Beyond These Waters - Letter 4

Read Detective Inspector Adderray’s response to the breakthrough on the Clay Killer case…

Mar 27, 2026

Recap

Letter 1

In Letter 1, Professor Virna Salo writes to Dr Marta Verdom in a time of fear and upheaval. She reveals that, to anyone who asks, her beloved Nico Salo is dead, and urgently warns of a growing threat: the Death Whisperer. This ghostly form terrorises victims across Vereterra using hallucinogenic Fervent Flora and a clay death mask, which foretells demise. Seeking Marta’s expertise, Virna asks whether similar cases exist elsewhere in the Meanderway. She shares that a mysterious Armoury Room has appeared, seemingly preparing her small circle for an unconventional war, and describes their secret efforts to study and cultivate dangerous plants while evading the oppressive Lanazar Guard. Virna then asks Marta to care for Derigo the Navarre crow on his return journey.

Letter 2

Unfortunately, Derigo the Navarre crow had a longer journey than Virna could ever anticipate – he did not attempt to deliver Virna’s letter to Dr Marta Verdom because the wise bird knew something we did not. Letter 2 is the reply from Dr Magnol Acacius, who writes to inform Virna of Dr Marta Verdom’s murder, along with all his colleagues, and that he himself narrowly survived an attempted poisoning. He recounts his dangerous journey across the Meanderway guided by the crow to Marta’s secret dwelling, and his belief that Marta’s death was a consequence of her relentless pursuit of truth. Magnol offers Virna his full trust and assistance, and encloses Marta’s collected documents, which he urges Virna to use to uncover the truth behind the growing horrors afflicting Vereterra.

Letter 3

The first of Marta’s enclosed documents is a letter from Detective Inspector Colpa to Detective Inspector Adderray, delivered from one undisclosed location to another by the Navarre Esperanza, who investigators very much consider an ally. D.I. Colpa reveals that he saw the Clay Killer at the fifth crime scene and the murderer left him a package – a clay mask matching the deceased’s face and a letter, smudged with the murderer’s fingerprint. This is the first break through in the case – they have no other remarkable evidence, just the reports from psychiatrists of the five victims’ shared paranoia of imminent death.

Letter 4

What follows is Detective Inspector Adderray’s response, which includes reference to the article (written in the Meanderway Miracle newspaper) covering the new crazes on the black-market Fervent Flora trade, like the homemade controversial remedies that claim to prevent the death mask curse.

Navarre Flight

Deliverer: Esperanza Navarre (Navarre 004) otherwise known as Truth’s Ally.

From: Location unknown.

To: Location unknown.

Of note: Esperanza is desperate to supplement the detective’s letter with the original Meanderway Miracle article that D.I. Adderray refers to below. This exposè, entitled Fraudsters’ Remedies to Dispel Death Instead Exact Departure, is missing from newspapers, archives, seemingly missing from time entirely. The recall reflects the fraudulent chemists’ and poison makers’ awareness of the detective’s new line of inquiry, as discussed in the letter below, and raises more questions as to the integrity of the international newspaper – whose side are they on, the Clay Killer’s?

FAO: Detective Inspector E. Colpa, wherever he may be.

Dear D.I. Colpa,

Thank you for the letter and for the good news of the killer’s mistake; my team has checked the loops and ridges of the fingerprint against all the records we hold but we have not yielded a match to the murderer. I hope you have better luck.

You may have heard of another death in our district: Victim Seven. With this last murder, we, too, have had a breakthrough (or at least a couple of breaks to the pattern). As you know we have never found any human marks on the death masks, no imprints of hands or fingers pressing and pasting clay onto the victims’ faces despite reports of this in all cases (with psychiatrists noting repeated paranoias like ‘they sculpt me for my grave’, ‘get it off my face’ and ‘the snakes crawl round my skull’ etcetera etcetera). As you inevitably do, we check each death mask for skin cells, sweat, prints, and never expect to find traces of anything but those strange and as of yet unexplained chain marks. We found copious drops of blood on the underside of Victim Seven’s death mask, however. The blood matched that discovered on the blade and soaked in the curtains at the crime scene, but the blood did not belong to Victim Seven. This means that unlike the other six dead (who appeared to give in to the inevitability of their demise) our seventh victim fought hard and fought well. We have alerted the nearby hospitals and clinics and asked them to notify us of any soul that steps foot through the door with a knife wound - this could be our killer. Though we have had no such reports yet, we remain hopeful. Another positive is that we have successfully kept this information from the Meanderway Miracle; the public believe that our presence at the hospital is related to potential victims - that is, those with an odd preoccupation with hiding their face - and not the killer.

The hospital staff speak not of knife crime but of other issues, which I think result from the Meanderway Miracle’s exaggerated article on the black-market Fervent Flora trade (I note, the main article has since been redacted). An emergency medical team treated multiple cases of self-poisonings and plant burns that they classed according to why the patient ingested, applied, or inhaled the Fervent Flora concoctions. It is only since the determining of these classes that we have found a connection to the Clay Killer. Some patients applied balm to their cheeks to disguise themselves from the death mask makers; others ate leaves purported to pause life, to freeze the body and soul between life and death so that the murderer would leave disappointed when they found their victim already dead; a few fools smoked ground petals alleged to give them unbeatable strength to fight any attacker; and others chewed years old stems supposed to make them temporarily transparent and therefore invisible to a killer. Patients cried and groaned, swelled and blistered, and vomited and rotted in varying degrees – and none will talk to us.

You might wonder why we wish to pursue this line of inquiry; why question the desperate and confused, why waste time following dodgy deals when we could focus on profiling the entire district and hunt for a blood match? Now, Eudo, I believe in evidence, in what the facts tell us; I would never usually entertain such blatant fantasy, such cunning and conning, but these desperate remedies arise from fear and from the unexplainable – both of which I also share. Forgive me for questioning whether foul flora played its part when two bodies vanished from the morgue. Victim Four and Victim Five laid dead for two to three weeks until one night they simply walked out. The guard on duty believed he was dreaming, hallucinating, and Victim Four’s mother believed she saw her son’s ghost. Am I to tell them that, in fact, what they saw was the dead refusing to stay dead, the dead returning to life? As I write this, I know it cannot be so.

We still find no pattern in victim selection. They are not from the same families or streets, they do not work the same jobs or vote for the same councillors, they don’t wear the same clothes or look alike. We are working tirelessly to find Victim Four and Five. Many would disagree with our wish to question them, but we cannot ignore the potential of this knowledge in preventing more murders.

The search is secret and so far, unsuccessful. All we know for certain is that the victims are human. The killer, too, is human. They bleed, share the same biology. What Fervent Flora drives them to fear? Is it Fervent Flora that drives a man to kill or helps him to evade capture? Which Fervent Flora awaken the dead?

We must look to the plants, Eudo. We must visit the chemists, apothecaries, and quacks. Those making and selling the remedies to the scared may with their other hands brew toxins to aid the harbingers of hell. It is true that the toxicologists have not found any traces of manipulative plants in the dead but as you said, Eudo, there are plants and tests we do not know of.

I enclose an interesting exchange found in our early investigations: the correspondence of two street merchants. Their observations and deductions may help us.

As always, Eudo, I value your input.

Regards,

Maddea Adderray

Detective Inspector M. Adderray

Wherever I may be

Beyond These Waters - Letter 5

Read the letter from one shopkeeper to another, both rivals in clients and sales but friends to morality. They bear witness to underhand deals, the exchange of suspicious packages and bottles, and wailing complaints of wronged customers – and they decide to act.