The Black Mark

Ilias Khalilov 1 story

Summary

A murder in the streets of Riverport. The victim: Clara Beormont, matriarch of one of the city’s most powerful families. The only mark left on her body is a pitch-black four-leaf clover, branded into her skin. Detective Kaen Corvin takes the case. Cold, precise and relentlessly perceptive, he is Riverport’s finest. But this case is different, because among the suspects is one name he recognises: his own brother, Rian. Kaen has to find the truth. But the truth leads somewhere he is not prepared to go. As the investigation deepens, the bodies multiply. The same symbol appears on every victim. The killer leaves nothing behind: no footprints, no witnesses, no explanation. Kaen finds himself confronting a historian with a buried past, an asylum holding century-old secrets, and a corrupt power running through the veins of the city itself. But the greatest secret is not out there. It is inside him. Every night Kaen sees the same nightmare. A dark silhouette, a door he does not recognise, and unexplained gaps in his own memory. While hunting a killer, he begins to question what those gaps say about himself. Some investigators find the killer. Some become one.