Lowe leaned back in his creaking chair, flipping through the final pages of his report.

  It was a masterclass in bullshit. It perfectly balanced the tightrope of bureaucratic survival—a blend of half-truths, artfully crafted omissions, and just enough verifiable facts to discourage anyone from digging too deep.

  The perfect cocktail of plausible deniability. An almost textbook Cuckoo House report.

  No one would be happy with it, but no one would be angry enough to pull at the threads. And in Soar, that was often the best you could hope for.

  A lot of people were dead, and while a few of them had it coming, far too many hadn’t. But that was Soar, wasn’t it? A city that thrived on grinding people up and spitting out what was left. If you let yourself care too much, you’d never make it out of bed.

  With a tap of his finger, Lowe activated the cuckoo sigil embossed on the cover of the file—a silver emblem of a bird mid-dive, its wings outstretched. It quivered once, twice, and then rose from the desk in a wide spiral, as if testing its newfound freedom. Tiny, glowing feathers sprouted from its corners, and the pages rifled with the faintest ‘coo’, like a real bird waking from slumber.

  Lowe watched as the file darted toward the open window, weaving around his lamp and narrowly missing a tower of precariously stacked case notes. It hesitated at the frame, flapping softly as though sniffing the air, before shooting off with purpose, leaving a trail fairydust in its wake.

  Off to Central Filing—wherever in the gods’ name that actually was.

  Almost immediately, another file, dull and heavy, thudded onto his desk, spat back through his window by the same Skill that had taken the first one away. Its edges were frayed, its corners scuffed, but the sigil on its cover burned bright and angry, as if demanding attention.

  Lowe sighed, his fingers brushing the cracked leather.

  A return file.

  Great.

  He wasn’t done for the night after all. How had he offended the admin trolls this time?

  The file was thick with worn edges and scuffed corners. It looked exactly like hundreds of others he had handled during his career. But something about it gave Lowe pause.

  His hand hesitated above the cover, and then he saw Unsolved stamped across it in faded ink.

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  He knew this file.

  And he knew the case that remained Unsolved.

  And with that, the pit opened in his stomach and, without any conscious thought, Grid View activated, dragging him unwillingly into the scene that had haunted his nights for the past year.

  Smoke curled through the air, thick and choking, curling around the overturned furniture and shattered glass of the room like a giant, constricting serpent. Somewhere in the distance, alarms blared, their wails distant and distorted, as if he were swimming underwater.

  The stink of burned mana clawed at his throat, mingling with the stench of blood.

  A scene frozen in time, etched into his soul.

  The body lay crumpled on the floor.

  Small.

  Too small.

  The fine fabric of its clothes was torn, the rich colours dulled and smeared with grime and darker stains he refused to name. The child’s arm was flung out above its head, and one shoe was missing, as though they’d tried to run.

  Or maybe fight.

  Lowe had no idea which thought hurt worse.

  His breathing came sharp and fast as the steel trap of the image locked in his mind. Smoke swirled around him, painting shadows where none should be, twisting into cruel shapes. The alarms rang on, each one a hammer to his heart.

  And then the laughter started.

  Low, cruel, and echoing.

  It wasn’t real—not here, not now—but Grid View dragged it from his memory in perfect replication anyway. That horrible, mocking sound, spiralling into his ears and parasitically latching onto his mind.

  The Black Knight.

  That failed ransom handover.

  His fuckup that had caused the death of a child.

  The case that had ruined his life.

  He reteched, and that action broke the hold of his Skill and forced him back into the present.

  Lowe blinked the vision away, returning to the dim light of his office. His hand trembled as he reached for the file again, and he cursed under his breath as he saw it.

  A slip of paper, neatly tagged to the front of the file, stark against the dull manila cover. Lowe’s fingers hesitated before plucking it free, his other hand wiping at his eyes in frustration at the sudden and unwelcome moisture there.

  The handwriting was precise, almost elegant.

  I feel our previous game ended a little early. What do you say about a rematch? Yours, as ever. The Black Knight.

  And then every alarm in Cuckoo House erupted into life.

  Shrill. Insistent. Every system designed to catch the tiniest ripple of a threat now howled in unison. Lights flared red along the walls, the polished floors gleaming like blood. The whole building seemed to lurch with purpose, like a beast waking from slumber.

  Lowe stared at the note in his hand, his jaw tightening as the cacophony around him intensified.

  “Fuck me,” he said, his voice lost in the wailing alarms.

  Inspector Lowe will return in the The Cuckoo’s Last Call