CW: Gruesome images.

Detective Stella Lockhart is a comet in a universe that has long since burnt out. Her boundless enthusiasm, the kind that seems to turn her morning coffee into rocket fuel, makes her a force—a force in a district that feels like it's always teetering on the edge of collapse. Promoted too quickly, her bright-eyed ambition and cheerful, unrelenting pursuit of justice are hard to ignore, even harder to kill. Every day, she wakes up as if the world has just begun, ready to chase the next case, the next challenge, the next prank. It's like she knows that somewhere in the crumbling corners of District B, there's still something—anything—left to save.

But under that sparkling, naïve surface lies the heavy burden of truth that she has yet to fully understand. A rookie detective, still cutting her teeth, Stella is trying to get used to the fact that the system is broken beyond repair. The corruption, the decay, the twisted souls that populate the streets—all of it seeps into the badge she wears. What was once the dream of righting the world’s wrongs has faded into grim reality. The glamour of law enforcement, of "justice," it feels more like a faded postcard now.

Still, she's pushing. Pushing through the muck, convinced that something, anything, is worth saving in this pile of rubble. Because without that belief, what else would be left?

The truth? That hope is already crumbling. And she won’t know it yet, but the Low Tide Motel will mark the precise moment her optimism takes a hit it won’t recover from. It’s not just the mystery. It's the questions. The gnawing feeling that something much worse lurks beneath the surface.

The kind of question that once answered, can never be unsaid.