*"The universe does not speak in words. It swings." — The Fool*
The next morning came without color.
Dawn crawled up over the city like an afterthought, gray and slow, bleeding through the cracks in the curtains of Jake's room. He hadn't slept.
His grandmother's old clock ticked on the wall — except sometimes, it didn't. He'd caught it once, around 3 a.m., when the second hand had stopped mid-swing for a full minute before lurching forward again as though time itself had hiccupped.
Now he sat on the edge of his bed, eyes fixed on the small mirror across from him. It had been quiet all night. No writing. No movement. Just glass.
But every now and then, when he blinked, he thought he saw a faint outline of a thread — thin, luminous, pulsing faintly like a vein of light — connecting him to something just outside sight.
He told himself not to care.
He cared anyway.
---
At school, everything was too bright.
The sun reflecting off the lockers burned in sharp fragments, and when people walked, he swore their shadows lagged half a step behind them.
He avoided everyone. Even Mira.
Liora Kaine wasn't there that morning. Her absence should've eased him. Instead, it felt like standing on a stage after the lights went out — the audience still there, unseen but watching.
By lunchtime, he couldn't take it anymore. He slipped away, heading for the disused wing at the back of the school — the old art room that smelled like dust and turpentine, where no one ever went anymore.
He locked the door, set his bag down, and stared at the window.
"Okay," he muttered. "Let's just… get this over with."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen flickered oddly — static crawling across it for half a second before clearing. His reflection in the black glass didn't move.
He felt that pulse again, under his skin — the same rhythm from the night before, steady, impossible.
"Suspensus," he whispered.
The air bent.
It didn't *move*, exactly — it *rearranged*. Dust motes hung motionless midair, the sound of the outside world vanished, and everything took on the muffled stillness of a photograph.
Jake stood there, afraid to breathe. His reflection in the window was no longer his.
It was hanging upside down.
This time, he didn't look away.
"Who are you?" he asked quietly.
The reflection smiled faintly. Its mouth didn't move with his.
"Who are *you*?" it asked back, though the voice didn't reach his ears — it was inside his skull, as if spoken directly to thought.
Jake's breath caught.
"What do you want from me?"
"Balance."
The word hit him like a pulse of heat behind his ribs. For a heartbeat, he saw — no, *felt* — a flood of images: people suspended in light, the Hanged Man card spinning through fire, silver coins melting into water. A thousand lives strung together on invisible threads.
Then it was gone.
Jake stumbled back, gasping. The reflection was normal again. The dust fell. The clock outside resumed ticking.
He fell to his knees. His phone clattered to the floor and landed face-up. The screen was black, but faint Latin text glowed across it like embers:
"Suspensus, filius inter mundos. Vocatus ad aequilibrium."
(Suspended one, child between worlds. You are called to balance.)
And then it went dark.
Jake stared at the phone, his pulse thrumming in his ears. His chest felt too small for his heart.
Something inside him whispered — *answer it.*
But before he could move, the door behind him clicked open.
"Skipping lunch already?"
Jake spun.
Mira stood in the doorway, holding two paper cups of vending machine coffee. She looked at him, then at the cracked glass of the window, then back at him.
"You look like you saw a ghost," she said, forcing a smile.
Jake tried to laugh but couldn't. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
She handed him one of the cups. "Try me."
He hesitated, then took it. The warmth steadied his shaking hands — slightly.
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me," she said lightly. "You saved my notes last week. You still owe me for that."
He smiled faintly. For the first time in days, it felt real.
But outside the cracked window, a single thread of light drifted lazily in the sunlight — unseen by either of them.
It curled upward, vanishing into the ceiling.
---
**Later that night**, in the old church that served as one of the Ordo's local cells, Liora knelt before the altar of mirrors.
The reflection staring back was not her own.
"Faust has awakened," she said quietly.
The voice that answered was many voices — a chorus shaped from shadow and thought.
"Then the balance has begun to shift. The Pendulum swings."
Liora bowed her head. "Do I proceed?"
"No," the voices murmured. "Not yet. Let him reach for the rope first."
A pause. The glass shimmered.
"And when he does—cut it."
Liora's hands tightened. "Understood."
But her heart whispered something else entirely.