The fog of tragedy hangs heavy over the district of Dobryanka, where a scene of most ghastly violence has left the good folk trembling in their boots. A lad of but seventeen years, a mere stripling of the ninth form, has traded his primers for a blade and his innocence for the cold stone of a dungeon.

It was on the seventh of April that this calamity unfolded. The boy, driven by some dark passion or a long-simmering grudge, seized a knife from his own hearth and sought out his mistress of Russian and Literature. There, upon the very steps of the school—a place of learning turned into a slaughterhouse—he drove the steel into the unfortunate woman time and again. The poor soul was hurried to the surgeons, but alas, the life-blood had ebbed too far; the doctors could do nothing but watch her pass into the silent void.

In a turn of events that would baffle any seasoned detective, the youth did not flee into the shadows. Instead, he walked straight into the arms of the constabulary, confessing his wicked deed with a chilling openness. He spoke of a long-standing feud, a bitterness that had curdled in his heart until it burst forth in blood.

Now, the Sverdlovsk District Court has spoken. The boy shall remain locked away, far from the sunlight, in the grim confinement of the gaol until the seventh of September. The investigators, acting as the crown's keen eyes, continue to unravel the threads of this 'Murder' case, while the community mourns a teacher lost to a pupil's sudden, savage madness.