The city bleeds every night.

Maybe it's a sewer overflowing, swallowing the alleyways of misery. Maybe it's a body floating in the river, swollen by time and neglect. Maybe it's just a bar fight that ends with a man passed out on the curb, his nose broken, and his dignity draining down the drain along with the rain.

But the city never feels remorse. It moves on. Cars pass, neon signs flicker, smoke rises. The blood dries.

My name is Laurent Dumas, and I'm the man the city calls when the blood refuses to dry.

I've spent my whole life investigating crimes that were just repetitions. The same patterns of greed, anger, desire. A man kills another for money. A husband kills his wife out of jealousy. A teenager gets revenge for a fight at school. Mundane crimes. Crimes of impulse. Predictable crimes.

But tonight, I knew I wasn't dealing with an ordinary crime.

I was dealing with a killer who knew what he was doing.

The Blood Speaks

The Chabrier building was a monument to hypocrisy. On the ground floor, lawyers in expensive suits sold justice to whoever could afford it. In the hallways, politicians made deals that would never reach the public's ears. At the top, Emiliano Duval reigned as a modern philanthropist, cleansing his soul with massive donations that seemed more like a moral alibi.

Now, the king was dead.

Duval's penthouse smelled of gunpowder and alcohol. The large glass room reflected the city below, its lights shining indifferently to the body lying in the center of the room. The gun rested in his hand like a stage prop. The hole in his temple was precise. No hesitation.

But I knew this wasn't suicide.

The proof was written on the wall.

"Truth only has value when it hurts."

The blood flowed across the words, tracing the glass as if the city could read them from the outside. As if they were a warning.

Duval's death wasn't the end. It was the beginning of a manifesto.

"Suicide?" murmured Jules, one of the experts, behind me.

I didn't answer. Silence was an old friend that helped me think.

What do I see? A rich, respected man, supposedly taking his own life. But his face showed no despair. He didn't look like a man who decided to die. He looked like a man forced to accept death.

What don't I see? Signs of a struggle. A break-in. Any obvious clue of an intruder.

What do I feel? That the killer wants me to read this scene like a text. He wants me to understand. He wants me to see what he sees.

I approached the glass table in the center of the room. On it, an untouched glass of whiskey. An empty ashtray. And beside it, a portable recorder.

The killer left a message.

But before I listened, I needed to understand the symbolism.

What did this death mean?

The Manifesto of Pain

A philanthropist, someone who spent years building an image of a generous man, forced to kill himself in front of a city he helped shape. The gun in his hand, a symbol of his own responsibility. The message on the glass, a testament that his death wasn't about him. It was about the truth.

The killer didn't just want to kill. He wanted to create an event.

Duval wasn't a common victim. He was an idea. And the killer wanted to destroy it in front of everyone.

"Get gloves," I murmured to Jules, pointing at the recorder. "I want to hear what he has to say."

The killer planned everything. Now, he wanted us to hear his voice.

Death has a signature, and I'm paid to recognize it.

In every crime I've investigated, one thing has always been clear: death, even in the most chaotic circumstances, leaves marks of who caused it. Some leave anger, others, despair. Some, like a deep cut, indicate impulse. But others… others leave a calculated, meticulous impression, as if the killer were signing his masterpiece.

The blood, it always reveals everything.

Now, in the room lit by the city lights, it was there, telling the story Emiliano Duval could no longer tell. Each drop, each drop flowing down the glass wall, seemed to be drawing the words the body could no longer express.

I crouched beside Duval, observing his calm expression. He was in the same place where life had abandoned him, as if he had accepted fate with a strange kind of resignation. The hole in his left temple was clean, with no signs of explosion. The blood, coagulated, didn't splatter like it should. There was no despair in his eyes; he was lost in a reflection that lasted until the last moment.

The gun was in his hand, but not like a suicide weapon. It was almost lying there, as if he had dropped it, or worse, as if he hadn't pulled the trigger.

I looked into Duval's eyes for the last time and knew there was more here than just simple death. He wasn't just dead. He was being used. His death had a purpose.

"Jules, what do you think?" I asked, without taking my eyes off him.

The expert was around me, writing everything down with the speed of a man already used to scenes like this.

"The angle of the shot suggests he was sitting, his head slightly tilted. No gunpowder residue. From what I see, someone held him still to make the shot. The blood on the wall indicates that the shot was the last step in a process."

I shook my head.

"He was forced to do this. The blood here doesn't lie."

Jules' eyes narrowed. He knew I was right.

And then, my eyes turned to the glass wall. The message was there, immortalized in blood, slowly and painfully drawn. "Truth only has value when it hurts."

It wasn't just a sentence. It was a verdict. It was a provocation. It was a warning. The killer was challenging us to understand the meaning of his work.

I stopped and observed the blood pattern on the wall. The movement of the letters was uneven, some parts weaker than others, suggesting that Emiliano Duval was already about to die when the message was written. Each letter, each line, seemed like a desperate attempt to say something that could not be spoken with words.

But he wasn't just forced to write those words. He was forced to become the very lie he preached. He didn't kill himself. He was stripped of everything he thought he was and found himself exposed. And like anyone who loses their false identity, he had to pay the price with the blood of his truth.

I stood up and walked to the glass table where the recorder rested. I looked at the play button with a cold knot in my stomach. Whatever was there, I knew it wasn't just a message. It was a manifesto.

"Turn it on," I said, already knowing what would come.

The sound that came from the recorder wasn't what I expected. There was no despair in the voice. There was no sadness. Just a cold calm, as if the narrator had already reached a place where death and life merge and suffering becomes part of the plan.

The voice, low and controlled, came in waves, like a river of words sweeping everything around it.

"Emiliano Duval was a fraud. He was the reflection of a world that lives by lies, fed by charity that never healed, by wealth that never saved. Today, he learned the truth. And you, detective, will learn it too. Because every lie must be broken, and I am the hammer."

Those words weren't spoken by someone who just wanted to kill. They were spoken by someone who wanted to teach us. Who wanted us, the spectators, to become part of his plan. He didn't just want Duval to die. He wanted Duval to understand what it means to be human. To understand the pain of being exposed. And he wanted all of us to know it. To look at him and see what he saw.

The killer wasn't interested in hiding his identity. He wanted us to know enough to see the truth. And the truth was that, in every lie that existed, there was a price to be paid. Duval's lie, the lie of charity, the lie of the city. They were all being forced to pay.

I turned back to Duval's body. He was still there, an immobile figure, but somehow, now he seemed more than a dead man. He was a warning.

And I knew that from now on, my life would be defined by this. Because something bigger was happening. Something I needed to understand, or everything that had been built around me would be destroyed, like the lies that supported the walls of the city.

I was there, observing the scene of another murder, the details meticulously laid out before me. The blood on the wall, the position of the victim, the marks, everything fit into a picture I was starting to understand too well. This killer, if I can call him that, is precise. He wants something from me, something I don't fully comprehend yet, but I know we're in a race, and every clue is a piece of an insane puzzle.

I was leaning over the table in the center of the room, trying to observe the small details that might escape me. More and more, I found myself immersed in the mind of this criminal, almost as if he were inviting me to enter in an increasingly unsettling way.

That's when the phone rang.

The sound of the call was almost like an echo in the room, interrupting my train of thought. I looked at the display: unknown number. I didn't hesitate. I answered.

"Detective Caldeira, right?" The voice on the other end was calm, almost bored. But there was something in its cadence that made me shiver. It was as if he were... studying me.

I took a deep breath. The blood at the crime scene was still fresh, the tension in the air still palpable.

"Who are you?" I asked, trying to keep my voice controlled, but the coldness in my spine was unavoidable.

"Oh, you still haven't figured it out, have you?" He laughed, and the laugh, though soft, echoed in my mind in a disturbing way. "I'm just beginning to show you."

He seemed to take pleasure in the control he had over the situation. But what unsettled me more was that he spoke as though he knew more about me than I did myself.

"What do you want from me?" I asked, more out of instinct than necessity. Something told me he had already given me the answer without meaning to.

"I want you to see. See what others can't or won't see. See what is real, Caldeira." He paused, and the silence was heavy, almost tangible. "Go to the old São Miguel church. I'm waiting for you. You'll see what you need to see to understand. And don't forget, time is running out. Don't miss your chance."

He hung up, and the line went silent, like an empty void. I didn't know what he wanted, but there was no doubt he was always ahead, controlling the game. A step ahead, as always.

I looked at the crime scene one last time, now with a sense of urgency, as if everything had intensified. It was as if I was entering a new stage of the game.

-

I arrived at St. Michael's Church in no time, an old and imposing building with towers that seemed to touch the grey sky of the night. The streetlights around it cast long shadows on the building. There was no one else there, the silence was absolute. As I entered, the smell of mildew and the echo of my own footsteps mixed with the feeling that something big and dark was about to happen.

The candles were extinguished, and the church was empty except for a figure in the center of the space. A man, dressed in simple clothes with his face hidden in the shadows of his hood, sitting in a chair in the middle of the altar. His eyes were closed, as if he were waiting for something – or someone – to arrive.

I approached cautiously, observing every corner, every detail of the church. Something wasn't right. The air felt thick, as if the walls were breathing in unison. The man, the pastor, was motionless, as if time had stopped around him.

Then I saw it.

On the floor, beside the chair, was the inverted triangle. It wasn't large, but its meaning was clear. The blood, or what appeared to be an imitation of blood, traced the symbol precisely, with sharp and defined lines. The triangle seemed to "look" at me in a disturbing way, as if it wanted to swallow me, absorb me completely.

In the background, against the wall, the cross was there, but not in the way I had expected. It was marked, stained. But what chilled me the most was the detail of the coins. They were stacked, layered over the cross, each one covered with a pigment of dry blood, which faintly reflected the little light in the church. Coins, symbols of corruption, distorted value, and perhaps, as the killer's last attempt to make me understand his message: everything has a price, even the truth.

The pastor didn't move, still seated, as if he were a statue, a specter watching everything but not interfering. What did he know? Who was he? I didn't know, but one thing was certain: the killer wanted me to see all of this. He wanted me to feel the weight of that scene, as if I were a part of it. He was testing me.

I took a step forward, my heart racing. The air was too heavy, and a sense of inevitability surrounded me. I looked at the inverted triangle once more, and then, as if a light had switched on, something inside me clicked.

He was showing me the cycle. He wanted me to understand that, no matter how hard we tried to escape, we always end up back at the starting point. And now, I was trapped in this cycle.

It was more than just a crime. It was a manifesto