nly swarmed past, laughing like windchimes. "Play with us! Play with us!" Their invitation hung in the air, though none glanced back.

Further on, boys clustered around an upright nail, tossing coins. The rules were street-simple: land your halfpenny to claim the pot. As Yvette passed, a copper disk struck true.

"I did it!" A grubby victor punched the air.

Common enough—London's gutters teemed with urchins. But the hairs on Yvette's neck prickled.

Cobblestones clattered. She spun aside as iron crashed down—a flower stand obliterating where she'd stood. "Saint's mercy!" cried onlookers, crossing themselves.

"Toast your health, lad," advised a shaken witness. "Better a whole head than a crown!"

Celestial protection? Yvette's smile felt brittle. These "accidents" tasted orchestrated.

Down a halfpenny, a boy trudged from the game. The clatter of hooves drew her to a hackney carriage—safer than dodging rooftop terrors. But as wheels rolled, children's rhymes pursued:

"Humpty Dumpty had a great fall— All the king's horses couldn't mend him at all!"

The verse still haunted when the carriage lurched. A wheel-spoke snapped. Panicked horses veered, dragging the wreck toward collision. Yvette hauled the driver clear, cushioning their fall with unnatural grace.

Through tears, the man inspected splintered livelihood. Yvette handed him a charity address—her thousand-pound donation to Keagan's refuge should cover repairs. "Saint bless you!" he wept, unaware she'd been the lightning rod.

"Playtime!" The singsong call echoed everywhere and nowhere. Above, sullied clouds brooded—the Angel's hunting grounds.

Ahead loomed dockside hazards: stacked crates, swinging chains. Yvette swerved toward the railyard. Let the entity try its tricks on empty tracks! She memorized train schedules, stepping clear of scheduled thunder.

It worked... until the iron bridge.

"London Bridge is falling down!" Children formed a living archway. Beneath their game, rusted rivets swam in the Thames. Yvette's vision fractured—steel groaning, flesh bursting under collapsing girders...

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She recoiled. A fleeing "bridge" child collided with her knees.

"We playing?" Yvette asked softly.

The boy looked up—and fled screaming. "Cor! His eyes were like... like knife-blades!"

Yvette scanned the fat man’s final confession, her eyes settling on the club’s address.

Come play the game! The childlike voice taunted again, a predatory lure veiled as invitation. Whatever this "game" entailed, the Angel would not be denied.

The Suicide Club lurked near the Bishop’s Crown, not far from where she’d saved Short—and where a banker had leapt to his death. The district reeked of sacrificial intent, a darkened altar for the Angel’s hunger.

As Yvette walked, children’s laughter dogged her steps. "Come play!" they chorused, their chant too synchronized, too hungry. Normal children, perhaps… yet their eyes gleamed with borrowed malice.

She pieced together the Angel’s patterns. The fallen rivet, the shattered axle—calculated probabilities, not miracles. It nudge fate’s threads, fraying a screw here, rusting a joint there. But true power? No. A bridge wouldn’t collapse; that demanded divine wrath, and the Angel was no god.

Then why the drawn-out theater? Why herd victims to the club?

Hydra’s words echoed: "Ritual is an address. Without it, sacrifices go astray."

Suicide as ceremony. Each death, a tailored offering. And she—a fellow occult being—was the grand prize. The Angel would savor her end, hence its contradictions: accidents to pressure her, riddles to tempt her. A predator playing with prey.

Her grip tightened on the pistol hidden in her coat. Steady. Breathe.

The club’s address led to a grimy alley, suffocated by leaning rooftops that smothered the dusk. A rusted sign creaked: The Old Clock Tower. The ghost of a beer mug hinted at its past life.

Inside, a bartender polished glasses, deaf to her footsteps. Yvette’s finger rested on her trigger. One move, and a bullet would pierce the cloth toward his heart.

"Welcome… sir," he droned, lids half-shut, eyeballs rolled back. "Nights belong… to members. Enjoy."

Her nape prickled. Behind her, the door had vanished. Walls boxed her in.

The bartender’s breath hitched—a sleeper’s rhythm. She aimed… but he dissolved. Dust coated the bar. A promotional poster hung askew: Half-Price Drinks for the King’s Birthday – July 21st.

No living monarch claimed that date. This relic was two decades old.

The Angel had conjured a warped replica—a shadow-puppet of the past, threaded into the Veil.

A pencil clattered off a table. Yellowed letters lay beside a brandy glass, its ice long melted. The script bled brown, ink or blood:

*[...Cease this folly. My lineage climbed through that cursed game, but the cost? Ravens feasted on my ancestor’s skull after Cromwell’s fall. When the crown revived, his family swung as traitors. His diary recounts the mob’s cheers as his kin died—the same cheers that once hailed the king’s execution.

Yet they had heirs to spare. You do not. Turn back.

But if you persist, I’ll recite the rites. Pray you choose wisely.]*

Centuries-old treachery. A noble house gambling with occult forces, their rituals now resurrected.

The pencil rolled toward shadowed stairs.

Yvette ascended, the darkness swallowing her whole.