The mansion was too quiet for a place so large.Jack never trusted quiet. Not in the homes of the wealthy.It always meant something ugly was hiding under the velvet.
The Crane Estate sat at the top of a mist-covered ridge just outside the city—an architectural beast carved from stone and glass. Long hallways, mirrored ceilings, and far too many locks for a woman who claimed to be alone.
He pressed the buzzer once.
A second later, the wrought iron gates unlatched with a hiss, like the house had been holding its breath.
Delilah Crane met him at the door in mourning black, head to toe. She looked like she'd stepped out of a 1950s film reel—hair swept into a sleek updo, eyes hidden behind dark glasses, even though the sun had long disappeared behind clouds.
Her voice was calm. Composed. But it didn't match the way her hands kept tightening around her cigarette case.
"You came quickly," she said.
"I was in the neighborhood," Jack replied, stepping inside.
The interior was colder than the outside air. Not in temperature—something else. Something psychological. Like the house hadn't accepted that its owner was dead.
Delilah led him into a lounge built for performance. Grand piano. Silk drapes. No dust anywhere. Not even on the photos. Her late husband's face was everywhere: oil paintings, silver frames, newspaper clippings pinned in pristine rows along the hallway wall.
Jonathan Crane, the eccentric billionaire collector, known for his obsession with pre-Sumerian artifacts and rare psychological instruments. The type who believed memory could be preserved in objects… or altered by them.
Jack had read the headlines when he died. Heart failure. Sudden. No foul play suspected. But rumor had always followed the Crane family. Whispers of rituals. Missing staff. Black vans arriving in the middle of the night.
"I need discretion, Mr. Stone," Delilah said, gesturing for him to sit. "I'm told that's your specialty."
"Depends on the job."
"One of Jonathan's most valuable pieces has gone missing," she said. "I noticed it was gone two nights after the funeral."
"No break-in?"
"None."
"No security footage?"
"Everything from that wing of the house was wiped," she said, pouring him a drink he hadn't asked for. "My husband had… unconventional protections."
Jack sipped it anyway. Bourbon. Expensive, but impersonal.
"What was the artifact?" he asked.
She crossed the room, opened a hidden panel behind a bookshelf, and pulled out a printed photo in a plastic sleeve. Old school.
Jack stared at it.
The statue was small—just under twelve inches—but its design was unmistakable: twin faces carved into one head, both smiling in opposite directions. One serene, one twisted. The surface shimmered like obsidian, but with gold veins splitting down the forehead.
"I've seen this before," he muttered.
"I doubt it," she said. "My husband claimed it was one of a kind."
"He was wrong."
She stiffened.
Jack leaned forward, eyes sharp. "This is a Janari effigy. From the lost caves of Dur-Kurigalzu. The dual god of self-erasure. Every time this statue has surfaced, someone ends up forgetting who they are. And sometimes… they forget that someone else ever existed."
Delilah's mouth twitched.
Jack caught it.
"You've been exposed to it," he said flatly.
"I only handled it once," she whispered. "Jonathan never let anyone near it."
"And now?"
"I've been waking up in rooms I don't remember walking into. Finding notebooks in my handwriting that don't sound like me. I—" She hesitated, pressing her palm against her temple. "I see a woman. In my dreams. Not me. But close. She's standing over my husband. Holding the statue."
Jack went still. "What did she look like?"
Delilah hesitated. "Dark hair. Tall. And eyes like a warning."
The same description everyone had for Elara Vane.
Jack leaned back in his chair. "Do you have any idea who would've wanted the statue?"
Delilah walked to the fireplace, retrieved a slim file from behind a loose brick, and handed it over. "These are the bidders Jonathan turned down when he bought the piece at auction last year. Most of the names are fake. But two kept sending offers."
Jack flipped through the pages.
One name made his stomach knot.
Ezra Night.
Charming. Dangerous. Untrustworthy. The same man who once tried to sell Jack a fake relic—by planting it at a real murder scene.
"He's not subtle," Jack muttered.
"No. But he's persistent."
Jack pocketed the file. "I'll find the statue. If Ezra's involved, he'll lead me to it—whether he wants to or not."
Delilah hesitated. "One more thing."
Jack turned.
She reached into a drawer and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, trembling slightly.
"This was on Jonathan's desk the night before he died. I don't recognize the handwriting."
Jack opened it.
At first, it looked like gibberish. Scribbled phrases. Doodles. But in the margin, scrawled in blood-red ink, were three words.
"She remembers wrong."
Jack frowned. "This was written before his death?"
"I think so."
"Who's 'she'?"
Delilah looked down. "That's what keeps me awake."
The wind howled when Jack stepped back outside.
Rain had started again—light, cold, insistent.
He lit a cigarette and stared up at the Crane mansion. Somewhere inside, a woman was slowly forgetting herself. And maybe, just maybe, remembering someone else.
The Janari effigy wasn't just dangerous.
It was a weapon of identity.
And someone was collecting them—one by one.
He looked down at the blood-red handwriting again, the words echoing in his mind like a prayer turned threat.
"She remembers wrong."
If the Raven Circle had the effigy, they weren't just stealing relics anymore.
They were rewriting people.
Ezra Night never stayed in the same place for long.
That was part of his charm. And part of the problem.
By the time Jack reached the warehouse district, the rain had settled into a steady drizzle that blurred the streetlights into long streaks of gold across the pavement. Cargo containers towered like silent witnesses, their rusted sides marked with symbols from companies that didn't officially exist anymore.
Ezra liked places like this. Temporary. Forgettable. Easy to abandon.
Jack parked two blocks away and walked the rest of the distance. No sudden movements. No unnecessary noise. Old habits from his detective days never really left; they just adapted to darker work.
The warehouse door was already open.
That alone told Jack two things.
First, Ezra knew he was coming.Second, this wasn't going to be simple.
Inside, the air smelled of oil, dust, and old wood. Lamps hung from chains overhead, casting long shadows between crates filled with artifacts waiting for buyers who preferred questions unasked. Ancient masks. Broken statues. Locked cases with museum tags still attached.
History, stripped of context and waiting to be sold.
"You're late," Ezra's voice echoed from somewhere deeper inside.
Jack didn't bother answering right away. He walked past a crate containing a shattered marble torso, the label still visible beneath peeling tape. Greek. Third century. Stolen three years ago.
Ezra stepped into the light, dressed impeccably as always — dark suit, no tie, hair slicked back as he'd just walked out of a gallery opening instead of a criminal operation. His smile came easily, but his eyes never did.
"Jack Stone," Ezra said warmly. "The city's favorite ghost."
"You stole the Crane statue."
Ezra sighed dramatically. "Straight to business. No small talk. I miss when you pretended to enjoy my company."
"You wiped security footage in a private estate," Jack said. "That's not subtle, even for you."
Ezra tilted his head. "You think I stole it?"
Jack said nothing.
Ezra laughed softly. "That statue is poison. I offered to buy it from Jonathan Crane because I knew someone else would try to take it eventually. I prefer dangerous things when they're predictable."
"And now it's gone," Jack said.
"Yes," Ezra replied. "Which makes this very inconvenient for me."
Jack studied him carefully. Ezra lied often, but rarely without purpose. Tonight, there was irritation under the performance. Real irritation.
"Who took it?" Jack asked.
Ezra walked past him, pouring two drinks from a bottle resting on a crate. He handed one to Jack, who didn't take it.
"You've heard the rumors," Ezra said. "Artifacts resurfacing. Collectors disappearing. Symbols carved where they shouldn't be."
"The Raven Circle."
Ezra's smile faded slightly. "They're not supposed to move this openly."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning someone is accelerating their timeline."
Jack's jaw tightened. "You're saying they took the effigy."
"I'm saying," Ezra replied calmly, "that Jonathan Crane wasn't their target."
Jack's stomach sank. "Delilah."
Ezra nodded. "The statue doesn't just erase identity. It replaces it. Slowly. Memories blur. Personalities shift. Eventually, the subject becomes… receptive."
"To what?"
Ezra met his eyes. "To suggest. To implantation. To become someone else."
Elara's face flashed in Jack's mind.
No. Not now.
"Where is it?" Jack pressed.
Ezra hesitated, then reached into his pocket and tossed a small device onto the table. A tracking beacon.
"I planted that during my last visit to Crane's collection. Insurance," he said. "It pinged three hours ago. Old medical facility on the east side. Closed ten years ago after an experimental therapy scandal."
Jack picked it up. The signal blinked steadily.
"Why help me?" Jack asked.
Ezra smiled again, softer this time. "Because if the Raven Circle succeeds, people like me become unnecessary. And I quite enjoy being necessary."
Jack turned toward the exit.
"Jack," Ezra called after him.
He stopped.
"There's something else," Ezra said quietly. "The buyer who commissioned the theft? The one paying for the artifact?"
Jack waited.
Ezra's voice lowered. "The authorization code matches a name you know."
A pause.
"Elara Vane."
The medical facility stood abandoned at the edge of the industrial zone, its windows boarded and walls stained by years of neglect. The sign had long since fallen, leaving only rusted brackets where letters used to hang.
Jack entered through a side door, gun drawn but low.
The inside smelled wrong. Not decay — disinfectant. Recent.
Someone had cleaned this place.
Down the hallway, lights flickered on one by one as he moved, motion sensors reactivated after years of silence. Doors lined the corridor, most empty, some filled with broken equipment left behind in haste.
Then he heard it.
A soft humming.
Jack followed the sound into a surgical room stripped bare except for a single table in the center.
And there it was.
The Janari effigy sat upright beneath a hanging lamp, its twin faces catching the light. One smiling. One grieving.
For a moment, Jack felt dizzy. The room seemed to tilt slightly, memories tugging at the edge of his thoughts. Elara laughing. Elara bleeding. Elara walking away.
He blinked hard, forcing himself forward.
A voice spoke behind him.
"You shouldn't look at it too long."
Jack turned sharply.
Rhea Alvand stepped from the shadows.
Dry. Calm. Unafraid.
"You're working with them," Jack said.
"No," she replied. "I'm trying to stop them."
"Ezra says the buyer used Elara's name."
Rhea's expression softened, almost sad. "Because that's the only name you'd follow."
Jack's grip tightened on his gun. "Start talking."
She stepped closer to the statue, careful not to touch it.
"The Raven Circle isn't collecting artifacts," she said quietly. "They're reconstructing a person."
Jack felt the air leave his lungs.
"They believe identity can be rebuilt," she continued. "Piece by piece. Memory by memory. The effigy removes what's there. The others… add something new."
"And Elara?" Jack asked.
Rhea met his eyes.
"They need her mind," she said. "But they lost her."
Silence swallowed the room.
"So now," Jack said slowly, "they're trying to make another one."
Rhea didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
The effigy's shadow stretched across the floor between them, splitting into two shapes under the light.
Two faces.Two identities.
And somewhere in the distance, sirens began to wail.