The first real crack was not in London's walls.
It was in its voice.
The streets no longer roared with anger or drunken songs. They sagged under a silence that followed the fresh graves. Every footstep became a question. Every glance, a threat. Doors closed faster. Shops shuttered before sunset. Men crossed the street to avoid children carving spirals into brick with broken nails.
Carmen watched it unfold from the top floor of an abandoned watchmaker's shop, her breath fogging the cracked windowpane. She didn't smile. She didn't gloat. She simply watched.
Julian sprawled behind her on a broken chaise, boots muddy, hands laced behind his head. He whistled low under his breath, a tuneless sound that set Carmen's teeth on edge.
Vivienne sat on the floor, back pressed to the wall, knees drawn tight against her chest. She hadn't written in two days. Her notebook lay open beside her, blank pages fluttering in the cold draft.
Carmen thought she might speak, might beg for something—mercy, clarity—but Vivienne stayed silent.
Good.
Words were weight, and Vivienne had none left to carry.
Julian's knife clattered to the floor, snapping Carmen's focus back. He pushed himself upright lazily, rolling his shoulders.
"She's almost gone," he said, nodding toward Vivienne, his voice casual, like discussing wine gone sour.
"She'll hold until we need her to let go," Carmen replied.
It wasn't cruelty. It was truth. Tools broke. Some slower. Some prettier. But they all broke in the end.
Vivienne traced meaningless shapes into the dust with her fingertip, her lips moving in silent prayers to gods that had long since abandoned the city. Carmen didn't listen. Madness always spoke the same language.
Below them, the spiral turned faster
Inside Hargreave's mind, it was different.
The detective stared at his wall of photographs, red thread stretching between bodies like veins across a broken map. His suit hung loose on his frame, soaked in sweat that clung stubbornly to his skin. He hadn't been home in days. Maybe longer. Time blurred.
He thought of the first body sometimes. How neat it had been. How deliberate.
Whoever these killers were—they were not reckless. They hadn't lost control. They had chosen to burn the city slow, pulling the wings off London one by one.
Hargreave stared at the latest photograph. A boy, no more than ten, a spiral delicately carved into his chest like lacework.
Something heavy and familiar lodged behind his ribs.
A memory.
He shoved it down. There was no room for ghosts now.
He dragged a red string across the map, tying another body to the others. It was a lie. They weren't connected. Not the way he needed them to be. Not the way the law demanded.
They were scattered. Splintered. Designed to mock him.
He leaned back, closing his eyes, and in the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw her.
Not her face.
Her shadow.
Moving through the city like a riptide.
He knew he was chasing something he would never catch.
And he hated that he couldn't stop.
Vivienne dreamed of drowning that night.
In her dream, she stood alone on the stage of the burned-out theatre, surrounded by the boys and girls they had gathered. They knelt at her feet, but when she looked closer, she saw their faces split open, spiral symbols carved deep into their bones.
Carmen stood at the edge of the stage, arms folded, watching without speaking. Julian's shadow flickered across the broken rafters, his knife catching the dead light.
Vivienne tried to scream, but the stage cracked open beneath her feet, and she fell—through rotting wood, through choking smoke—into water black and thick as oil.
She woke gasping, fists clutching at the sweat-drenched sheets.
Carmen was sitting at the foot of the bed, smoking in the dark.
"You're breaking," Carmen said, softly, almost kindly.
Vivienne shook her head, tears streaking her cheeks.
"No," she whispered.
Carmen plucked the cigarette from her lips and stubbed it out against the wooden floor without looking away.
"Good," she said. "Not yet."
The next night, another body surfaced.
This one left sprawled at the foot of a statue in St. Martin's Square, hands folded as if praying, mouth stitched shut with golden thread. The press named it the Golden Martyr. The city rioted, small and ugly, tearing through market stalls and overturning carriages. Men screamed for order. Women wept for safety. Children disappeared without trace.
And Carmen and Julian moved unseen through the smoke and panic, the spiral turning tighter with every death.
Even they knew it could not last forever.
Nothing infinite could be sustained without rot.
Not even this.
Especially not this.
But they didn't need forever.
They needed only long enough to burn their shape into the city's bones.
And as Carmen lit another cigarette with steady hands, she smiled to herself, knowing London was already hollow, already bleeding from wounds it would never name.
All she had to do now was keep the blade steady a little longer.