(Narrated by The Fool)
"There are moments when the world forgets how to breathe.
And in that held breath, a life is rewritten."
Light.
Noise.
Nothing.
Jake floats in the white silence that follows pain. He thinks he's dead, but death shouldn't feel this heavy, this wet. The rain hasn't stopped; it's inside his skull now, echoing.
Somewhere, voices—muffled, frantic. Then black again.
When he wakes, the ceiling above him hums with fluorescent light. Hospital white. The antiseptic sting of disinfectant. Machines beep in lazy rhythm beside him.
His arm's bandaged, ribs bound. He tries to sit, but the pain in his side flares sharply and electrically.
"Hey—hey, don't move."
Mira's voice. She's sitting at the edge of the bed, eyes red from crying but smiling anyway.
"You're awake," she breathes. "You idiot. You really jumped."
Jake swallows. "You okay?"
"Me? You saved my life." Her laugh breaks in the middle. "I'm fine. You're the one who—God, Jake, why would you—"
He doesn't answer. Because the truth is simple: he didn't think. He just moved.
"Ah," says The Fool, softly. "The first real decision he's ever made. It only took a heartbeat to kill the old him."
Doctors come, voices like static. They talk about a concussion, possible shock. Jake half-listens. The world feels slippery, edges blurred.
When they leave, the room falls quiet except for the monitor's pulse. Mira sits watching him.
"Everyone's talking about it," she says. "They said you—when you pushed me, there was this… light."
"Light?"
"Yeah. Like the air bent around you. I thought I imagined it, but—"
She stops. He's staring at the wall.
"Oh, he saw it too," the Fool whispers. "He just doesn't know what to call it yet."
Jake remembers the moment: the scream, the headlights, then the split-second where everything froze—time stretched like glass before it shattered. He remembers the symbols on the blackboard, too. Latin words burning behind his eyes.
He closes them. For a second, the white hospital room flickers—
And he's somewhere else.
A bridge of light hanging over a dark sea. Figures suspended upside down, glowing faintly, eyes open but empty. And a voice, neither male nor female, speaking in syllables that ache in his bones.
"Suspensus es. Chosen to hang between."
When he opens his eyes, he's gasping. Mira's on her feet, startled.
"Jake?"
He forces a breath. "Just… dizzy."
She sits again, worried. "They said you should rest. I'll tell your grandma you're awake."
He nods. When she leaves, the silence feels alive, pressing against his skin.
That night, he dreams of water.
He's falling through it—slow, endless—and somewhere above, a rope burns against his ankle, holding him just shy of drowning. The voice returns.
"Every watcher must choose to see, or to fall."
He wakes with a start. The monitor's gone silent. The air smells faintly of ozone.
A shadow stands near the door.
"Who—?"
The figure steps closer. Not a doctor. Too still. Dressed in black, coat dripping with rain. A silver sigil gleams on the collar: a circle crossed by a hanging line.
"Jake Faust," the stranger says. His voice is low, precise. "You should not have survived that impact."
Jake's throat dries. "Who are you?"
The man tilts his head. "A custodian. I watch for those who've touched the hidden current."
"I don't—"
"You saw light when you should have seen death. You heard the word when you should have heard nothing. You are marked."
Jake pushes back in bed, heart hammering. "What do you want?"
"To make sure you don't die before understanding what you are."
Then, as suddenly as he appeared, the man's gone. The room's door is still closed. No sound of footsteps.
Only a faint whisper left behind, like breath on glass:
"Suspensum est veritas."
Days pass. He heals quickly—too quickly. The doctors mutter about luck. Mira visits every afternoon, each time a little more hesitant, as if unsure he's still the same person.
And maybe he isn't.
When he looks in the mirror now, his eyes seem darker at the centre, like something inside them's watching back. He notices patterns everywhere—on the hospital tiles, the hum of machines, the drip of rain outside—all syncing to some rhythm he almost recognises.
The Fool chuckles.
"Oh, he's listening now. That's the curse of awakening—you start to hear the machinery of the world. And once you hear it, you can't unhear it."
The day they release him, the sky's too bright. Mira insists on walking him home. They stop by the river that splits Halden in two—the current slow, the water thick with reflection.
"You ever think about dying?" Jake asks suddenly.
Mira startles. "What kind of question is that?"
"Just wondering."
She sighs. "Sometimes. When I'm scared everyone I love will leave."
He looks at her. She means it. That kind of honesty feels heavy.
"I don't want to leave," he says.
"Then don't."
But his voice is distant when he answers, "I don't think I get to choose anymore."
That night, when the apartment's quiet and his grandmother's asleep, he sits by the window watching the streetlamps blur in the rain.
He opens his hand. There, faintly glowing against his skin, is a sigil he doesn't remember earning—an inverted man, hanging serene between two pillars.
The mark pulses once, in time with his heartbeat.
"There it is," The Fool murmurs. "The rope around his ankle. The promise of power, the price of sight."
Outside, thunder rolls like distant applause.
And somewhere in Halden, behind locked doors and hidden altars, the members of the Ordo Arcanae take note.
A new piece has entered the game.