The square was no longer a celebration—it was a nightmare.
Tables lay overturned, their contents scattered and smashed. Banners, once vibrant, were now torn and trampled underfoot.
Mana-lanterns flickered erratically or lay shattered on the ground, casting a fractured, surreal light over the chaos.
Civilians screamed as they fled in all directions, some tripping over each other, others clutching their children and dragging them through the madness.
And at the heart of it—
Kael stopped cold.
People were attacking each other. Not in drunken brawls or street disputes, but violently, ferally. Their faces were pale and twitching, their eyes glazed with pulsing rings of blue and black. They moved with jerky, unnatural motions, lashing out at anything and everything near them—friend, stranger, even family.
One older man in merchant robes had collapsed, shielding his head, as a younger woman with shriveled fingers wrapped in leaking black tendrils of mana clawed at the air above him.
