Rain blurred the city into watercolor.
From the second-floor window of Halden High, Liora watched the boy walk away, shoulders hunched against the cold. For a long time, she didn't move.
The mortalis coin in her pocket burned faintly — confirmation of what she already knew. *Suspensum.* The Hanged Man.
A resonance that shouldn't exist outside of prophecy.
She exhaled, fogging the glass. Below, Jake passed beneath the courtyard light; its halo flickered once, then steadied. The resonance followed him even here, leaking into the mundane.
"A fracture in the Veil," she murmured. "The Fool always did love symmetry."
Her communicator pulsed once, red. She pressed it to her ear.
"Report," came the voice of her handler — a man who never gave his name, only orders.
"Confirmation complete," she said. "Subject Jacob Faust. Manifestation: Suspensum class. Latent but rising."
"Then finish it."
Her jaw tightened. "He's stable. Contained."
"Containment is an illusion," the voice replied. "You of all people should know that."
Liora looked down at her gloved hand, flexing it as if remembering something warm. "He's just a child."
"So were you, once."
The line clicked dead.
She stood there, still as a statue. The storm outside deepened — thunder crawling like a wound across the horizon.
Liora closed her eyes. For a moment, the scent of smoke filled her lungs — the ghost of another night, another child she hadn't saved.
"Death is a mercy," she whispered to herself. "But mercy isn't always death."
She drew the coin again, rolling it between her fingers. It whispered faintly, not in words but in pulse. The mark of Mortis stirred within her chest, answering.
Then, deliberately, she turned the coin over — silver to shadow.
"Not yet," she told it.
She pocketed the charm, pulled up her hood, and walked out into the rain.
Above the school, the clouds cracked open in a single, soundless flash — light folding in on itself, like glass breaking inward.
Somewhere, the Fool laughed.