“Some truths hide in silence. Others wait in flowers.”
The streets still wore last night’s rain like a memory. Slick and glistening under the bruised morning sky, puddles stretched across the cobblestones, catching the dim light and tossing it back like shards of a shattered mirror.
Leora walked through them without pause.
Her hood was pulled low, but not to hide. Not really. There was no one here to recognize her—not in this part of the city, not at this hour. But the hood offered a kind of armor. A thin, fabric-bound silence. And that was enough.
She moved like a shadow made flesh—quiet, fluid, purposeful. One alley bled into the next, each more narrow and silent than the last, until the city itself felt like it was holding its breath.
Her own breath came slow. Measured.
Like she w
