Hargreave saw her before she saw him.
Or perhaps, he thought later, she always saw first.
It was impossible to tell with Carmen Vale.
She stood near the marketplace, pretending to examine a row of bruised peaches, her gloved fingers trailing lightly across their skins — not touching to taste, but touching to bruise.
She wore a simple dark coat, a small hat tilted just enough to cast her eyes in shadow.
It should have made her invisible.
It did not.
Even from across the square, people noticed her.
Not with conscious thought.
Not in words they could explain.
But they looked.
And looked again.
Men stared longer than was safe.
Women stared longer than they admitted.
Children looked once, and then never again.
There was something about her.
Something sharp enough to cut.
Something magnetic enough to bleed you dry before you even realized you'd stepped too close.
Like the moment before a blade slides into skin — when the breath holds, but the pain has not yet begun.
Hargreave lit a cigarette with fingers that didn't quite shake.
He should have left.
He should have been smarter.
But rage curdled his judgment into something heavier than sense.
He crossed the square in six long strides, boots slamming against the worn stone.
Carmen turned as he approached — slow, fluid — her expression calm, almost fond.
Up close, she was worse.
Too perfect.
Too wrong.
Cheekbones sharp enough to cut rope.
Eyes dark enough to drown empires.
A mouth meant for worship or ruin, but nothing in between.
Hargreave stopped a foot away.
She smiled at him like she knew exactly how many heartbeats he had left.
"Detective," she said, her voice a soft velvet blade. "Looking lost?"
He didn't draw his gun.
He didn't need it.
Words were his weapon now.
"I know who you are," he said.
The smile widened — not kind, not cruel.
Inevitable.
"You know who you want me to be," she answered.
She turned back to the peaches, as if he were a stain she could wash away with a breath.
"You're sick," he said, hating how weak his voice sounded against the silence she carried with her.
"You're right," she murmured. "But sickness only matters when you think you were ever clean."
The words hit harder than a bullet.
Because he was infected.
He knew it.
And so did she.
The spiral wasn't just on the walls anymore.
It was under his skin.
It was behind his eyes.
It was inside the breath he dared not exhale.
Julian appeared before Hargreave even realized he had moved.
One moment, there was air.
The next, there was a man.
Taller.
Broader.
Dressed in black so fine it seemed to drink the color from the air itself.
Julian looked like the kind of man mothers warned about in fairy tales, long after the children had gone to bed.
A smile too lazy.
A stance too casual.
Eyes that glinted like knives pulled slowly across glass.
Hargreave stepped back before he could stop himself.
Julian laughed — low, rich, almost warm.
"Now, now," he said. "You finally get close enough to touch the fire, and you flinch?"
Carmen plucked a peach from the stand, weighing it lightly in her hand.
"I expected more from you," she said, voice full of mockery so soft it almost sounded like kindness.
Hargreave swallowed against the iron in his throat.
"You can't keep hiding," he rasped.
Julian shrugged, easy, loose.
"Who's hiding?"
Carmen tossed the peach into the air.
Caught it.
Tossed it again.
The fruit bruised deeper each time it hit her palm.
"We're not hiding," she said at last.
She dropped the peach at his feet.
It landed with a wet, hollow sound, splitting open to reveal the rot inside, veined and weeping across the stone.
"We're thriving."
She turned on her heel, coat flaring like smoke from a pyre.
Julian followed, tipping an invisible hat.
And just like that, they were gone.
The market exhaled slowly.
The world crept back into itself.
People returned to their bread, their gossip, their illusions.
No one realized how close they had come to standing at the center of the spiral.
Only Hargreave remained still.
Staring down at the ruined fruit.
Finally understanding what it meant to lose a war you never knew you were fighting.
That night, Callum made another offering to the spiral.
Not a merchant.
Not a drunk.
A constable.
One of Hargreave's own.
They found the body strung from a lamppost by the ankles, gut opened, intestines trailing down like festive ribbons.
A spiral carved neatly into the forehead, the blood dripping slow and deliberate into the cracks of the cobblestones.
Carmen watched from a rooftop.
The fog crowned her.
The city bowed beneath her.
Julian leaned against a broken chimney, humming some old, broken tune only madmen and sailors remembered.
Callum stood beneath the lamppost, face tilted upward, admiring his own work like a boy proud of his first fire.
The city screamed.
The city bled.
The city begged.
Carmen smiled — slow, sure, already turning away.
Because mercy was never a currency she had traded in.
Only ruin.
And ruin, she knew, was the only gospel worth preaching now.