“I recovered an artifact of some kind from the site of the house fire. It has no apparent magical signature, and appears to open by some unknown mechanism. Unregistered artifacts are of particular concern to the agency. They are often incredibly dangerous. This one might, after all, have attracted one of the Zara.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

It was bitterly cold. Bek stepped carefully through the rubble, his eyes scanning for any sign of remains, whether the remains of the family that had lived in the house, or of the creature that had destroyed it.

Silver’s home.

He kicked one of the largest pieces of charred wood that remained, about the size of his foot, and watched it settle slowly into ash.

Or what used to be Silver’s home.

He brushed ash away from a pool of molten glass, now solidified into a rounded slab. The ruins of the house were dotted with others of his men, each outfitted in the black and crimson uniform of the MASO. Most of them were doing the same work as he was; digging through the ash in search of any sign of anything that might tell them what had happened the night before. There was little enough left of the house; only gray and black ash remained.

“Magic fire,” he concluded aloud, “Nothing else could destroy everything in the house so thoroughly.” He waved one of the men over, noting the blonde hair and slight build of the older man. “Koriander, the reports from the firehouse listed a flame impervious to water, am I right?” he ascertained. The older man nodded, and Bek offered him little attention beyond a brief nod in return.

“No sign of survivors?”

“None besides the girl, sir,” Koriander replied with a glance towards the dark woods on the outskirts of the rubble. Bek looked instead to the surrounding houses. He had several guards posted outside of the yellow tape, preventing anyone from disturbing the evidence to be found among the ruins. There were a few neighbors passing by now and again, no doubt wondering about the sandy haired youth commanding the many black-suited men to search the ruins, or the strange devices that they used. His eyes were, however, not for those people, but for the driveway.

“Four other people lived in this house, and we don’t have so much as a sign that they ever existed,” Bek continued out loud as he picked his way slowly to the asphalt, “So either their remains were destroyed, which in this fire they would have been, or…they were abducted. I doubt they escaped.” Koriander continued to keep pace behind him, and watched as Bek knelt to stare at a darker splotch against the driveway.

Blood.

“The report said the survivor had blood on her, but was apparently uninjured. Whose blood was it, I wonder,” Bek glanced at the man behind him. “There’s enough blood here that the wound couldn’t have been minor. Forensics already took a sample?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. We’ll know soon enough if it belongs to anyone in the family, at least.” He straightened. “Koriander, take Hendricks and Dorn and search the woods for a five-mile radius. Tell them to expect Zaranal Sorea.”

“Zara, sir? The shadow beasts?” Dorn asked uncertainly from several meters away. Bek turned to look at the dark-haired man, forcefully reminded of his inexperience in the field. It seemed to be to Jorik’s personal satisfaction to always send him with men who spent more time sifting through the volumes of information that daily graced the MASO’s doors than conducting the outside surveillance that would have made them familiar with one of their most treasured chain-of-command laws: never ask questions.

“Yes. I’d say this fire proves they are not as extinct as we had believed.”

The man looked surprised, but fell silent when Koriander also gave him a sharp look before moving to gather up the other men for a sweep. One of them, at least, Bek knew he could rely on. The remains of the house would be quarantined for magical pollution, and more evidence might be garnered from the rubble, but…he stared hard at the stones…no, there would be no further evidence. He walked back to the ash anyway and took several steps into the stark foundations, neatly avoiding a half-melted metal rod thrust into the ash. These were the remains of the storm door.

Quite suddenly, his bronze eyes narrowed, and he turned and took several steps to the left, stopping as his booted foot came up against something hard and heavy. He bent down and dug through the ash until his fingers closed around a rectangular wooden box, about a foot by six inches in size, and six inches deep. He straightened and blew the remaining ash from the box so that he could see its blackened surface, and his eyes narrowed further. Everything had burned to the ground except this one box.

He turned his eyes skyward, preferring to look away from the devastation for a moment, and then, thoughtfully, let his eyes slide down to the forest. He knew they would not find anything more.

There were no remains.

And the Zara was gone.