Arin sat at the table, pen in hand. No words came. Nothing. He wanted to write to his grandfather; there was so much he wanted to say, but he didn’t know where to start. He thought of his grandfather’s warm smile. Everything about the city felt strange and dull.

He stared out the dark window. The quiet outside felt heavy, almost suffocating. For days, his mind had been full of the missing children, masks, and seals. His grandfather’s stories felt far away now, like a fading dream. Here, surrounded by concrete and steel, he felt completely alone. Like no one really understood him. He took a breath and lifted the pen again. Still, the words didn’t come. He just wanted to get away.

That was when the knock came. Two short, firm strikes. No hesitation. Mechanical. Exactly Kael’s style.

Arin sighed, rose from his bed, and leaned on the desk. “Come in,” he said, his voice heavy.

The door creaked open. Kael’s shadow spilled into the room, but he didn’t step inside. His dark grey coat was pristine, not a wrinkle out of place. His face, as always, unreadable.

“There’s a new assignment,” he said flatly. “High priority.”

Arin frowned. “What does ‘high priority’ mean?”

Kael tilted his head slightly. “The case file has been matched to you. Naturally, I’ll be your assigned observer again.”

Arin stepped away from the desk, eyes fixed on him. “When do we leave?”

“In thirty minutes.”

Kael turned to leave but hesitated at the door. Something flickered behind his eyes, like a quiet inner debate. Then he glanced over his shoulder.

His tone was still neutral, but there was the faintest shift in it: “Hey... you alright?”

The unexpected question dropped into the room like a stone. Arin stared at him for a few seconds, then looked away, letting his hair fall to hide his expression. “My well-being... does it affect mission protocol?”

Kael didn’t look away. “Yes,” he said. “If it interferes with performance, I have to report it.”

Blunt. Honest. Almost too honest.

Arin closed his eyes and took a breath. “No,” he said. “I’m not alright. But it won’t affect the mission.”

Kael nodded slightly, as if that were enough. He turned again, but paused with his hand on the door.

His voice came once more, this time softer, almost a warning: “Get ready. We’re going deeper this time.”

The door clicked shut. Arin was alone. He looked at the spiral sketch covering the notebook on his desk, reached out, and traced its ridged surface with his fingers.

“Deeper,” he echoed.

***

When they descended into the disused Underground Line 06, they had stepped into a world entirely different from the capital above.

As they went down the abandoned stairwell, Arin was instantly enveloped by the scent of rust, mold, and lingering burnt electricity. He walked carefully, trying not to step on the faded warning signs whose texts were now unreadable. Some of the overhead lights still flickered feebly, but most had long gone out, leaving behind only a dim and oppressive gloom.

Kael walked silently ahead. He held his scanner like a weapon, examining each corner with a practiced, cold-blooded calm. His severed arm had long since been repaired, but Arin could swear he still heard a faint creaking when he moved. He had never asked how much of his body was mechanical, but he was fairly certain his heart was already lost.

"According to the case file," he said without slowing, "the station worker was found at 04:10 a.m."

"Who found him at that hour? Isn’t this a disused station?" Arin asked.

Kael slowed slightly, as if giving him a chance to catch up. "Local kids sometimes sneak in despite the closure."

Arin frowned. "But it’s not suicide?"

"Definitely not," Kael replied, resuming his pace.

They descended onto the darkened platform. Their eyes immediately locked onto the man lying on the ground. But this wasn’t just a corpse; this was someone who seemed to have fought a senseless, agonizing battle against death itself.

His body was bent and broken in an unnatural, backward arch. His face was frozen in a mask of terror and unbearable pain. It looked as though he had braced his hands against the ground to force himself into that horrific pose, pressing so hard, his fingers had cracked and embedded into the concrete.

And perhaps strangest of all: there was no blood.

None at all.

It was as if every drop of it had been drawn inward, trapped just beneath the skin. His complexion was now a deep, near-black shade of maroon.

Staring at the sheer impossibility of it, Arin could only whisper,

"This is definitely not suicide. This is a ritual... but it’s unfinished. Whatever they were trying to do, they couldn’t complete it."

“Had they completed it, we’d be dealing with a whole different entity right now,” Kael said. "And whoever did this also left a message."

He slowly raised his scanner toward the ceiling, its light illuminating the dark space above as he focused the device.

They found a line of text carved into the stone surface. The letters were angular and slanted; they were written in an ancient tongue, one no longer used in common speech.

Kael squinted at the inscription and cleared his throat. “It says... ‘When a promise is made, it is bound by a seal of blood.’”

Arin’s eyes flickered nervously. “The words are roughly correct... but the grammar is off. It should be more like, ‘A promise forged in blood seals the fate forever.’”

This wasn’t one of the standard ritual phrases for a jinn binding, and why was it written here anyway? In such rituals, the words are always spoken aloud; there’s no need to write them down.

A sudden tightness seized Arin's throat. It felt… familiar. But from where? A ripple stirred at the edge of his mind. A flicker of old darkness blinked behind his eyelids. His heart pounded faster. The ring on his left hand suddenly grew warm, then gave off a faint glow. Arin instinctively pulled his hand behind his back.

Kael turned, eyes narrowing at him. He adjusted the scanner, trying to catch whatever had just flashed across the display. His brow furrowed.

“Your ring…” he said slowly, voice carefully neutral. “The metal composition is stable, but... my system’s reading it as if it’s reactive.”

Arin didn’t answer. He clenched his fingers into a fist. The heat had faded, but that deep, rattling sensation... It was still there.

Kael turned back to the writing on the ceiling and quietly repeated the sentence.

Azimushan still hadn’t spoken. But Arin could feel him, unsettled, tense. A familiar kind of restlessness. As if the sentence had scraped across an old memory. One too painful to fully awaken.

Silently, Arin asked: “Does this seem familiar to you?”

No answer. Only silence. A deep, crushing silence.

“Arin!” Kael snapped.

Startled, Arin turned to him. “Yes!” he replied quickly.

“I called your name three times. Where’s your head at?”

“I… I don’t know,” he said, unable to think of anything better. “I need to research this. Do you have a library for rituals like this?”

“Information like that is restricted, only accessible to certain levels. But we can check the Archives.”

“Can we go now?” he asked, then added, noticing his suspicious glance: “This place is kind of… getting to me.”

“For someone who summons jinn from the shadows, you’re oddly delicate,” Kael said.

“Delicate? Sure. I also wilt without sunlight and compliments,” Arin replied with a nervous laugh. Kael gave him an even more suspicious look. “Fine. We’ll run a few more scans and then we’ll go.”

“Great!” Arin said and this time, he meant it.

Every second spent here made him feel like he was suffocating.