---
"When a pendulum swings too far, it stops being balanced and becomes judgment." — The Fool
At first, it was just noise.
The clatter of lockers, laughter echoing down polished halls, the monotonous drone of a Monday pretending to be ordinary. But beneath it, Jake could hear something else — a low hum, steady and deep, vibrating through the floor like a buried heartbeat.
He tried to ignore it. Tried to pretend he was fine.
That worked until the clocks stopped.
Every one of them.
The digital readouts froze at 10:12 a.m. The hallway fell into a brief, startled hush.
"Power cut?" someone muttered.
But the lights were still on.
Everything else was still moving — except time.
Jake's hands trembled. The hum grew louder, closer, until it wasn't sound anymore but pressure. His stomach twisted. The air felt thick, syrupy, resisting motion.
He turned to Mira — her lips were moving, but no words came out.
And then gravity failed.
Books rose from desks in lazy spirals. Paper drifted upward like pale feathers. A half-full bottle of water floated beside Jake, rippling as if in zero gravity. The students screamed — or they would have, if their voices hadn't been swallowed by the air.
Jake stumbled back, gripping the edge of a desk. "No. Not again."
The hum deepened into a wordless chorus — whispers overlapping, forming syllables that didn't belong to any human tongue.
But one word rose clear, cutting through the noise:
"Suspensus."
He didn't say it aloud.
It said *him.
The world shattered.
Light fractured through the air like glass, turning everything upside down — floors above, ceilings below. Every student hung motionless, suspended in that impossible reflection. Their eyes were wide, their bodies weightless, trapped mid-motion.
At the centre of it all stood Jake, caught between horror and surrender. The thread in his chest blazed white.
"Stop," he whispered. "Please, stop."
The word trembled, and the light dimmed — but didn't vanish. Instead, the reflection shifted. From every mirrored surface, *he* stared back: dozens of versions of Jake, all hanging upside down, all watching him.
The air pulsed once. Then all at once, time slammed back into place.
Papers crashed to the floor. Students screamed, desks toppled, and the lights flickered violently. Jake fell to his knees, gasping, his body heavy again. His reflection in the nearest window looked terrified — not of what had just happened, but of *him.*
---
That night, the city whispered.
Videos flooded social media — "Halden High gravity glitch," "Time Freeze Challenge," "Leaked government experiment." The Ordo Arcanae watched them all in silence from a basement full of mirrors.
Liora stood before the council's projection, her coat dripping with rain.
"Containment has failed," intoned the voice of the Magistrate.
"The Suspensum has revealed himself. Proceed with recovery — and erasure."
Liora's jaw tightened. "He's not a threat."
"All anomalies are threats. You know the law.
She didn't answer. The mirror before her shimmered faintly, showing Jake on his bedroom floor, staring at his shaking hands.
"He will not survive the week," murmured one of the reflections.
"Then neither will the Veil," said another.
Liora turned away.
"Then I'll break your law," she said softly.
The mirrors cracked.
--
The city was quieter than usual that night, as if holding its breath between storms.
Jake Faust hadn't left the apartment since yesterday. The news called the phenomenon at his school a "localized electromagnetic event." The internet called it *a miracle.* He called it what it was — a mistake.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the mirror across the room. His grandmother was asleep, and the television murmured faintly to itself, a late-night preacher talking about judgment and mercy.
Jake whispered to the glass, "If you're real… then talk to me."
The mirror didn't answer, but the air shifted — a subtle rearranging of the room's gravity. Dust lifted, tiny constellations forming in the dim light. He felt the weightless pull again, that invisible thread tightening behind his ribs.
He spoke the word.
"Suspensus."
The room exhaled. The walls breathed.
And for an instant, he was floating — not physically, but within something deeper, the dream-space behind waking.
He saw flashes:
A woman standing in the rain before a shattering mirror.A circle of robed figures chanting around a black pool. A pendulum swinging above a burning city.
Then the images folded into a single reflection — Liora Kaine's face, eyes pale with light, whispering something he couldn't hear.
The world snapped back, and he fell hard onto the floor, gasping. His hand was bleeding — he'd crushed the edge of the mirror.
And through the crack, faint and distorted, he heard it: laughter.
The Fool's laughter.
Soft. Patient. Inevitable.
---
Across the city, inside an abandoned cathedral, Liora stood before the Ordo's assembled mirrors. The air trembled with contained power.
"Jacob Faust is to be collected," said the Magistrate.
"His resonance threatens equilibrium. You will bring him in alive — if possible. If not…"
The sentence didn't need finishing.
Liora bowed her head. "Understood."
But her heart said something else entirely.
She turned away before the mirrors dimmed, her coat whispering across the stone floor. Outside, the rain had begun again — the same soft rhythm that always followed him.
She reached into her pocket, drew out the silver coin, and let it rest in her palm.
It was warm. Almost pulsing.
"Fool," she murmured. "If you ever loved your symmetry, save him from it."
The coin's reflection rippled — and for a heartbeat, it laughed.
---
Back in the apartment, Jake stood shakily, the broken mirror glinting at his feet.
He didn't see the shadow that moved behind the curtains.
He didn't feel the air pressure drop.
He only heard his grandmother's voice from her room:
"Jake? Are you talking to someone?"
He opened his mouth to answer — and froze.
Because the voice that came from her room wasn't hers.
"You shouldn't have said the name."
The apartment lights went out.