The noose still swayed.
No wind. No movement. Just the soft creak of old rope adjusting to absence.
The scaffold had been hastily cleared of crowd barriers, but its edges still bore the marks of yesterday's audience—boot tracks in the dust, discarded flyers, a snapped ribbon of security tape curling by the corner post.
Perry stood at the base, coat collar turned up, hands tucked into his sleeves. The light hadn't changed. The silence hadn't either.
The city had come for a show. They got one.
A noble walked calmly up the platform, tied the rope himself, and stepped off without fanfare.
Then—vanished.
No snap of the neck. No blood. No magic burst. Just a body gone before it could fall.
No one tried to stop him. They thought it was illusion. Theatrics. A noble's cry for attention. Only when the rope swung alone did anyone panic.
And by then, it was too late.
Perry stepped up the wooden platform and crouched.
The floorboard beneath the drop point groaned—not from weight, but looseness. He pried one edge with a dull scraping sound, revealing the subspace hollow. Empty. Dustless. As though something had passed through and wiped the interior clean in the process.
He took out a folded cloth and reached inside. His fingers brushed the edges of something soft and oddly damp.
A strip of cloth. Faintly oiled. No scent. But his gloves now glistened with a translucent sheen.
He wrapped the rag and pocketed it.
Preservation compound. Not rare. Often used to delay decay. Not needed for a living body. But this wasn't the kind used in funerary rites—it was the kind used in smuggling.
One clue, then.
Not evidence of death.
Evidence that something wasn't quite alive to begin with.
But not enough.
Not yet.
---
The underside of the stage bore marks from countless performances. Peg holes. Torch brackets. A child's scrawl in charcoal that read "DON'T TRUST THE BACKDOOR."
Perry ignored them all.
What drew his attention instead was a faint scoring along the inner wall. A track—too smooth, too straight. Wheels? No… rollers. Heavy-duty kind. The kind used for moving weight, but not distance.
A coffin cart, maybe?
He followed the marks to the edge of the wooden perimeter. There, the tracks faded into the gravel lot behind the execution square. No indentations. No sign of a turning point.
If something had been moved, it hadn't been dragged far.
Or it had never touched the ground.
He crouched again, staring at the shallow indentation where the track ended.
"Why carry the body up only to take it away again?" he murmured.
No answer.
Not from the air, not from the street behind, and—oddly—not from the System.
But a faint shimmer pulsed in his vision:
System: Active investigation confirmed. Truth-lock operational. Immunity status: sustained.
He nodded slightly.
Back on the platform, he walked in circles, retracing the supposed fall point.
No blood, no arcane residue, no scorch.
But near the back edge—where the platform joined the city's stone border—a tag fluttered slightly in the breeze.
Perry blinked. Took it gently.
A sealing stub. Meant to bind soft cloth or a wrap. One end was scorched. The wax signature had melted. But the fibers had Bureau-issued runic threads woven into them.
Not from his kit.
He examined the stub under shifting light.
The melt pattern suggested a severance by heat. Not flame, but pressure-discharged ignition. A release glyph? Misfired? Or timed?
And why Bureau fibers?
Was someone pretending to be one of them?
Or had this been stolen?
Again, no conclusion. Just anomaly.
But the pieces were stacking now.
An oiled rag. A melted seal stub. Roller tracks that ended in air.
And a platform with no memory of weight.
---
"Detective."
A voice from behind.
The city guard—Captain Elsen. Gray tunic, taller than most, with a permanent squint.
Perry didn't turn fully. Just enough.
"Any updates from the crowd witnesses?" he asked.
Elsen shook his head. "Same confusion. Half of them thought it was stagecraft. Other half started screaming only after the rope was empty."
"Any of them notice the moment he disappeared?"
"Some say mid-fall. Some say before the step-off."
"Anyone mention flashes? Glow? Burn marks?"
Elsen shook his head. "Nothing. No light, no magic. Thought it was a stage trick."
Perry narrowed his eyes.
Even good spells leave residue… unless they're built to hide it.
"Inconsistent," he muttered. "Good."
Elsen blinked. "You like that?"
"It means no planted perspective. If the illusion was meant to deceive, it wouldn't have fractured."
Elsen frowned. "But you don't think it was illusion?"
Perry didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he walked to the base of the support beam, staring at a notch near the rope's anchor point.
A scratch. Vertical. Fresh.
"A suspended weight doesn't scratch unless it twists," he murmured. "And for that to happen…"
He crouched again.
"…there had to be weight. At least for a second."
Elsen peered down. "Then where'd he go?"
Perry stood.
"I'm starting to think… nowhere."
---
He returned to the rear wall of the platform. Dust had settled more heavily here—no wind circulation. And near the far corner, something caught his eye.
A flick of white. Paper? No. Sheen was too stiff.
He pulled it loose.
A patch. Torn from clothing.
Black silk, dyed with bureau-standard fade resistant thread. But not stitched—welded. This kind of clothing didn't belong to nobility.
This belonged to agents.
Undercover units.
Or impersonators.
He held the patch up to the light. There, near the edge, a faded symbol.
A broken crest. Not the Bureau's. A mimic version—used by smugglers to bluff their way through checkpoint scans.
He pocketed it—then paused.
Just beneath where the patch had snagged, something glinted in the beam seam.
He crouched again, fingers brushing a flat shard of enamel.
A badge fragment.
The noble's, if the sigil was right. Bent—not broken. Wedged deep, like it hadn't fallen, but been tucked.
Not discarded. Placed.
He wrapped it in cloth and stood.
---
Back at the scaffold's base, he paced once more.
Five clues now.
Each minor. None definitive.
But none contradictory.
He looked up.
Where the noose still swayed.
No body.
Just a story.
---
"Detective."
It was Elsen again.
"We've found no body. Nothing in the nearby alleys. No signs of panic in the sewer outflow gates. Gate logs show no mass disturbance in the hour after the incident."
"So no panic, no chaos."
"None."
Perry nodded once. "Then it wasn't meant to cause one."
"What does that mean?"
"It means this wasn't a message. It wasn't a warning. It was a vanish meant to disappear—not impress."
The guard said nothing for a moment. "But it was in front of hundreds of people."
"And yet, no one can agree what they saw."
---
Perry sat on the edge of the scaffold, dangling his feet slightly above the earth.
He took out the melted seal again. Studied it.
Oil. Melt. Roller tracks.
He was beginning to suspect something. Something absurd.
But the absurd had a habit of showing up, usually wrapped in logic's clothing.
He leaned back.
Let the wind whisper through the alley.
And slowly, let the questions reshape themselves.
Not: Where did the body go?
But: Was there ever a body at all?