into the dark corridor. But as she descended the wide staircase, as she walked through the pouring rain toward her office in Nutra, those simple, human words of Soaren’s warmed her better than the strongest tea.

"You aren't mute... You simply speak a different language."

She locked the office door, brewed herself another cup of thyme tea, and sat in the darkness for a long time. She didn’t yet know exactly where she needed to go in the Old Port tomorrow. She only knew that she absolutely had to find answers—for the sake of the city, for the sake of the dead, and perhaps, for the sake of seeing the archivist’s gray eyes again.

Chapter 7: Tower of Silence

Avrin’s Old Port was a place the city would have preferred to forget. If Nutra was its festering womb, then the port was a withered, dead limb. Once, before the Great Rupture, life had teemed here: heavy merchant galleons from the continent crowded the docks, and magical beacons pierced the fog with beams of pure, blindingly white ether. Now, however, it was the territory of the "Dead Zone." Magic didn't flow here—it stood still like stagnant water in a ditch, filmed over with slime and exhaling the scent of decay.

Kaira walked along the embankment, where the hulls of abandoned ships jutted out of the shallows like the ribs of prehistoric monsters. The rain here didn't smell of soot, as it did in the central quarters, but of salt, rust, and something intangibly metallic. The wind from the bay was prickly; it unceremoniously crept under the hem of her coat, bit at her chilled fingers, and hurled icy drizzle into her face.

Her search had been going on for four hours. Without exact coordinates, the Old Port turned into an endless, maddening labyrinth of collapsed warehouses, stacks of rotting crates, and abandoned docks slowly sliding into the sea. Kaira tried to "switch on" her vision to full power, searching for the very resonance Larsen had written about, but the sector remained stubbornly silent. To her senses, this district was gray, flat, and absolutely empty.

She stopped at the edge of a crumbled pier to catch her breath. She pulled out her pocket watch—the second hand jerked and stopped. In the Dead Zone, mechanical devices, even the simplest ones, often acted up. Time itself seemed to mottle in an invisible molasses here.

"She doesn't like being watched."

The voice was quiet, whispering, like the sound of dry leaves driven by the wind over stones. Kaira spun around instantly, her hand habitually falling to the grip of her revolver, but she didn't pull it out.

In the shadow of an overturned boat encrusted with barnacles sat a teenager. Thin, in rags that might have once been a cabin boy's uniform. His eyes were strange—too large, almost transparent, devoid of pupils. In his aura, which Kaira saw with her "special" vision, there wasn't a single whole thread. Only torn, charred edges that fluttered feebly in the wind. "Burned." A victim of a magical discharge so powerful it had seared away his very ability to perceive the ether.

"What am I looking for?" Kaira asked, her hand still on her weapon.

The boy slowly raised a hand and pointed somewhere toward a foggy spit stretching far into the bay.

"What hums in the silence. Everyone says there’s nothing there. Even the rats have left. But she sings, mistress. Every night, when the tide reaches the old supports, she begins to sing her song. Only there are no words in it, just the cold."

Kaira looked in the direction he pointed. Through the thick, almost palpable veil of fog, a tall, thin silhouette was barely discernible. A lonely tower standing on the very edge of a rocky outcrop.

"A lighthouse tower?"

"It was a lighthouse," the boy wrapped his thin shoulders in his arms, rocking from side to side. "Now it is a needle’s eye. The wind from another world passes through it. Go there if you must. But don't listen to her for too long. Or you’ll become like me... seeing only ash."

Kaira tossed him a small coin. He caught it in mid-air but didn't hide it; he simply squeezed it in his fist, continuing to look through Kaira with his transparent eyes. She didn’t ask anything more. In this district, words meant less than premonitions.

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