Chaos MAGIC

After Zerzura arriving Zurich – Christmas Eve (Book VIII shard)

Snow makes a liar of this city. It softens the glass edges, dusts the tramlines, pretends that money, secrecy, and neatly laundered wars can be made pure under a thin white veil. Christmas lights drip from Bahnhofstrasse like carefully managed miracles; somewhere, a choir mouths peace on earth in three languages at once.​

From the tarmac of the private strip, Zurich looks precise, almost innocent. From here, it’s just another postcard. From where we’re heading, it’s a vault with arteries, and we’ve come to cut a few.​

Tarmo steps down first, boots crunching on cleared ice, breath a pale ghost in the floodlights. Mikael follows, expression carved out of old stone and classified files. Wolfgang drops lightly after them, wolf in a winter coat, gaze already tracking shadows, not lights. I bring up the rear, the cold biting through my coat, the black heron humming faintly against my skin like a second pulse. No nativity scene can hide the fact that we’re here for a different kind of birth.​

“Nice,” Tarmo mutters, taking in the runway, the sleek cars waiting, the distant glitter of Christmas markets. “Even their capitalism wears fairy lights.”

“Giants like camouflage,” I answer. “Tinsel is cheaper than truth.”

Wolfgang’s mouth quirks. “Fairy lights are still lights,” he says. “They just make it easier to see what you’re cutting.”

He moves ahead with Mikael, the two of them falling into that easy, lethal parallel line—one reading structures, the other reading scent and intent in every passing silhouette. Above us, a plane lifts into the dark, carrying other people home. We walk toward the city instead.

There will be carols tonight, and champagne, and discreet midnight mass for the respectable sinners. Somewhere beneath it all, Amellal Trust will hum with data, oil, weapons, debts—every vein of the crude power that has bled through centuries into this neat little hub.​

Let them light their trees and polish their glass. We didn’t come for the holiday. We came for the moment the lights flicker, and the giants realize the story on their balance sheets has started to write back.

I.Ph.

Author’s Note

The COMC Files does not stop in Iran or on the African continent.

Beyond this arc, three books are already written—Quantum Jump, Quantum Magic, and Chaos Magic—still waiting for their full edit, but very much alive on the page.

If you’re ready for the voyage of your life, climb aboard and stay on the road; this story was never meant to walk—it was built to run.

I.Ph.