The crowd hushes as Igor approaches Master Leo Torbit with a gift: the baby crow, wrapped in omen and innocence. Feathers twitch, silence thickens. Leo declines. His displeasure is quiet, precise, unmistakable. The crow blinks. Igor freezes. Something ancient misaligns. This was not rejection alone; it was refusal of timing, meaning, prophecy. Whispers ripple through the onlookers as tension stretches like wire before a storm. What follows will not be polite. It will be symbolic, awkward, revela