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??The Scale Beneath the Skin

Ember

Sleep was a rumor I stopped believing in weeks ago.

Tonight, I didn’t even pretend to chase it. Instead, I sat at my desk in the half-light of my apartment, the glow of my screen casting shadows across a wall stitched together with string, pinned photos, police sketches, clippings, and handwritten notes.

It looked like madness, felt like prophecy.

And in the center of it all?

Dorian Vale.

But he wasn’t the only ghost in my head tonight.

Cassian Black had wormed his way in, too with that wolf’s smile and a stare like he’d already read the ending of my story. He’d found me at Stygian’s Café, slid into the booth across from me like we’d known each other for lifetimes, and spoke my name like it wasn’t even mine anymore.

“Ember Carr,” he’d said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

We only spoke for fifteen minutes. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The things he implied. The way his gaze dipped too deep, too quick. And the sign on the card he left behind, it was still burning a hole through my drawer like it’s alive.

But that wasn’t what’s keeping me up.

It was him .

The man in the alley, the victim. Milo Rhodes. Hung like a warning. Disemboweled. Posed like penance. That’s the word I keep coming back to. Penance .

He was acquitted of killing his wife. Stuffed her in a suitcase. His own son testified.

Dorian Vale defended him. And won.

Just like all the others.

I opened another file. Brielle Vaughn. A bloody Chanel goddess who got away with at least five murders. Every lover she touched turned up drained. Cleaned. Tossed. The coroner ruled it an overdose.

Except… I’d seen her body.

I got to that crime scene before it was sealed. Slipped under the yellow tape, pressed my palm to the concrete. That’s where I saw it, just like all the others... A black obsidian scale.

Perfect. Smooth. Warm to the touch.

No one else ever reported it. Not once. But I found it. Every time.

Victor. Brielle. Malcolm Deen. The butcher of Bell Street. Acquitted on a technicality. Seven missing boys. Found months later in the woods, organs harvested like fruit, bones bleached and arranged into, what else?

A fucking scale.

And Dorian Vale? He smiled at the press conference, like he already knew Malcolm wouldn’t live to see Christmas.

He was always there.

Not at the scene.

No prints. No hair. No residue. Nothing forensic. Just presence . His clients walked out of court with fresh suits and clean slates, and within weeks, they're found in pieces. Each crime scene darker than the last. Each death a symphony of pain and precision.

And always, the scale.

My fingers trembled over the keyboard as I scrolled through another article, an arsonist this time. House fire. Three children dead. Blamed on a malfunctioning smoke alarm. Dorian stood beside the defendant, calm, unmoved, sipping water like it was wine.

But the courtroom photo… something shifted.

Behind him. In the corner.

A shadow.

It stretched too long. Bent the wrong way. Its teeth were showing.

I dragged the photo into Photoshop, adjusted the contrast, sharpened the exposure. My heart hammered against my ribs like it wanted out.

The shadow grew edges. Arms.

A face.

It was him .

The same feeling from the alley surged through me, pressure, heat, like being watched by something ancient . Like prey in a predator’s dream.

I pushed away from the desk, hands clenching my scalp.

“Holy shit.”

I’d been right.

I wasn’t crazy.

Dorian Vale wasn’t just defending monsters. He was hunting them. And the scale wasn’t just his calling card.

It was his judgment.

Justice. Drenched in blood. Burned into bone. Hidden in plain sight by a man who wore sin like silk and smiled while the world looked the other way.

I looked back at the wall, at the pattern, the names, the faces, the impossible timeline.

He wasn’t random. He wasn’t reckless. He was building something. And if I was right… Then I wasn’t just uncovering a killer.

I was stalking a god.