Chapter 1: The Scent of Death

The jasmine tea had gone cold. Jiang Se stared at the untouched cup, its delicate steam long vanished into the midnight air. Her gloved fingers hovered over the sealed evidence bag containing a man's charcoal-gray overcoat. Even through three layers of protective packaging, the stench of decay crawled up her nostrils—burnt caramel undercut by something metallic, like copper coins left in the rain.

No, she corrected herself. Not decay. Memory.

The client's instructions had arrived via encrypted email at 2:17 AM: Recreate the scent clinging to this coat. Discretion guaranteed. Triple your usual fee. Attached were photos of a middle-aged man lying on a marble floor, his face frozen in a scream that pulled his features sideways, as if Death itself had yanked him by the cheek.

Now the coat lay spread across her stainless steel worktable, its left sleeve stiff with dried vomit. Jiang Se unzipped the final protective layer. The smell exploded—rotten peaches soaked in gasoline, with a haunting whisper of sandalwood. Her throat tightened.

Familiar. Too familiar.

She reached for her scent diary, leather-bound and fraying at the edges. The pages fell open to an entry from three years ago: Qin Shu's new formula—black currant, white musk, and... regret. Her gloved thumb smudged the hastily scribbled note below: He calls it "Path to Hades."

A knock shattered the silence.

Jiang Se froze. Her converted-warehouse studio wasn't listed on any map. The security system showed no alerts. Yet three deliberate raps echoed again—not from the reinforced front door, but the service entrance she'd sealed shut after the Incident.

"I'll double the payment." The voice slithered through the air vents, genderless and smooth as poisoned honey. "Show me the scent."

Her pulse thundered in her ears. The client wasn't supposed to come here. They weren't ever supposed to meet.

Floorboards creaked. Jiang Se grabbed a perfume atomizer labeled Nightshade—not a fragrance, but a cocktail of capsaicin and synthetic skunk musk she kept for unwelcome visitors. The motion-activated lights flickered as a shadow stretched across the frosted glass panel of the back door.

"The coat belonged to Chen Wei," the voice purred. "Real estate mogul. Philanthropist. Found dead yesterday morning in his penthouse sauna with his lungs full of rosewater."

Jiang Se's grip tightened on the spray. The news hadn't reported that detail.

"His widow wants closure." A diamond-edged nail slid through the mail slot, clutching a platinum credit card. "She says he smelled like hope when he died."

Liar.

The stench radiating from the coat spoke of terror so profound it curdled sweat into acid. Jiang Se switched on the voice scrambler she'd installed after the harassment lawsuits. "I don't work with ghosts. Leave before I—"

Glass shattered.

Not the door—her sample cabinet. Twenty-seven hand-blown crystal vials cascaded to the floor in a symphony of breaking dreams. Bergamot embraced vetiver. Tuberose consummated its forbidden affair with asphalt. The mingled essences formed a new entity that clawed at Jiang Se's throat—a scent that shouldn't exist outside nightmares.

She stumbled backward, spray canister falling from numb fingers. The security cameras showed nothing but swirling dust motes.

When the coughing fit subsided, three items lay arranged in the spilled perfume:

Her scent diary, open to the "Path to Hades" entry. A dried gardenia petal stained blue at the edges. A child's plastic hair clip shaped like a butterfly.

The credit card fluttered to rest atop the debris. Its holographic strip shimmered with an eight-digit number that made Jiang Se's breath hitch—not a payment code, but GPS coordinates she'd etched into memory.

The abandoned greenhouse where Qin Shu first kissed her.

Twenty-Three Hours Earlier

The corpse flower bloomed at midnight.

Jiang Se knelt in her rooftop greenhouse, respirator misting with each strained breath. Amorphophallus titanum, the rare Sumatran giant whose stench of rotting flesh had earned it the nickname "corpse flower." This specimen had lain dormant for seven years—exactly how long she'd been free of Qin Shu.

Her scalpel glinted under UV grow lights as she made the first incision. The plant's central spadix oozed viscous fluid smelling of spoiled milk and forgotten promises. She'd waited a decade for this moment. One precise cut to harvest pollen that could...

Buzz. Buzz.

The encrypted phone vibrated across the workbench. Jiang Se ignored it, focusing on extracting the burgundy-streaked pollen without contamination.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

"Damn it." The scalpel slipped, severing a vital vein. Fetid sap sprayed across her goggles. By the time she'd disinfected the wound, the caller had left seventeen messages.

Unknown number. Geo-tagged to a burner device in Macau. The first attachment loaded—a corpse photo so fresh, the dead man's Rolex still showed moving seconds hands.

Chen Wei. Age 54. Time of death: 11:58 PM.

The second attachment froze her blood—a scanned page from her private scent diary, the one she'd burned after leaving Qin Shu. Someone had redrawn her teenage sketch of "Path to Hades" with disturbing additions: thorny vines strangling the original lilac motif, and in the corner, a tiny butterfly hair clip.

Her hands shook. That same clip had vanished from her studio the night Qin Shu disappeared.

Present

Jiang Se stared at the shattered remnants of her life's work. The mysterious caller had vanished, leaving only the credit card and a single sentence scrawled in spilled perfume oil:

He wants you to remember.

The compound's gates creaked open. Headlights swept through the broken window—her midnight delivery of Indonesian clove buds had arrived three hours late.

"Miss Jiang?" The driver's boots crunched glass shards. "You okay in here?"

She pocketed the hair clip before turning, her professional mask sliding into place. "A minor accident. Please place the crates by the cold storage."

As the man retreated, Jiang Se knelt to collect glass shards. A sliver pierced her glove, drawing blood that mingled with spilled perfume. The scent hit her like a freight train—gunpowder and gardenias, with an undercurrent of baby powder.

Qin Shu's signature blend from their first anniversary.

Except Qin Shu was gone. Had been gone since the fire.

She stumbled to the sink, scrubbing her hands until the skin turned raw. The water swirled pink, carrying whispers of the past down the drain. When she dared breathe again, the studio smelled only of lemon disinfectant and lies.

The security monitor flickered. In the top right corner, barely visible through the lingering mist of broken perfumes, a shadow moved—too tall to be human, its outline warping like heat haze over desert sand.

Jiang Se reached for her emergency kit. Her fingers closed around the taser... and the butterfly hair clip.

Somewhere in the city, a clock tower chimed three AM. The corpse flower's stench had mutated, now carrying notes of jasmine and regret—the exact composition of "Path to Hades."