Westhaven - Eastern City Limits, Continuing
The waiting stretched longer than John had anticipated. Helena and Kiran should have returned by now—the monastery was only three kilometers into the city, maybe twenty minutes each way even accounting for crowded streets and civilian panic. They'd been gone nearly an hour.
John's ki perception tracked the chaos intensifying rather than subsiding. The smoke patterns suggested multiple fires burning simultaneously across different districts. Mana signatures moved with increasing desperation—not just panic now but genuine fear, the kind that came when people recognized coordinated attack rather than isolated incident. The distinctive energy patterns of combat Uncos being deployed aggressively multiplied, suggesting guard forces were engaging with organized resistance rather than simply responding to property damage.
