The voices behind the zinc wall grew more heated, more specific.

  “...taxes line their pockets while we starve! No jobs, no hope, and this blood wax crap finishing the job!” another man spat. “Enough talk. Tomorrow, when the protest hits its peak, we break off. We hit where it hurts. We start with the big houses. The symbols.”

  A third voice, calmer but full of grim intent, cut through. “City Manager Mioro’s mansion. He’s the puppet master. We burn it. Send a message they can’t ignore.”

  A murmur of dissent rose. “Burn it? With people inside? That’s too far—”

  “Too far?” the leader’s voice snapped. “What’s ‘too far’ when they’ve pushed us over the edge? We burn the houses of the ruling bodies. All of them. It’s the only language they understand.”

  After a tense silence, a low, unified rumble of agreement followed. The decision was made.

  Burn down houses? Martin’s mind reeled. This wasn’t just anger; it was a plotted, violent upheaval. He shifted, trying to back away silently, but his foot knocked against a discarded bottle. It clattered sharply on the asphalt.

  The talking ceased instantly. “What was that?”

  “Over there!”

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  Martin didn’t wait. He scrambled to his feet and fled the alley, his body protesting with fresh waves of pain as he melted into the labyrinth of backstreets, the sounds of pursuit fading behind him.

  Once he was sure he was safe, he leaned against a brick wall, his mind racing. He had just overheard a plan for arson and possibly murder. He had to tell someone. The police. He had to call the police.

  Mioro. The name echoed. City Manager Mioro. Where had he heard it before? Not just from the news…

  A memory surfaced: a teacher’s voice in a crowded hallway. “Ava Mioro, see me after class.”

  The connection slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. Ava Mioro. The City Manager’s daughter. The bully who wanted him gone, who had invited him to her birthday party… tomorrow.

  Ava’s house was the primary target.

  The information swirled in his head, chaotic and terrible. He knew. He knew a deadly secret. He walked on, numb, his feet carrying him without conscious direction until he found himself pushing through the door of a neon-lit convenience store.

  The clerk behind the counter glanced at him—a bruised, disheveled teenager with black streaks down his face—and looked away, unperturbed. In this part of town, such sights were commonplace.

  “Bathroom,” Martin mumbled.

  The clerk jerked a thumb toward the back.

  Inside the small, grimy restroom, Martin locked the door. The single thought played on a loop, drowning out everything else: Ava’s house. Tomorrow. The party. I’m invited. If I go… we’ll both be in the building.

  He bent over the sink, turning the tap on full. The water was icy. He splashed it on his face once, twice, three times, trying to shock himself back to reality, to morality, to fear. On the fourth splash, he scrubbed hard, the water turning gray with mascara and dirt.

  On the fifth, he stopped. He just stood there, hands pressed flat against his closed eyes, the water dripping from his chin. The noise in his head quieted. The chaos resolved into a single, clear, terrifying point of convergence.

  Slowly, he lowered his hands. He raised his head and looked into the cracked mirror above the sink.

  The boy who stared back was cleansed of the black streaks, but his eyes were hollow, his face pale. And then, something shifted. The corners of his mouth twitched. They lifted, not into a smile of joy or relief, but into something softer, quieter, and infinitely more chilling. A smile of grim, poetic inevitability.

  The thought was no longer a terrifying possibility. It was a solution. A final, symmetrical end.

  Both of us, the reflection seemed to agree. In the same building.