Frankfurt, West Germany.
1960.
Jakob woke up in his apartment as he always did, even as the morning sun painted the sky with gentle gold.
Yet for Jakob, mornings always looked grey.
He stepped out into the streets, crossing Marktplatz as the chill crept beneath his old grey wool coat.
In the distance, the bells of St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral rang, soft and hollow.
He stopped by a small coffee shop called Brücke, his usual spot — a place to observe the city and quietly note down the faces that felt... wrong.
Frau Keller, the middle-aged owner with a floral apron and a laugh like a breaking branch, greeted him.
"Herr Eisner, the usual?"
"Black coffee. And an apple roll," Jakob replied.
"You look even paler than usual. Investigating ghosts, perhaps?" she chuckled.
Jakob didn’t answer. He simply nodded and sat in the corner by the window.
His mind wandered back to the alleyway that night.
"What really happened? Who was that tall man?" Jakob muttered.
Questions kept clawing at him, relentless.
He couldn't take it anymore. Something inside pulled him back to the crime scene — even if it meant breaking protocol.
He didn't care.
The city was still eerily quiet.
Only the distant chirps of birds and a few early workers moved through the cold morning air.
When Jakob arrived, the police lines were gone.
Too fast.
As if someone wanted to wipe the incident from the city's memory.
He scanned the alley, forcing himself to remember every detail.
There — a faint smear of dried blood.
Jakob crouched down.
A glint caught his eye.
Half-buried near the gutter was a broken brooch: a pair of scales — the symbol of justice — but one side was shattered, as if even its balance had been betrayed.
---
Later that afternoon, at the police station.
Jakob sat at his desk, a cold, untouched coffee and a mountain of case files spread before him.
Sunlight slanted through the dirty windows, casting sharp, broken lines across the papers.
He opened two folders:
Karl Freuden — a defense lawyer for war criminals.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Annalise Berg — a witness to a murder case that never found justice.
At first, there was no link.
But maybe that was the point.
They weren’t random victims.
They were symbols.
Jakob pulled out an old dusty file from the bottom drawer — secret cases he'd gathered on his own: unresolved crimes, political cover-ups, war criminals who slipped through loopholes.
His fingers turned the pages, restless, his breath shallow.
Names blurred into each other — judges, prosecutors, defendants — all cloaked in dry bureaucratic language:
"Insufficient evidence."
"Procedural error."
"Case dismissed."
He began marking the names — in red.
The list grew longer than he remembered.
It hit him then —
This wasn’t just murder.
This was systematic judgment.
And Jakob Eisner was staring into a brutal mirror:
The law he had upheld was never fully just.
Maybe it was never even meant to be.
He glanced at the evidence board — pinned up with Karl's and Annalise’s photographs.
He added two more — victims from cases long forgotten, buried by technicalities.
His hand moved unconsciously, drawing red threads between them.
Patterns emerged — symmetrical, deliberate, merciless.
His eyes burned from exhaustion.
But inside them — a small fire began to grow.
Not just the need to solve a crime.
But the raw, desperate obsession to find the truth.
No matter the cost.
---
As the sun set, Jakob returned to his apartment.
He walked down the dim corridor, reaching for his door.
Something caught his eye — an envelope.
Grey, unmarked.
Without thinking, he picked it up and sat on his bed.
Unease gnawed at him.
Fear, curiosity, anger — all at once.
Inside, a single sheet, typed from an old typewriter:
---
"You chose silence when the law was raped by its own procedures.
But their blood still cries out.
I am only balancing the scales."
— R
---
Jakob's heart pounded.
His hands shook.
He stood up and flung the letter across the room.
"What do you want from me, R? Who are you? What the hell do you see in me?"
Frustration clawed at his chest.
"Is he avenging the victims the courts forgot? But then... why kill Annalise Berg — a child?"
Jakob sank back down, forcing his breathing to slow.
Then — a thought.
An old figure from his past.
Someone who once guided him when he was still a boy in the orphanage.
Jakob decided:
Tomorrow, he would find him.
---
The next day, Jakob walked through the cobblestone streets of old Sachsenhausen — a part of Frankfurt that seemed to resist time itself.
The houses leaned into each other, tired and stubborn.
At the end of the narrow street stood an old Catholic church, its stone walls cracked and crumbling, but defiant.
Inside, the church was deserted.
Only small candles flickered before the altar, casting long shadows against the battered figure of Christ — a Christ who looked less merciful, more wounded.
Jakob sat alone on a pew, staring at the altar, eyes closed.
Footsteps echoed softly.
"Jakob," a heavy, worn voice called.
Pastor Grunwald.
The old man limped toward him, leaning heavily on a cane.
His robe was tattered, but his gaze remained sharp, penetrating.
"It’s been a long time," the pastor said, sitting beside him.
"I’m not here for forgiveness, Father," Jakob murmured.
"I don’t even know what I'm looking for."
The priest nodded, as if he had heard those words many times before.
"I watched two people die before me," Jakob whispered.
"A child. A man. Both... innocent, at least unproven guilty.
And the killer — he left a message. Not mocking the law... but replacing it."
The priest was silent for a moment, then spoke in a voice like a wound that never healed:
"In this world, Jakob, many are wounded not by evil... but by the failure of justice.
Some of them choose to burn the whole system down.
They don’t seek forgiveness.
They seek balance."
"Balance?" Jakob turned sharply. "With blood?"
---
"Sometimes," the priest said quietly, staring at the crucifix, "the devil doesn’t come with horns — but dressed in the robes of a judge."
"And worse than the devil," he added, "is the man who truly believes he is doing good."
---
Jakob fell silent.
The words cut into him like a blunt knife.
"And if I can’t stop him?" Jakob whispered.
"If I'm no better than the broken system I serve?"
Pastor Grunwald turned to him, eyes gentle but unflinching.
"If you can still ask that question, Jakob...
then at least, you haven't become him."
Jakob stood up slowly, nodding.
He left the pew without looking back.
The church bells tolled somewhere in the distance, a hollow sound marking a confession without absolution.
Outside, the fog rolled back in — swallowing the city in white, cold silence.
Jakob walked the damp, cobbled streets.
Mist curled around him, soft and merciless.
Streetlamps flickered behind veils of fog, casting frail, dying halos.
His boots struck the stones with a slow, heavy rhythm.
In his fist, he gripped the small crucifix tightly — the last anchor between himself and the abyss.
Far away, the horn of a distant car cried out — and vanished.
Frankfurt, 1960.
A city that did not forgive.
A city that never forgot.
Jakob now understood:
This was more than murder.
This was an idea.
A belief that blood could pay for the justice that law had abandoned.
And Jakob — as a policeman, as a man, as a shattered remnant of another war —
was already trapped inside it.
He stopped in the middle of the deserted street, looking up into the choked night sky.
For the first time, Jakob Eisner felt the road ahead wasn’t a path toward truth.
It was a path into a bottomless abyss —
where law and justice were only fading ghosts,
and one step further might mean he could never return.
He exhaled once, heavy.
And stepped forward.
Chasing the darkness.
Or perhaps —
welcoming it.
