Morning came hesitantly, as if afraid to—its lazy light gray, bleeding softly past Avery's blinds. There was no warmth to morning, no hope. Just the quiet, remorseless hum of city life returning to routine, unaware something watchful and timeless had come alive.
Avery Locke had not slept.
She stood at the window, arms crossed, her gaze not on the city but on her own face in the glass. She didn't know herself—not exactly. There was a tension around her mouth she hadn't noticed before. Her eyes were wider than usual, darker. As if they knew something her conscious mind had not yet accepted.
Behind her, Detective Elias Reed clicked the folder he had spread out hours ago. He hadn't intimidated her, not yet. But he was there for answers. That much was true.
"So," he said finally, "are you going to tell me why the killer is using your childhood notebooks?"
Avery turned around. "I haven't even seen that journal since I was a teenager."
"Yet the clues are word for word.".
She didn't say anything. Instead, she walked back to the desk and grabbed her phone. It had remained silent since that early morning phone call. But the memory of those words continued to scrape the walls of her mind.
Hello, Avery. It's been a while.
Reed came to his feet and walked up to her. "This isn't an accident. I want you to tell me the truth—do you know who's doing this?
"If I did," she told him, "I wouldn't be standing here wondering the same thing."
His jaw clenched. "That's not a no."
She didn't move. "That's not a lie."
Reed stepped back, grudgingly allowing her space, but his eyes remained on her face. He was measuring her, and she knew it. Not for guilt, but for secrets.
"I want everything you can remember about these riddles," he said to her. "Where they came from, who used them, anyone who might have—"
"They belonged to my father," she interrupted him softly, voice as tenuous as thread. "He used riddles the way some fathers use bedtime stories. Except his had rules. If you answered wrong, you didn't get to try again."
Reed raised an eyebrow. "Sounds cruel."
Avery's mouth twists—not a smile. Something more caustic. "He thought the world was a puzzle built to be solved. If you couldn't figure it out, you were prey."
He writes a note on his phone. "And Alina? Your sister?"
Her fingers flutter.
"Gone."
"I read the file," he said. "Disappeared. No confirmed mortality. Case closed in 2012.".
"She disappeared in an unlocked house with no trace of entry or departure. They shut the case because they were fed up with my reopening it."
Reed's voice relaxed, defensive. "You think that has something to do with this?"
Avery hesitated. Then, "Yes."
That one word fell like a flaming match onto tinder.
Reed looked at her for an agonizing length of time. "How can you be so sure?"
She looked at him directly in the face. "Because the final riddle she ever solved was: 'I am always hungry, I must always be fed. The finger I touch, will soon turn red."
His eyes narrowed. "Fire."
"Yes." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "And when I found her room that night, there were ashes on her bed. Nothing else. Not even the sheets."
***
Elsewhere – 4:19 AM
Abandoned Rookside District – Building 13B
The killer waited in the shadows of a neglected building, the kind of building time had stopped caring to maintain. Wires hung like dead vines. Fungus crawled up shattered walls. And above, in the middle of the room, one dancing bulb cast its low light—more for mood than for necessity.
The body was on its side.
This victim had been harder to quiet. A teacher. Woman. Forty-seven.
Clever, certainly.
But not fast enough.
The murderer huddled next to her, inserting the note into the clenched hands with care. The envelope was white. The ink, red. Not blood—not yet—but something meant to imitate it. Symbolic. Sacred.
The murderer did not make the riddles. They were relics. Gifts handed down, like bone or curse.
They merely brought them.
And watched.
And waited.
***
Hollowbridge Precinct – 5:03 AM
Reed's phone rang as he stepped into his office. The moment he glanced at the screen, he stopped in his tracks.
MORGUE
1 New Arrival – Riddle Included
He ran.
Reed's running footsteps echoed through the hallway as he rushed toward the morgue. His brain was in high gear. He felt the cold morning air on his face, but it wasn't the temperature that caused his heart to beat fast. No, it was the riddle.
"I am always starving, I must always be fed. The finger I touch, will immediately turn red." Fire. The symbolism of fire had been too familiar to the catch of his breath in his chest. There'd been ice in the body he'd seen before, the A and L carved into the skin of the first victims. But now, the fire… That was near.
"Detective?" Officer Malone's voice cut through his mind as the morgue doors opened. She was standing beside the body on the table, her eyes locked on the woman who had only hours ago lain there.
Reed was unable to bring himself to look at the face of the woman. His gaze fell on the burn on her wrist. Her hand was placed there, fingers still clenched as if she held something she treasured, something that had burned her.
The riddle was there, written on a creased piece of paper placed on the floor beside her. Red writing, neat. The same words.
"Fire…"
Reed growled, barely aware he had spoken at all.
Malone regarded him, watching as he stared off into the distance. "You see it, don't you?" she asked, her voice soft but insistent.
"I see it," Reed stated, his eyes scanning the room. He reached for the note, holding it in his fingers before glancing down at the woman's wrist. He wasn't an expert, but the burn marks didn't look accidental. It looked deliberate. The kind of pain that spoke of something more.
"Evelyn Crane," he said our loud. "A school teacher. Thirty-seven years old."
Reed turned the note over. More script, this one in smaller letters. Another puzzle. Another play.
"The dead are not silent. They speak only when they're listened to. But if they shriek, the response must be prompt."
The hair at the back of Reed's neck rose in surprise as he felt an unexpected jolt of familiarity. He'd already heard this one. It was one of the riddles Avery had spoken of—those from her history.
The chill inside the morgue grew colder.
"She was tortured," Reed snarled. "And someone wants us to hear her."
Malone shivered and automatically backed off. "You think this has to do with the others?
Reed's jaw clenched. "Yes. And I think it's just the tip of the iceberg."
***
Hollowbridge City – Avery's Apartment – 6:15 AM
Avery's mind had not yet calmed since Reed left. She had not expected that he would leave so soon, not when his words hung on every second ticking by. He had only spoken to her sparingly, his eyes only on the crime scene pictures in front of him, his fingers idly flipping through them with a gruesome detachment. It was the unwritten understanding between them, though, that kept her unsettled. He got it, just like she did, that they were looking for the same thing.
Answers.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another text message.
She stared at it, racing heart before she looked at the name.
Unknown Number
The words came almost simultaneously:
"You have another puzzle, Avery. The hourglass is drained. The ticking started. What breaks before you can use it?"
Her stomach hardened. She did not need to think. Easy one.
A broken egg.
Her fingers touched the keyboard gingerly. No response had followed the last posting. The unspoken between she and the transmitter had grown turgid.
But now….
Now, the silence seemed to press into her skin, pushing her closer to something she wasn't ready for.
Another message pinged before she could type her answer.
"Correct. Now, you're running out of time."
Avery felt her pulse quicken as she read the last line.
The air about her contracted, the weight thick with sensing something being watched. She whipped about toward the window, eager to catch a hint of anything, anyone, but only a vaguest impression on the glass.
Nothing.
Breath rushed through her in desperate gasps as she suppressed the thought. She could not be swayed by it.
The phone again rang once.
"You're never safe, Avery. But then again, you never will be."
The weight of the words lingered long after the screen went dark.