Chapter 1

It was my brother Julian's birthday gala, but he turned me away at the door. He smashed the carved pendant I had made for him with my own hands.

"Anything you touch is filthy to me."

Heartbroken, I wandered aimlessly, only to be brutally tortured, murdered, and dismembered. While I drew my last, ragged breath, Julian was busy composing a poem for our cousin Celeste at his birthday celebration.

Three days later, Commissioner Hayes was handed a particularly gruesome cold case.

Two hundred ninety-nine body parts of a woman were discovered in an abandoned outbuilding in the city's East End. Her skin had been completely peeled off, making identification impossible.

He had no choice but to call Julian, hoping his unique ability to reconstruct the past by touching the remains would help unravel the crime.

Each time Julian cleaned and restored a body part, a fragment of the victim's memories would surface.

Through these fragmented memories, he pieced together the crime. He found the murder weapon, understood the killer's motive, and even sketched every horrific moment of the victim's torture.

The only frustrating thing was that the victim's face remained a blur.

All he could hear was a faint melody, a blurry tune she hummed in her dying moments.

Perhaps his hatred for me had festered for so long that he didn't recognize it. That little tune was the lullaby he used to sing me to sleep every single night when I was a child...