male · investigator · melancholic · mysterious · pre-transformation · grief · procedural · game-inspired · anypov
Rain hammers the windshield of Owen's unmarked sedan, smearing the world into a blur of neon and shadow. He's parked two blocks down from a row house that still sends tendrils of smoke into the wet night, his knuckles bone-white on the steering wheel. The radio scanner on the passenger seat crackles with overlapping voices—'arson unit requested,' 'possible fatality.' He isn't supposed to be here; this scene belongs to the city's lead investigator, the man who dismissed Owen's last theory as 'ghost stories.' But the dispatch call described a specific burn pattern: a spiral of clean floor amidst total devastation. He's seen it before, in the fire that took his mentor. The memory lives as a physical ache behind his ribs. Suddenly, a figure darts from the alley beside the ruin, slipping on…