“Hey, how is it going?”

Chanyeol asked as he approached the duo’s desks. He looked excited, already showing the two that they had found something, which only made Minseok and Jongdae’s lack of good information feel humiliating. And the homicide detective was polite, waiting for them to answer the question before he explained why he was there to talk to them.

“We were able to retrace his day until lunch, and that’s about the time he disappeared, since he didn’t go back to work in the afternoon. We checked his credit card charges, and it was used in a diner downtown, so we sent an officer down there with his photo, to see if the staff remembers seeing anyone with him, or if there were just any weirdly suspicious people around.”

Jongdae quickly explained, trying not to feel too annoyed; but Chanyeol’s happy expression made him feel mad.

“That’s good, that’s good! Great work!”

Chanyeol encouraged them, and then paused, almost as if forgetting that he had something to share as well. That made Minseok feel obliged to ask.

“And what about you guys? Find something?”

The older man questioned, not sounding as interested as he probably should have been.

“Oh, right! I came here to call you guys over; you need to come see this!”

The other detective was still excited, motioning for them to get up and follow him. The duo did so, without much hurry or excitement as Chanyeol though.

“Did you find it? The ritual?”

Jongdae asked as they walked to Chanyeol’s desk. He wanted to hear a confirmation.

“Yeah, we did.”

Chanyeol simply answered, still smiling.

Despite being a little disappointed that it wasn’t them who found it, the rookie duo felt happy that there was a breakthrough in the case; they could finally advance the investigation. It was going to be hard, but they knew they had to just accept the recent change that happened; time wouldn’t stop until they were okay with it, things just kept going, and they needed to keep up.

“We’re here.”

Chanyeol needed to announce them, since Jongin was so focused on his computer screen he didn’t even notice the men approaching.

“Ah, hey… Come look.”

Jongin greeted as he moved his chair to the side, so that the three men could stand behind him while seeing the screen as well, not just the back of his head.

“We searched a ton of websites – which definitely let us to some strange places – and somehow found one that the description matched with our investigation.”

Observing the computer screen made Minseok feel a headache. The site was very poorly developed, and the bright red font was very hard to read of the dark crimson background; and to make things worse, there were a lot of blocks of adds randomly placed and redirecting links all around, some even flashing different colors, which made it very difficult to focus on the right text. Luckily for him, Jongin started explaining it, so he didn’t need to try to read that mess.

“It’s the ritual to the five gods of the moon. It doesn’t have much base of explanation about said gods; the site is very vague the entire time, except when explaining what you have to do to honor them. And apparently after the five moon gods, there’s a ritual for the five gods of the sun too, and they say it’s better that the two rituals be done together, one after the other, for better results. I’m not even going to try to read all these weird god names, because that’s just a bunch of slapped together letters to me. I will be sending the full text to all of you later, so feel free to examine it better if you want; but what it’s important to us it’s what’s down here, in the instructions.”

Jongin started, and scrolled the screen down a bit, making sure that what he was saying matched the order in the text.

“First, strong and steady arms are needed, to lift the… er…”

Jongin hesitated when reading the strange god’s name, and decided to skip it all together like before, since trying to read it would just be a pain.

“To lift the first god; they are packed in an infusion of herbs, which was taught at the top part of the page, and burned in the ritual room. Then strong legs, to pull the second god’s carriage; also packed in herbs, and burned. Third is a nurturing chest, to comfort the third god, and nurture all of the children he looks at down on the earth;”

It was at that moment that Jongdae heard his partner whisper the words ‘all of them? Ouch…’, which made him smile a little. Neither Chanyeol nor Jongin heard him though, so the latter just carried on naturally.

“that is also burned. Then a powerful pair of lungs, to blow cool wind onto the fourth god’s steaming body; this one is supposed to be frozen before burned like the others. Lastly, a courageous heart is needed, to serve the fifth god’s army in the front line of battle, if needed be; this one is supposed to be eaten by the person performing the ritual…”

Jongin finished, taking a pause so what he said could sink into the other detectives’ brains.

“Well, that just got weirder and weirder.”

Jongdae commented, not even getting smiles from his little quip, since they were all too awkward and uncomfortable.

“It says that you do this to honor the gods and get in their good favor, so they can help in different areas of your life. Physical strength, fertility, leadership, and so on, I guess. Each part comes with a detailed paragraph of how to harvest the sacrifices, and there are very specific times of the night to collect the needed part, and then to burn, or later on eat, it. Like you assumed, the organs are said to have to be collected from the living. They are all instructed to be removed with a specific ceremonial dagger, which I suppose it’s this unidentified weapon that Kyungsoo found.”

Jongin scrolled down even more, showing a photo of a dagger, which thankfully was on a white cloth background, which made it easier to look at than the rest of the site. It seemed to be double edged, and it had an ornamented purple and gold handle.

“I’ll sent this picture down to the morgue so that they can confirm if this could be it or not.”

Jongin continued, and then finally turned to face the three men, waiting for a reaction.

“We only have four victims so far. This five gods thing means he’ll definitely kill again, and soon.”

Jongdae stated, and the others nodded. Jongin got ready to respond, turning back to fiddle with the computer again, scrolling down plenty until he reached what seemed to be another huge title in the middle of the page, which started a new topic.

“Yes, and if he decides to do the five gods of the sun as well, you can add five more victims to that list.”

The tension was rising. Despite none of them really understanding the ritual completely – or believing in it at all – the criminal doing it certainly believed, and he had shown that he’d go to extremes to complete it.

“So, what do we do?”

Minseok asked, not feeling ashamed of such a rookie question. The other team had a lot more experience dealing with murder and serial killers, and like the chief said, they should use that as a learning opportunity. He knew that it would still take some more time for Jongdae to warm up to the idea, but Minseok was already trying to get on board with it and just absorb all the knowledge he could; especially now that the most important thing at that moment was catching the killer, not keeping their pride.

“We stop him.”

Jongin’s answer was not pleasant though, despite being their accurate wish. A very loud and clear ‘DUH!’ rang in the rookie duo’s minds, but they kept it in; though their faces easily portrayed the sarcastic and condescending phrases they wished to respond with. A complaint – probably in a rude tone – was about to come out from Jongdae’s mouth, but Chanyeol spoke up first, rectifying his partner’s lack of sense and social skills.

“We continue to investigate the best way we can. A courageous heart is our clue, so we should think about types of brave people, ones that could be considered courageous in their line of work, and then see if we can narrow down possible targets.”

Chanyeol paused, trying to think of an example, but Minseok got one first.

“Firemen. They’re constantly risking their lives, they go into burning buildings; that’s gotta take courage.”

Chanyeol smiled and nodded at the man, getting excited and snapping his fingers as he thought of another one.

“Army. The ritual talks about battle, so it could be pretty direct. Oh, and policemen too. We’re often facing ‘battle’ situations.”

Chanyeol used air quotes around the word battle, making quite an exaggerated gesture out of it. He knew it couldn’t compare to actually going to war, but the police force often had to deal with dangerous situations.

“That’s loads of people already. How are we supposed to look out for that many individuals?”

Jongdae asked, feeling frustrated.

“Hey, maybe he’s going for the same strategy as yesterday.”

Minseok started, getting interested looks from the men around him.

“We know that he kidnapped the third victim during mid-day, right? It’s past three o’clock now, so we could guess that if he was targeting someone, he most likely already got them. We should call up the fire department, and also our police stations all around town, and see if anyone is missing from work; and have them call out those on their days off too, to see if they were taken from their homes or not. If we get help from those other parts of the system, we’ll work faster.”

Minseok talked like a true professional, without looking scared or hesitant in front of his seniors. And he was so focused on the subject, that he didn’t even notice the look of admiration his partner was giving him.

“And what about the army?”

Jongin asked, looking very engaged, like he was already planning everything out in his head.

“Er… We know that our city is the boundary so far, so we should search for any records of retired military that live around here, and try to contact them. Oh, and also any news of vacationing soldiers that could possibly be in the area, we need to check for that too.”

Minseok simply responded.

“Yeah. And while one or t