Юлия Авилкина – The Bodiless Shadow (страница 1)
The Bodiless Shadow
Prologue
The fog in the port city of Avrin didn’t just hide the streets—it deadened sounds, devoured the light of the gas lamps, and left a bitter taste of salt and iron on the lips.
Inside the Main Magical Archive of the Inquisition, it was quiet. And absolutely safe. At least, that was what Councilor Vael believed. The heavy oak door was bolted from the inside with a massive deadbolt. The windows were sealed shut with latches. Sleepy paper dust hung in the air, and all around, they softly pulsated—the threads.
The Councilor saw them clearly: golden, azure, and crimson strings of energy tightly entwining the ancient tomes and slumbering artifacts on the shelves. He himself was woven from the same threads—thick, strong, brimming with life and power. Magic sang within him, granting the pleasant illusion of his own invulnerability.
But in Avrin, illusions are short-lived.
He heard no footsteps. There was no creak of old floorboards, no shatter of broken glass. Just at some point, one of the magical threads in the far dark corner of the room twitched. Then another. As if someone unseen was plucking them like the strings of an out-of-tune harpsichord, shattering the harmony.
Cold slithered down his spine like a clammy snake. Vael slowly turned around.
There were no monsters in the deep shadows between the tall bookshelves. Only silence, which had suddenly become thick and suffocating.
"Who is there?" his voice sounded pathetic and dissolved almost instantly into the gloom.
No one answered. Only a slight, barely perceptible movement of air.
And then came the pain.
It wasn't a knife in the back or a noose around the neck. It was something much deeper, unnatural, and terrifying. Vael's eyes flew open, staring in horror at his own chest. The internal threads—the foundation of his life, the vessels of his magic—suddenly pulled taut to their limit, ringing from the tension.
The one standing in the shadows didn't approach, didn't utter incantations, didn't touch him physically. He was simply watching.
The sound was silent, but in the Councilor's head, it echoed with a deafening crack. The first thread inside his body snapped, curling up like a singed hair. Then the second. The third.
Vael tried to scream, but his lungs failed him. His body was paralyzed by shock. The unknown figure was methodically, cold-bloodedly, and terrifyingly cleanly carving out his essence from the inside, severing the connections one by one.
The last thing the Councilor saw before collapsing dead onto the oak parquet was the calm, indifferent gloom between the bookshelves. There wasn't a drop of rage or hatred in it. Only icy inevitability.
Dead silence reigned once again in the locked room of the Archive. Outside, somewhere high above the unseen port, a night airship let out a drawn-out hum. Tomorrow, Avrin would wake up in fear.
Chapter 1: Silent Threads
The sea fog pressed down on the port districts of Avrin like a heavy, wet blanket. It smelled of salt, rotting wood, and rancid whale oil. In the lower city, which the locals simply called Nutra, the fog wasn't just a weather phenomenon—it was a habitat. It obscured the outlines of the crooked streets, muffled footsteps, and hid other people's secrets.
Kaira Vellen stood on the wooden pier, her back leaning against the chilled brick of a warehouse, smoking. The glowing cherry of her cigarette was the only warm spot in the gray gloom.
She looked at the water, but that wasn't all she saw. Above the black surface of the canal, pale, bluish lines flickered faintly—the protective weaves of the port customs. For ordinary, un-Initiated people, they didn't exist. For the Inquisition mages, they sounded like the low hum of a cello, warning of the boundary.
Kaira heard nothing. To her, the threads of Avrin had always remained absolutely mute. She saw magic as a complex, cold blueprint, devoid of emotion and sound. This made her an outsider among the inquisitors, but it was exactly this flaw that made her the best private hound in the city. Where others were blinded by magical resonance or deafened by foreign power, Kaira saw only bare structural connections.
She took one last drag just as a silhouette emerged from the fog.
The footsteps were heavy, measured, shod with military iron. But Kaira recognized their owner not by sound. A veritable golden storm seethed around the approaching figure. Thick, aggressive threads of magic coiled around broad shoulders, betraying irritation and hidden power.
"Your office is locked, Vellen," Magnus Trey's voice matched his aura: rough, low, accustomed to giving orders rather than asking questions.
Kaira flicked her cigarette butt into the water. It hissed softly and went out.
"My office opens at eight in the morning, Handler. It’s a little after three a.m. Normal people are sleeping."
"No one in this city sleeps normally anymore," Magnus stopped two steps away from her. Beneath the folds of his heavy leather duster, one could guess the outline of a holster and the official silver badge of the Inquisition. His face was gray with exhaustion, and deep shadows lay at the corners of his hard mouth. "We have a body in the Upper City."
"The Inquisition investigates Upper City cases itself," Kaira replied calmly, burying her chilled hands in her coat pockets. "Unless one of your own got drunk and fell out of a brothel window."
"It’s Councilor Vael. And he didn't fall out of a window."
Kaira froze. The name hit her like a gust of icy wind. Vael wasn't just a Councilor. He was one of the architects of the modern Inquisition. A man whose power stretched from the port customs to the spires of the Cathedral.
"Gear up," Magnus threw out curtly, turning around. "The airship is waiting at Pier Five. I need your eyes, Vellen. Mine... aren't cutting it there."
The flight on the
The Inquisition’s police airship, smelling of machine oil and expensive tobacco, rose slowly above Nutra, piercing through layers of fog. Kaira looked out the porthole. From this height, Avrin seemed split in two. Below reigned a gloom cut only by dim gas lamps. Above, beyond the invisible barrier of the climate shields, the Upper City glowed. The spires of mansions and the domes of administrative buildings were entwined in a dense web of shimmering threads. There, magic flowed through the streets like water, heating the squares, lighting the parks, and guarding the peace of the aristocracy.
"How did it happen?" Kaira finally asked, her eyes fixed on the golden radiance beyond the glass.
Magnus sat opposite her, leaning heavily with his elbows on his knees.
"Vael was working in the Main Archive. At night. He locked himself in the reading room of the 'Special Records' sector. The guards at the doors were external. The spells on the windows were internal. No one entered. No one left."
"A magical surge?"
"That’s the thing—there was none." Magnus rubbed the bridge of his nose in irritation. His golden threads twitched nervously. "It’s as quiet as a crypt in there. No signs of a struggle, no residual background. My men went in this morning when he didn’t answer a knock. He was just sitting in his chair. Dead."
Kaira frowned. The death of a mage of Vael’s caliber should have caused a resonance felt by half the Cathedral. Severed threads of such power always left behind an ethereal burn—like the smell of gunpowder after a shot in a cramped room. If Magnus felt nothing, then something had occurred beyond the understanding of the standard Inquisitorial school.
The airship moored softly to the docking mast on the roof of the Main Archive. The building was a colossal fortress of dark granite, devoid of windows on its lower tiers. Around it shimmered a containment cocoon—a tangle of protective spells so dense that Kaira’s eyes momentarily watered as she tried to decipher their structure.
They descended a spiral staircase into the depths of the building. Here, away from the city's bustle, a very particular scent reigned: dry paper, beeswax, and old, settled magic. The air was cool and surprisingly clean.
At the massive double doors of the "Special Records" sector stood two pale guards with halberds laced with power circuits. And between them, holding a small kerosene lamp, stood a man in an impeccably pressed gray frock coat.
He did not possess Magnus’s intimidating aura. The threads around him were thin, pale, almost transparent, pressed tightly to his body—the mark of a man accustomed to conserving energy and avoiding attention. He had fair hair neatly combed back and thin-rimmed glasses that concealed watchful, gray eyes.
"Handler Trey," he said. His voice was quiet but very steady, without the slight tremor usually present in civilians when facing the Inquisition.
"Darr," Magnus nodded, making no effort to hide his annoyance. He hated being in the Archive, where his brute force was useless. "This is Ms. Vellen. Private consultant. Open the doors."
Soaren Darr turned his gaze to Kaira. In his eyes, there was neither the condescension nor the distaste with which Inquisitors usually viewed "mute" mages. Only a calm, professional recognition of her presence.