:
Early the following morning, a pile of files arrived at a small rented apartment, carried upstairs in stacked boxes marked clearly with the Warden’s office insignia pressed across each lid.
One after another, the boxes were set down around an office desk already cluttered with steaming cups of coffee and half-used ink quills, the room quickly transforming into something closer to a cramped, temporary command center than the modest rental it had been the day before.
"This is extremely elaborate."
Ethan muttered the words under his breath, glancing up briefly toward the rest of the group scattered around the room. Each of them had drifted into varying stages of exhaustion, heads nodding, eyes fighting to stay open against the sheer volume of paperwork stacked in front of them, Fin’s chin already resting against his own chest despite his best efforts to appear alert.
The moment they’d settled into the apartment, briefing documents spanning the past several months had begun arriving in a steady, relentless stream, leaving no meaningful room for rest at any point along the way.
Only Ethan, who had spent his previous life buried in bureaucratic work of a very different kind, seemed capable of enduring this level of paperwork without his focus fraying at the edges, the old habits of cross-referencing spreadsheets and financial statements sliding back into place almost naturally.
’From what I can conclude, there are three prerequisites to becoming a target.’
Ethan scratched thoughtfully at his chin, sinking deeper into concentration as he cross-referenced yet another stack of case files.
’One must hold significant influence within the city.’
This much felt fairly obvious, reflected clearly in the broader pattern of prominent business tycoons dying in quick succession.
This was propaganda pushed by the city administration so the masses wouldn’t panic. It was much easier to stomach these things when you feel like your group or demographic was not being targeted.
But the pattern ran deeper than wealth alone. Union leaders. Community heads. Even respected high-level medical professionals had appeared among the victims, their names scattered throughout the growing list without any obvious connection tying them together beyond one shared trait none of the previous investigators had bothered to isolate clearly.
The death toll spread evenly across the city, regardless of perceived financial standing. What actually mattered here, Ethan realized, was influence itself, not simply the size of someone’s bank account.
’One must have recently endured a tragic event.’
Ethan read through the account of a priest devoted to Karth, describing the horror of returning home to find his entire family murdered in cold blood, the killer described only as some manner of demon originating from an abyssal dimension, a claim the original investigators had dismissed outright as grief-induced delusion.
The account seemed unlikely on its face, bordering on delusion, and had reportedly pushed the man dangerously close to genuine insanity in the weeks that followed.
Stories like this repeated themselves throughout the files. Sudden lost fortunes. Broken relationships. Devastating personal losses arriving without warning.
Without fail, the same underlying pattern surfaced again and again across nearly every case.
Ethen didn’t understand why such dark patterns were so prevalent, but he could easily come to certain conclusions by just looking at it from the outside.
Especially after noting the final prerequisite.
’They had to maintain residence within Blackwater city .’
This particular condition operated on more of a presence-based basis. Ethan confirmed the theory by carefully cross-checking records of individuals who had died while physically outside the city during the exact windows Kang’s own presence had been logged nearby, a correlation that had taken him nearly an hour of tedious cross-referencing to fully verify.
Without exception, the victims affected under those specific circumstances were people who still technically owned property within Blackwater, despite being temporarily away or having recently relocated elsewhere.
"Hmmm, I see."
Ethan nodded slowly, reaching for a fresh cup of coffee before pulling another sheet of paper toward him, eyes already scanning the next report.
The Warden’s office had carried a reputation for incompetence over the past several months, whispered about openly in the streets and reinforced by every failed investigation before this one. But the sheer detail packed into these reports made Ethan increasingly doubtful of that reputation the further he read, the depth of the cross-referencing alone suggesting a level of diligence the rumors had never given them credit for.
If the office genuinely struggled with anything, it wasn’t insight or diligence.
It was raw fighting power, the kind necessary to actually confront whatever was responsible once identified.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
That afternoon, Ethan left the apartment behind and made his way toward the Warden’s office once more, though this time his purpose wasn’t to speak with the Warden himself.
Instead, he sought out the officer directly in charge of the ongoing investigation.
According to the files, the man’s name was Dent, a relatively unremarkable tier 9 summoner by rank alone.
"Good day, Mister Algar. It’s a pleasure meeting you."
Dent greeted him warmly, presenting himself as a dignified, well-composed gentleman who couldn’t have been much older than Ethan in actual years.
And yet, he carried himself with a kind of refined poise Ethan usually only encountered in men who had lived through several decades of accumulated experience, a stillness in his posture that felt distinctly earned rather than practiced, the sort of composure that didn’t come naturally to someone still this young.
"The pleasure is entirely mine."
Ethan replied, extending his hand into a firm, deliberate handshake. His eyes locked with Dent like two men who already knew what the other was about long before interacting with each other.
Having already read through Dent’s personal reports in detail, Ethan had noticed something curious woven throughout the documentation, subtle insinuations scattered between the lines that pointed toward something reaching far beyond the immediate murders plaguing the city over these past several months.
And the central subject of those particular insinuations was precisely what had drawn Ethan here to meet him in person.
The Algar clan.
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