Inheritance of Shadows [Hugo Vlad x Fem!OC]

Chapter 8: Buried Legacy

Yukari opened the letter that was given to her. It was rather unexpected.

Her eyes flickered across the letter. There were... many names. Spanning down the paper in columns. Did that shopkeeper give the wrong one? But, the symbol felt oddly familiar to her, it couldn't be.

Her phone buzzed. It was buzzing the whole way but she never picked up. Now it was a good opportunity to do so.

She answered, "Hey-"

"YUKARI YOU REALLY NEED TO PICK UP YOUR PHONE MORE OFTEN I WAS WORRIED!" Yurina's exploding voice almost ruined Yukari's ears.

Yukari winced, pulling the phone slightly away from her ear. "Calm down, I'm fine. What's wrong?"

"You're not fine if you're ghosting me after that weird note showed up!" Yurina huffed. "Where are you?"

"Home. I just opened the envelope from the boutique."

There was a beat of silence on the other end. "...And?"

"It's a list. Dozens of names. No context. Just names." Yukari's eyes trailed back to the paper. "Some feel familiar... but I can't place them."

"That's not good," Yurina said. "You think it's a client list? Or past victims?"

"Could be both," Yukari muttered. "Or maybe... people tied to the jewels."

She rubbed the back of her neck, tension curling into her shoulders.

"Yurina, I think these names are part of a bigger pattern—but I don't know what it is yet. I need time to figure this out."

Yurina sighed. "You better not pull another disappearing act. You're lucky I didn't call the entire department."

Yukari smiled faintly. "Thanks for worrying."

"Damn right I'm worried. Next time, text back, even a single emoji works, okay?!"

Yukari chuckled. "Got it. Talk soon."

She hung up and looked back into the letter.

Her fingers stilled.

She stared harder. The longer she looked, the more wrong it felt.

Too many names on this list. Some seemed real, others felt like it was completely fabricated. But there was a pattern—some letters were oddly capitalized. Some names had strange spacing. A few had dots in unusual places.

She narrowed her eyes, pulling out her pen. She couldn't gather the correlation between the names of those jewels. It just didn't make sense.

Her tail stiffened.

"Wait..."

Every third name started with a letter that seemed off. The initials... no, maybe it was the spacing. Or a skip cipher?

She grabbed a blank page and began copying the first letter of every second name. Then she tried every third letter of the full names. Piece by piece, something started forming.

Then it clicked.

It wasn't a list at all. It was a message.

A hidden one.

Her breath caught as she deciphered the first line:

"The Raven sings where silver bleeds—"

Another line began forming under it:

"Find the locked Atelier where no clocks turn.

She flipped the paper, checking for invisible ink or embossing—but it was just a plain sheet, elegant and simple. The entire "list" had just been a front.