Ravenswood looked dead after midnight.Fog swallowed the narrow streets whole, wrapping around buildings and flickering streetlights like smoke from an unseen fire. Rain dripped steadily from broken gutters while sirens echoed through the sleeping city.Detective Alex Mercer sat behind the wheel of his black sedan, staring through the wind shield at the crime scene ahead.Red – blue lights flashed against wet pavement.Another body.Another long night.Alex stepped out of the car slowly, pulling his coat tighter against the cold, while uniformed officers crowded the entrance of a narrow alley off Elm street, most of them looked uneasy and that immediately bothered him.Cops only looked nervous when something felt wrong. Officer Brooks approached quickly. Young, sharp – eyed, and always trying too hard not to appear intimidated around senior detectives. “You got here fast”, she said.“I was awake”. Brooks hesitated briefly before lowering her voice “You should probably see this you

Ravenswood no longer felt like a city, it felt like a warning.By morning, news of the second murder spread everywhere. Reporters crowded outside police barricades. Headlines flooded social media.THE ECLIPSE KILLER RETURNS?Captain Voss ordered media silence immediately but that only made the rumors worse.Alex stood inside the bullpen watching television flash of Sarah Porter’s face beside Mark Reed’s.Two victims in three days, and somewhere behind all of it someone was playing games with him personally.Ramirez approached carrying a file.“I dug into the victims deeper.”Alex looked up.“Find something?”Ramirez nodded slowly.“Both victims were researching encrypted data networks before they died.”Brooks frowned. “That doesn’t sound random.”“It gets worse,” Ramirez continued. “Mark Reed accessed several hidden servers connected to anonymous offshore accounts.”Alex leaned forward slightly.“Owned by who?”“That’s the problem,” Ramirez muttered. “Every trail disappears.”Like so

The explosion shook half of downtown Ravenswood. People screamed, glass shattered across nearby streets, smoke erupted into the night sky from beneath the industrial district.Alex turned instantly toward the sound. The underground facility.“Mina,” he breathed. Brooks’ voice crackled through his earpiece through heavy static.“Alex—!”Then silence, complete silence.Alex’s pulse crashed violently inside his chest, and for one horrifying second, he couldn’t move, couldn’t think.The killer had forced him into exactly what they wanted— An impossible choice.Sirens screamed through the city as emergency responders flooded both scenes.Ramirez grabbed Alex’s shoulder hard.“We need to move!”But Alex barely heard him, all he could see was that hooded figure standing above the city moments earlier, watching and waiting like they already knew how this would end.Forty minutes later, Alex stood outside Ravenswood General Hospital soaked by rain and smoke. Emergency crews rushed stretchers

Alex didn’t sleep all night. By sunrise, he was still sitting inside his car outside Ravenswood Harbor, staring at his phone like Daniel’s voice might somehow return but the line stayed dead. Rain drifted softly across the windshield. Five years of grief had cracked open overnight and Alex no longer knew which memories were real.Ravenswood PD remained partially closed after the bombing. Temporary desks filled the downtown operations building while exhausted officers shuffled through stacks of salvaged evidence. Brooks found Alex studying old harbor photographs.“You look terrible.”“Feel worse.”She sat across from him carefully.“You really think it was Daniel on the phone?”Alex didn’t answer immediately.Then:“I know his voice.”Brooks folded her arms.“Could someone fake it?”“Maybe.”But his tone lacked conviction.Ramirez suddenly rushed into the room carrying printed documents. “I found something.”Alex stood instantly.Ramirez spread cemetery maintenance reports across the

The fourth body appeared two days later.A male in his mid-fifties, was found inside a luxury apartment overlooking Ravenswood Bay.By the time Alex arrived, the media already crowded the streets below the building, flashing cameras lit the rain-soaked entrance while reporters shouted questions at every officer passing through.Captain Voss looked furious.“Keep the press contained,” she ordered sharply.But Alex barely listened, because the moment he entered the apartment he knew this victim was different. The man sat dead beside a grand piano, dressed in an expensive charcoal suit. No signs of forced entry, no defensive wounds. Another Eclipse envelope rested neatly beside a wine glass. But unlike the previous victims, this room felt… Disturbed, not physically, emotionally, as if whoever killed him hated him personally.Dr. Lee examined the body quietly while Ramirez searched nearby computers.Brooks flipped through framed photographs lining the shelves. Among the photographs are V