The officers approached the entrance of the building, the wood of its structure worn and eaten away, they knocked on the door, with one of the hinges broken causing it to lean to the right, it trembled under the slight force applied.

Receiving no response they broke it open with a push.

Arles was the first to set foot inside the building, coughing from the dust raised by knocking down the door, he looked around, in disbelief at Jake's conjectures.

“Tell me again boy, why are we here?”

“Because I found a clue”.

Jake pushed his way through the cloud of dust, as if it didn't affect him, feeling the call of the essence of that entity on the tips of his fingers with a growing tickle, leading him to the next room.

“And that clue is…?”

“The substrates present in the substance are the same as those in the nearby woods, this building is the closest to the area with the best match”.

Officer Arles, having more than two decades of experience, recognized inconsistencies in Jake’s statement.

“And you, a mere human, performed such a test in less than a minute without requiring any assistance…”.

“What?”

A shaky voice from within the darkness interrupted their conversation. An extremely thin man, with signs of starvation and malnutrition, came out of the next room, shuffling his feet and shaking his body in violent, random spasms.

“Who-Who are you?!”

Jake’s tingling turned to heat, his refined senses heightened even more at the possibility of a confrontation with the killer. Arles, unaware of the situation, took a calm and neutral approach towards the man.

“We are detectives, looking for information on the recent murders-”.

“Where am I?! Did you say murders?!!”

“Sir... Are you okay?”

“Leave me alone!”

Jake took a step back, away from his suspect's erratic and confused behavior, deciding that it was best to follow him and act as if he didn't know his connection to the case.

He looked him up and down looking for an excuse to restrain him and put him under observation. On his half-naked feet the man had stains of the black substance, soaking his once white socks.

With a gesture, a light tap and a look towards Arles he redirected his attention to that substance.

“Sir, that thing on your feet, could you explain to me where it comes from?”

“What?...”

He looked at his feet, surprised by the strange tar on his soles, he raised and shook one with anxious force.

Jake interceded with an assertive, yet soft-toned voice, putting on his best face to reassure his suspect.

“Calm down, we’re here to help, we’ll get you to safety”.

“Since when… how long…? I don’t-”.

The man’s eyes began to roll back in his head as convulsive spasms took over his body, sweating and foaming at the mouth he lost consciousness. Jake caught him before he fell to the ground.

Arles watched the rapidly escalating situation with skepticism for both his fellow officer and the mysterious man they had just encountered.

“What the hell just happened?”

“Must be another victim, we need to call an ambulance”.

“Let me get this straight!”

Arles raised his voice and spoke with harsh firmness

“With just a small sample of whatever, you ran a test that takes hours in less than a minute and the results guided you exactly, with no margin of error, where the killer hid his most recent victim, just like that”.

The officers looked at each other in the eyes, in silence, Jake reading Arles' emotions thinking of a good excuse to justify the situation.

“Yes”.

He couldn't come up with anything. Arles pulled out his phone and dialed the direct line to the station.

“Detective Arles here, we need urgent medical assistance, there's a civilian” he looked at Jake and pointed behind him “and an officer injured”.

Seeing that his partner hadn't let go of what happened in the lab, Jake sighed, irritated, at the prospect of having to make up more excuses, now in front of medical personnel.

After a couple of hours and several tests to determine how the young man had bled so profusely without presenting any wound, the intrigued doctors tried to make up pretexts to keep him in their custody.

Knowing this would happen Jake was prepared to refute each and every one of them.

In the end they had to give up.

While Jake was dressing, still with his bare torso, exposing the delicate lines that illustrated a pair of white wings that seemed to grow from his trapezius muscles, extending their shape to the base of his lower back, in a last effort a nurse approached Arles, hoping he would convince his companion to stay.

“There really is no doubt that’s his blood, we assume it has something to do with his tattoos, if we just run a couple more tests-”

“No, we have a lot of work to do, we are leaving”.

“You are right! Let's go”.

Jake, already fully dressed, quickly stood up, desperate to leave the hospital. Arles was still confused and worried about the young officer's situation, he clarified.

“But it's late, you better go home and rest. I'll take you” he looked Jake up and down, still incredulous of his good condition “After bleeding like that you could end up in an accident if you drive”.

Jake, who was already exhausted from the day of work and the harassment of the doctors, remembering what had happened just the day before and reading the officer's emotions, he couldn't help but explode at Arles' hypocrisy.

“So what?! Why do you care?!!”

Arles kept his composure, although the young man's aggressive reaction to his concern irritated him quite a lot.

“If you drive in poor condition you will put civilian lives at risk, think about it carefully”.

Jake could not refute that statement, still annoyed and grumbling he followed Arles without saying a word. The veteran took him, in the same car they used to go to the crime scene, to the nearest train station, saving both of them a long and uncomfortable trip.

Jake boarded the first train that arrived, completely empty given the late hour of the night, and continued on his way, still frustrated and tired from the latest events of his day.

Arles was watching the train’s departure when he received a text message, the number of the sender gave him chills just reading it.

• So did he show you what he really is?

• …

• Well, yes he did

• I think you got mistaken with the kid 

• He's just a simple albino

The next message took several minutes to arrive, showing the person on the other end of the conversation typing and stopping multiple times.

• WE DIDN'T

• You saw it yourself, by the end of the day even those scratches disappeared

Arles continued his conversation for half an hour, deep in thought, going over all the events of the day and considering all possible explanations. No matter how much he thought about it, it was clear that his contact had made a mistake, however, even clearer than that was the fact that Jake was not a mere human.

Inside the empty car, Jake leaned exhausted against the worn plastic seat’s back, inhaling deeply, tensing all his muscles and then relaxing them completely as he exhaled.

A shiver ran down his spine, alerting him to danger.

The lights in the cars began to go out, one by one from the last to the first, reaching where the young officer was. Two silhouettes could be distinguished among the shadows.

“Stop playing games and show yourselves already”.

Jake took off his jacket and removed his tie, preparing for what was to come. One of the two silhouettes, now in the darkness of the same car, spoke with a trembling and shrill voice.

“Why do you keep getting in our way?”

“Well…” he unbuttoned the first buttons of his shirt, revealing his chest “it's my job, you know?”

As he brought his right hand to his chest, ready to grab something non-existent in the air, a dazzling flash emerged from his heart through his flesh, bone, and skin. In the empty space beneath his palm a golden sphere began to manifest, absorbing the light, turning into a pure, transparent crystal, while the gold continued to grow and form around it like the handle of a sword.

“Ah, I see,” the silhouette exclaimed, “you are one of its soldiers, pretty boy”.

A deep, raspy voice echoed behind some of the words.

Pulling the handle, the light completely transformed into a crystalline blade, as if it had been pulled directly from his heart, emitting a slight glow of its own, illuminating the carriage and making its interior slightly more visible.

With the silhouettes close enough to distinguish, Jake observed them, scanning their essence.