Hunting the Self: Aberlnar's Redemptive Journey

Detective Aberlnar rubbed his eyes, looking with bleary vision at the mess of papers littering his desk. They were all part of a case he'd been investigating for what felt like an eternity. He leaned back in his chair and sighed, rubbing his temples. His head was pounding. An incessant knocking echoed from the other side of the door to his office, snapping him out of his foggy state.

"Detective Aberlnar?" A nervous voice rang through the wood of the door. "Detective Aberlnar, sir?"

"Yes? What is it?" He called wearily, standing up and pushing a stack of files away from him. Upon doing so, a small piece of paper fell out and fluttered onto the floor. He bent down to pick it up and nearly screamed when he found it to be blank on both sides.

"I have some news concerning that missing person case you've been working on." The voice said hurriedly.

"Oh...right..." He muttered, picking up the file off his desk and plopping back down into his chair with a sigh. He made sure not to leave any more documents lying around after that freak accident with the last one. "Come in."

The door opened and a young woman entered nervously into the room, stopping several paces away from him. She cleared her throat, but did not make eye contact with him as she spoke. "We have reason to believe that we have located the victim's whereabouts." She said quickly before turning around and walking out again as abruptly as she had entered.

Aberlnar stood up once more and followed her out of his office, hoping that perhaps he'd finally be able to get some rest soon if they found this man who had gone missing five days ago. So far, all they had found were some strange markings on the ground outside his home that looked like bird tracks at first glance, but then upon closer inspection seemed more like footprints mixed with claw marks from some sort of animal. Aberlnar shook his head dismissively; it didn't matter anyway without any leads or clues to follow up on.

"So where is he?" Aberlnar asked as he caught up with her in front of his office door. She stopped and turned around as she had done before, still refusing to look at him directly.

"He's...well...he's dead." She replied quietly after a few moments' hesitation. Her hand flew over her mouth as though in shock at herself for saying something so blunt. But still she refused to meet Aberlnar's gaze despite her obvious distress over the situation; she kept her eyes focused on the wall next to them instead while wringing her hands anxiously behind her back.

Aberlnar raised an eyebrow at her choice of words but figured there must be a reason for them being used so he opted not to call attention to it just yet, no matter how curious he was getting about it all now. "Where did you find him?" He asked instead while walking past her toward another detective who was standing at the end of one hallway looking rather bored with their task at hand: watching video surveillance tapes from outside the victim's home until something interesting happened or someone left or arrived within view range and could be questioned about what they might know about this whole mess.

"We haven't checked inside yet." The young detective said slowly while looking up at him with wide eyes as though she thought he was going crazy again or something before clearing her throat nervously and continuing, "...so I can't tell you about what we found there."

Aberlnar stared at her for a long moment before shaking his head slightly and looking away from her briefly in frustration before meeting her gaze once more with a slight smile on his face as though this entire ordeal wasn't driving him up a wall anymore. He suddenly had a rush of thoughts contemplating the reality around him, questioning the sanity of the entire situation, but quickly he snapped back to focus, determined not to let these intrusive thoughts derail him.

After regaining his composure, Aberlnar said with determination, "Alright, let's get a team together and investigate the scene. We need answers, and this could be our chance to finally put this case to rest."