Page 67 - DivineSparkRisingFinal

Nicholas Boothman
“Exactly,” she said. “Whoever carries that name
doesn’t just erase words. They erase the people
who speak them. They steal symbols, twist their
meaning, and turn them back on us. Aleph should
mean a beginning. In their hands, it means an
ending.”
“And endings,” Henry said, “have a way of
starting over.”
They passed a row of cafés, plates clinking,
tourists laughing. The city carried on, oblivious. Yet
Henry felt the air thin, as if a shadow had slipped
into step behind them.
“They know we’re here,” Carolina whispered.
“And now Aleph does too.”
But she wasn’t afraid. She was angry. “How do
you hide a word that can wake the world?” she
said. “You bury it in plain sight.”
They turned a corner and stepped into the
square. A musician was packing up his guitar by
the fountain. As he bent to coil a cable, Henry
caught the faint scrawl in white paint on the stone
edge: Chega de Fingir, the letters half-faded but
unmistakable, curling beneath a rough spiral
symbol. He kept walking, but the words stayed
with him.
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