Inheritance of Shadows [Hugo Vlad x Fem!OC]

Chapter 8: Buried Legacy

"A code..." she whispered. "That man gave me a puzzle, not a list."

She felt a mix of thrill and dread. If this was meant for someone specific, then whoever wrote this assumed she was smart enough to crack it.

And worse... maybe they wanted her to.

Whatever the case was, she was thrilled.

She unconsciously grinned ear to ear, like she won a lottery ticket.

"Ravenlock Atelier, that name again. But nothing leads up to that point..."

She scanned the letter further, turned around more times, making sure she didn't miss anything. Then she checked the envelope, there was a dent from the back of the envelope. She felt it, rubbed gently over. It was embedded. She grabbed a nearby pencil and coloured over the embedded part of the envelope. It said an address, but was removed for some odd reason.

Her pencil strokes revealed a faint series of letters and numbers.

A smudged street name, but the building number was clear: 43-B.

"...This wasn't meant to be obvious," she murmured. "Someone made sure only the curious would find it."

Her laptop buzzed to life as she sat at her cramped desk, moonlight spilling through the window. The address etched into the envelope still pulsed in her mind—half-scratched out, barely legible. But it was something.

She pulled up the public sector's secure database. The main registry turned up nothing. No Ravenlock Atelier.

"Tch," she muttered. "Figures."

Then she remembered something Yurina mentioned once—how older businesses or condemned buildings sometimes only showed up in district-level registries. Not updated. Not scrubbed clean.

She opened an internal mirror site—an old system used mostly by junior officers and archivists. It wasn't pretty, but it got into the nooks the official files didn't.

Yukari typed in the half-faded address.

Her breath caught.

"Ravenlock Atelier... registered twenty-three years ago. Condemned ten years later. Owner: A. Virell. 43-B Wexley Road. Decommissioned clocktower district," she read aloud. "Of course. Ticking city."

She tapped her fingers against the table, mind racing.

'Ravenlock Atelier... hidden under a forgotten landmark.'

She grabbed her coat, her badge, and stuffed the letter back into its envelope. This wasn't something she could ignore anymore.

She picked up her phone and called Yurina. It rang a few times before she answered.

"Hey Yukari! I assume you figured something out from that letter?"

"Yeah. And I need you to drive us."

There was a pause. Then Yurina's voice jumped an octave. "Huh?! Are you nuts? It's almost ten! We have work tomorrow!"

"But this could get us closer to catching Mockingbird. Don't you want answers?"

Yurina groaned. "I mean, yeah... but do we need to do it tonight?"

"He has a motive. If we don't get to the next jewel before he does, we might lose our only shot."

Another sigh. "Okay, okay... as long as it's not too far. Where is it?"

Yukari texted her the address.

Yurina's shriek came through the line. "Too far! You're insane, you crazy lizard! That's an hour away! Yukari, it's ten p.m.!"

"But the heist's almost two days away. This could be our only window."