Ckareena Stenndotr of Upper King Barthaus District hurried up the cathedral stairs, her workbooks clutched protectively to her chest. The big Rahenian lore tome was in front where everyone could see it, of course, but it hid two smaller, thin texts of more academic origins, pressed tightly between the tome and her shirt.

Her class was gathering in the Second Hall, along with half a dozen other classes from the Great University and the student populations of lots of lesser academies throughout the city. The Cathedral had deals all over King's Circle to help fund the education of the upper-middle class, but part of the deal was that those who benefited from the deals were required to participate in the twice-a-week lectures on Rahenian Structure and Strictures.

There were tests at the end of it all, of course, but no one had ever said you had to pay attention. Ckareena wasn't the only student who used Cathedral Lecture time to catch up on their other, more important readings. But you did have to be on time.

Ckareena was in such a hurry, she rushed right past the big district message boards, and the warning that the City Protectors had hung there.

Murder in Prince Embrodak District. Woman found mutilated in the streets.

She heard the whispers, though, eventually. Fearful rumors, followed by nervous giggling from her fellow woman-students. The Three Prince districts were close enough to the Center to make the murder unusual, and the unusual was frightening.

But Ckareena didn't have time to listen to rumors. People died all the time, even in the Center. This one was just gruesome enough to get a page on the board, that was all...

Two months, three dead, and eight victims left alive. Perhaps there were more who hadn't come forward, who hadn't even realized they had been victims to the mysterious attacker of the middling districts. Ckareena wouldn't have been surprised.

She spread out the copies of message board sheets and hand-written notes on her desk, her Rahenian tome banished to the floor to make room. The University was a hive of information, of noble or well-connected blood, and any news of the mystery mutilator had become as good as coin in the halls. And Ckareena was more then willing to make the trade.

The Protectors had reports, but nothing conclusive. They had seen the connection between the victims of the last crime, the one where no one had died, but no one knew what to make of it yet. A man was attacked one night, his arm cut off with clean and careful strokes, and the very next day a different man runs into a Protector outpost with surgical stitches circling his shoulder and a wild tale of having regained full use of an arm that had been mangled by a mill-stone years ago. And his arms hadn't matched.

That story had cost Ckareena a lot. The Protectors hadn't made the stories public, but she knew a daughter of a Protector who had been there during the interviewing of the second victim. That one piece made so many others fall into place.

Seemingly unconnected gruesome crimes, and then a corresponding incident. New scars, attacks in the night, illnesses or injuries seemingly magically repaired...

There were missing pieces, of course, attacks with no match, but Ckareena accepted that as due to her incomplete access to information. There was a pattern, one that a few outlier incidents could not convince her to abandon. An attack, and a miracle. An attack, and a miracle.

The message sheets still told a story of terror and fear, of a monster in the darkness. The rumors around the University still elicited squeaks of fear and nervous giggles from women scared to go out at night, and bold boasting from men who were desperately trying not to look scared in front of one another.

Ckareena's sheets of paper told a different story. A story of... she wasn't sure what to call it. But Ckareena wasn't scared of the killer. She knew what he was doing.

Six months in, no sign of stopping.

She had convinced them to let her switch her final project from Remnant History to Information Dissemination, though it left her with only five months to complete the necessary tasks. Thankfully, her years of dedication to every class and subject had left the professors very much on her side, and so they bent a little to allow her to achieve this new, admittedly strange goal.

Information Dissemination, the subject that led to the message boards and record-keeping. It wasn't glamorous, but it was far from the worst career a woman could achieve in King's Circle. Her professors saw it as an acceptance of her own limits, or perhaps a reaction to other historians getting thrown in the prisons for... various crimes.

She had to learn to gather information, organize information, write information in a way that was easily understood. They gave her some easy assignments at first, local announcements and taking notes for the Cathedral. This many commoners attended the Mare Festival; this much coin was taken in tribute; this many Paladins were assigned to that Duke for so-and-such a mission. Then, because they had to hurry and she had taken to the new focus so very well, they had pushed her into harder, more complicated assignments.

Ckareena spent more time outside the regular classes, and more on the streets. She found her stories, researched the topic, wrote the paper, and gave it to her overseeing professor for approval or correction. Her name began appearing on the University board-sheets, in the corner of announcements about a new shop opening, or a Baron's fall from grace, or the yearly change in mood of the man-eaters in the Great River outside the city.

Slow and careful. Be patient.

That's what she told herself at night, allowing herself only the occasional glance at the stack of papers beneath her bed. Her old source of information had dried up, and the board-sheets had nothing but the same, bland warnings now. Apparently the Protectors didn't want people talking about the Killer of King's Circle, the newly-named Stitcher. They wanted people to come with information, not go away with it. There were rumors of a witness. Someone who had seen the Stitcher, who had gone to the Protectors, but the Protectors refused to give the public anything.

So she had to be able to find her own information.

Not yet. We have to be patient.

The re-opening of the Execution Theater was a huge story, an impressive opportunity, and they gave it to Ckareena. There were a half-dozen other students who would be researching the thing with her, of course, the assignment having been crafted to give the top Information Dissemination students experience working with others and double-checking facts, but it was still a perfect opportunity.

The Execution Theater worked closely with the City Protectors. Researching it would mean researching City Protectors. The University worked closely with the Cathedral, and the Cathedral worked closely with the Protectors.

She had every reason to be there. The Protectors were practically holding the door open for her.

She visited three different posts, all in different districts, before going to the one she wanted. She tested her questions - her requests, pushed the boundaries of what she was allowed to do - three times before setting her eyes on the prize. When she walked in, she felt prepared.

A few questions with the Head Protector. Smile, chuckle, be charmed and charming. Get him to like you, show him you admire him. Wander somewhere safe, and get caught wandering. Charm the Head Protector a little more, show him the depths of your research, get permission to wander just a little...

She slipped into the records room. If things carried on like her professors expected, she could very well end up working in a place like this. It wasn't suspicious for her to want a look around.

She dug through the files. They kept written record of witness testimonies taken in the outpost.

The Stitcher.

One piece of paper.

She copied it in quick-hand code, and replaced it, but the account itself wasn't what she was after. She just wanted the name of the witness, and where she lived.

The woman had different colored eyes. A dark, almost black one, and a hazel-green one. She opened the door with a suspicious look in those mismatched eyes, so Ckareena put on her best smile.

“I've come from the University. I would love to hear your story.”

The tale began the same way as the survivors from the beginning of the Stitcher's spree; an attack from behind in the dark of the night. But, unlike all the others, it went on past falling unconscious. The odd-eyed woman had awakened again.

“It wasn't just my eye,” she said, her voice tense with remembered anguish. “He'd cut me open... but I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't move. I was just... staring up at him with my one open eye...”

“What did he look like?” Ckareena couldn't hide her excitement. She leaned forward, her pen set to paper, waiting.

The other woman closed her eyes, as if calling up the vision of the past to relate most accurately. And then, the words Ckareena had gone so far to earn...

“I am pretty sure it was a man, but he was small, short, his shoulders as narrow as a woman's. He wore a brown night-coat, all buttoned up, and he wore a mask over his face... a dark grey mask with bright glass circles for eyes. The hood of his coat was down and the mask didn't cover his hair... it was pale and short, and stuck out sideways...”

Ckareena copied the description word for word, but her mind was already putting together the image. She could picture it as the woman told the rest of her account; the slim, masked man standing over her, his eyes hidden behind mysterious lenses... his narrow fingers threading a needle, and his low, almost melodic voice constantly speaking encouragement, an attempt at comfort undermined completely by the horror of his holding a human organ in his hand...

She didn't sleep that night. She sat at her desk, and with charcoal and pen she recreated the images the survivor's story had inspired in her racing mind.

Her professors were concerned. When she explained what her master article would be about, they tried to dissuade her.

We don't know anything. There is no story, only horrifying crime we can't understand.

But Ckareena persisted, and they had no choice. She had done everything right, so she got to pick her topics.

And then, mere weeks before her half-written master article was ready to be presented, she saw a new sheet hanging on the message board, triumphant and bold.

The Stitcher has been Caught! King's City Protectors promise the End of Terror!

She stood in front of the board for a long time.

The trial wasn't public, though Ckareena tried everything she could think of to get in. The goodwill of her professors had run out. They refused to talk to anyone about allowing her this one last favor, even in service of her article. She learned the fate of the Stitcher in the same way as everyone else; on the message boards.

Five years in the Tower of Punishment, five years of torment curated by the “best” torturers in the Kingdom. Then... the Theater. They'd haul whatever was left into the center of a filthy arena, and tear him apart in front of the crowds. The King had declared an edict of No Mercy. There would be no allowances, no way out.

Ckareena went to her room, locked the door, and wept.

Four months since he'd been caught. A little more then four months. The University had decided not to give her another year.

Ckareena sat in the dingy room her employer offered for lodgings, her head buried in her hands. Her last sheet of precious paper lay beneath her elbows, smudged charcoal roughly depicting a face she could imagine in detailed perfection, but which never translated onto paper.

The other attempts surrounded her. Her still-unfinished article sat in a stack on her wobbly desk, the first pages' well-written portrayal of events an interesting contrast to the emotionally-driven ramblings that had been scrawled across the last ones.

Another plan cut abruptly short.

Without the University's recommendation, the district board-managers weren't interested in her. She'd been lucky to find work keeping tenancy records for a street owner in an unnamed lower-middling district. It was enough work to earn her four walls and a roof, but nothing more then that. Food was quickly becoming a problem.

And now she was out of paper.

That night, she went down to the streets. Perhaps she hoped to find a shop in desperate need of a cleaner, or a merchant who needed a record scholar – at least that's what she told herself, but in truth she was just wandering. Aimless, and uninspired.

Uninspired.

She had tried to write her thoughts before, but the words always seemed not-quite-enough. Uninspired came close, but it wasn't personal enough. Yes, the mystery of the Stitcher had inspired her, and the end of it had depressed her, but there was more to it now. She felt... broken.

Heart-broken, broken in spirit, broken in mind... maybe all of them at once? She didn't know. She'd never experienced anything she could even begin to compare with the painful emptiness that drained her now.

Ckareena was so caught up in her own thoughts, she never even heard him coming. She never saw him at all.

He grabbed her from behind, slid a knife around her ear to rest against her throat. “A gift from Teru,” he mumbled in her ear, and the filthy smell of city ale was on his breath. And then--

Ckareena opened her eyes and saw only light. She knew she was dead, but she felt oddly alive. She tried to raise a hand to her throat to feel for the gaping wound she had felt drain her life away, but she found that she couldn't move. She could tense her muscles, she could feel her fingers at her sides, but she couldn't move.

She blinked and squinted, the light dazzling her eyes. Is this what death is? Not moving forever in a plane of light?

There was no answer. She gave up trying to take a step after a few minutes of pointless effort and just closed her eyes, accepting the bizarre afterlife she had found herself in.

Until the light beyond her eyelids began to fade.

She had no way of knowing how long it took, but as the light faded she also realized she was hungry. She opened her eyes and realized that she was staring at, not spectral light from beyond the grave, but thick and pale threads, each gleaming from within with quickly-fading light. As they grew dimmer, they also visibly lost strength and structure.

She waited patiently, strangely unafraid, and then simply raised her hand to tear through the dull threads as easily as if they were dusty cobwebs. When she stepped out into the cavern, web clinging to the gown she knew for a fact did not come from her wardrobe, she heard the distant whispers of simple voices in her ear...

“A gift,” she murmured, and was almost surprised by the sound of her own voice. The cave was so quiet, but she could hear them. “From... Teru?”

A tiny spider hung in the air, and she sensed its tiny curiosity. And its readiness.

Build a little web for me, she asked it, as natural as anything she had ever done. She wasn't remotely surprised when the little creature immediately went to obey.

Ckareena wondered if it was, perhaps, a dream after all, or some vision. She didn't even feel like herself, but not in a bad way. She felt taller, stronger, more confident... more alive. She looked down at her dress, fashioned with a sort of almost scandalous elegance that only the fabulously wealthy noblewomen could wear, and then she looked up into the many black eyes of the spiders above her, waiting eagerly to hear something.

If this is a dream, or a dying hallucination, then there is no harm in playing along. And if this is a gift from the Circle... well, I can't wait to see where you are going with this, Teru.

~

“So you see,” the Web-Weaver said, taking one of the Stitchdoctor's thin hands in her own soft fingers, “this was meant to be. Teru killed me that I might be reborn, and all so he could place me in your path today. All of this, just so you and I could meet.”