POV: RENATA SILVEIRA.
The classroom was practically full.
Not full in the traditional, chaotic sense of a school break, with bodies bumping into one another and voices competing for acoustic dominance, but filled with a human density that seemed to limit how much oxygen was available.
Small groups were scattered like islands of anxiety in an ocean of gray concrete.
Some were sitting on the cold floor, hugging their knees; others leaned against the peeling walls, their gaze lost somewhere on the moisture-stained ceiling.
There were improvised chairs, dragged together to form several small clusters.
The ambient sound was a low, fragmented, disconnected murmur.
Urgent whispers, nervous laughs that died before finishing, and the irritating sound of sneaker soles squeaking against the floor.
It felt like everyone there was engaged in a collective performance, desperately trying to pretend everything was normal while nervousness seeped through the cracks of their social masks.
It felt like we were in a play, where we had to stay in character after an incident.
And we were barely managing to fake it properly.
Some people laughed too loudly, shrill laughter that sounded almost hysterical, clashing with the silent gravity of the moment.
Others spoke too softly, barely moving their lips, as if they were afraid that raising their voices might attract some invisible entity.
The balance was strange, fragile, like a violin string stretched to its limit, about to snap and whip the face of anyone nearby.
I sat near the back wall, seeking solidity, something firm to lean on for a moment of relief.
My eyes swept the perimeter, analyzing every face, every movement.
The fingers of my right hand tapped rhythmically against the side of my thigh, a nervous tic, a silent drumbeat I only noticed once I was already halfway through the rhythm.
I took a deep breath, smelling dust, cheap floor wax, and the metallic, sour odor of cold sweat.
I breathed in again, trying to force air into lungs that felt like they had shrunk.
People were still feeling sick. And that bothered me the most.
It wasn't something generalized, like a virus or mass food poisoning, it was visible and disturbingly specific.
A girl sitting a few meters from me, near the erased blackboard that hadn't been used in ages, was breathing far too fast.
Her chest rose and fell at an accelerated pace.
Her hands shook violently in her lap, fingers twisting as if she were trying to grab something invisible.
A friend held her shoulders tightly, murmuring words of comfort that got lost in the ambient noise, but the friend's expression wasn't comforting; it contained terror.
Farther to the right, a boy was leaning against an improvised desk.
His face was pale, drained of all color, like melted wax.
His eyes were glazed over, pupils dilated, fixed on an empty point in space, as if he were watching a horror movie that existed only in his mind.
He was visibly struggling to stay conscious, his head lolling forward and being jerked back in rhythmic spasms.
That wasn't normal.
Not like that. Not at a school book fair.
The air in the room felt heavy, dense, almost liquid.
It wasn't hot, actually, there was a cold draft left over from the rain, which was now easing under the still-cloudy sky.
I swallowed hard, my throat feeling raw.
My mind, treacherous and tireless, returned to what had happened earlier, rewinding recent memories like an old tape.
The fair. The book stalls. The opening moments of the event.
And that's when a thought hit me.
'Helena must be out of her damn mind right now…'
After what happened in the library weeks ago, that supernatural mess, the supposed explosion, the sadness stamped on her face, the last thing she needed was another bizarre event to deal with.
She seemed like a lightning rod for the absurd.
I knew that look of hers all too well when things started going off the rails.
The way her eyes darted from side to side, searching for escape routes, the way she lifted her chin, pretending to have courage she didn't feel.
She and her habit of pretending everything was fine, keeping that fake smile that never reached her eyes while she was clearly falling apart inside.
She had gone to get some water.
Said she needed to cool off, wash her face.
I nodded, pretending to agree, respecting her space.
I should have gone with her. I should have made up an excuse, saying I was thirsty too. anything.
I sighed softly, letting the tension ease for a moment.
'It's just water.'
Trying to convince my paranoid brain.
'It's just water. No big deal. Right? What could happen in five minutes?'
But logic didn't work when intuition was screaming.
My body moved before I could rationalize or argue with myself.
Anxiety turned into kinetic energy.
I placed my hands on the cold floor and stood up slowly, feeling my joints protest.
I ignored the light tingling in my legs from sitting in the same position for too long.
I took one last look around the room, a panoramic sweep, as if trying to memorize that strange scene in case I needed to describe it to the police or a doctor later.
The pale boy now had his head resting on the desk.
The hyperventilating girl seemed calmer, but now she was silently crying.
None of it made sense. And I wasn't going to stay there waiting to find out the punchline.
I started walking between groups of students, stepping around outstretched legs and backpacks thrown on the floor.
Each step sounded too loud in my ears, like a drum echoing inside a cave, even though I knew that, amid the room's general noise, I was quiet.
The door was only a few meters away.
When I reached for the handle, I stretched out my hand to push the heavy wooden do—
"AAAAAH!"
The scream didn't just sound, it exploded in the air.
It was a visceral, primitive sound, tearing through the stifling atmosphere like a serrated knife cutting fabric.
It wasn't a short, sharp scream of surprise. It was a scream of pure horror, continuous, born from the depths of someone's throat as they watched hell open up.
My body reacted before my mind processed it.
I misstepped, tripping over my own left foot, my heart instantly racing as if it wanted to leap out of my throat and escape on its own.
For a fraction of a second, I felt my weight tilt too far forward, gravity pulling me toward an inevitable face-first fall onto the dirty floor.
The world spun.
But I managed to steady myself at the last instant, in a desperate reflex, slamming my right hand against the side wall to regain balance.
The palm of my hand burned against the rough plaster.
"Damn it…" I muttered, breathing hard, eyes wide.
I turned toward the source of the sound, rotating my body with my back still pressed to the wall.
It was a group of girls from the front row, sitting together in a circle, a little farther from the door, near the closed windows.
One of them was in the center. And the sight was terrifying.
Her body was rigid, stiff as a board, the muscles in her neck bulging beneath pale skin.
Her eyes were wide in a way that didn't seem human, much less conscious.
The iris looked like it had been swallowed by the pupil or rolled back, leaving only milky white and red veins visible.
Her mouth was gaping, frozen in a silent "O" after the scream, as if she wanted to keep talking or screaming but her vocal cords had been cut.
"Is-Is everything okay? Júlia?" one of her friends asked, kneeling beside her, her voice shaking so badly the words came out broken, stuttering.
The friend's hand hovered over the rigid girl's shoulder, afraid to touch her.
The girl, Júlia, didn't respond. She didn't even blink.
Instead, the tension holding her body vanished instantly. Like someone had cut a marionette's strings.
Her body collapsed all at once.
She let out another sound, a short, high-pitched, strangled scream, and then fainted. Her dead weight pitched forward toward the hard floor.
The other girls moved in panic, a tangle of arms trying to catch her before her head hit the concrete.
"Hey! Hey, hold her! Watch her head!" someone shouted, their voice shrill with panic.
"Call someone! Fast! She's not breathing right!"
The entire room froze for a second, all eyes locked on the scene.
The earlier murmur was replaced by stunned silence, immediately followed by an explosion of voices.
I stood still for a second too long, unable to move my feet.
That… that wasn't just an ordinary fainting spell.
I'd seen people pass out from low blood pressure or heat.
This wasn't that. The way she screamed, like something was being ripped out of her.
The empty, soulless look before she fell.
A cold, cutting shiver ran down my spine.
A terrible sense of déjà vu hit me.
'It's like that bo—'
I opened my mouth to warn them, to scream for them to back away, but before any sound came out.
BANG!
The sound sliced through the air like a guillotine blade.
Loud. Sharp. Unmistakably metallic and explosive.
A gunshot.
There was no mistaking it for a firecracker or a book hitting the floor.
The blast echoed off the school walls, reverberating in everyone's chest, a sonic shockwave that made the windowpanes vibrate slightly.
For an instant, time seemed to stretch. The entire world froze in a still frame of horror.
No one breathed. No one moved.
My heart, already racing, skipped a beat and then came back with painful force, slamming against my ribs like a caged animal.
"W-what the hell was that?!" someone said from the back of the room, their voice breaking halfway through.
Panic was about to set in, but before I could even process the logistics of what was happening.
Who has a gun at school? Where did the shot come from? Are we safe here?
It wasn't sound. It didn't smell. It was pressure.
A sudden, crushing pressure, as if the ceiling had dropped a meter or the atmospheric pressure inside the room had tripled in a millisecond.
The air felt like it had turned into gelatin.
My ears popped painfully, like descending a mountain road at high speed, and a sharp ringing filled my hearing.
My eyes were drawn back, unwillingly, magnetically, to the girl who had fainted, Júlia.
She… was glowing.
Not literally, not like a lamp or a camera flash. It was worse. It was a visual distortion.
The air around her inert body seemed to vibrate, to ripple, like heat rising off asphalt on a summer day, warping whatever was behind her.
There was a subtle aura, a sickly, purplish, pulsating luminescence emanating from her skin.
Her marks were activating!
"This… this is energy…" I murmured, the words coming out as a hoarse whisper, more to myself than anyone else.
I recognized it. I'd seen it before, but never this strong, never this raw.
She was channeling.
But not consciously. It was like a gas leak, a rupture in a high-pressure tank.
Magical energy was leaking out of her, uncontrolled, chaotic, flooding the room and contaminating everything it touched.
In seconds, the effect spread like an invisible shockwave.
A boy near the door, the first to be hit by the wave of distortion. clapped a hand over his mouth violently.
He doubled over and vomited on the floor, the acidic, gurgling sound prompting a chorus of gagging and disgusted screams from nearby students.
The smell of bile instantly mixed with the heavy air.
Another student, a large and athletic guy who had looked unshakeable minutes earlier, dropped to his knees, clutching his head with both hands and screaming that something was burning his brain.
He broke out in a cold sweat, thick drops running down his forehead.
A girl in the opposite corner started laughing. Far too loudly.
A broken, manic laugh, devoid of joy, rising and falling in strange pitches.
She stared at her own hands as if they were a monster's claws, laughing at something only she could see.
The sound was completely wrong for the situation, it was the soundtrack of madness.
Everyone started shaking violently.
"What's happening?!" the first boy cried, curled into a fetal position. "Make it stop! Make it stop!"
His wrists began to tremble… and after a few seconds, a purple light started to emanate from his marks.
Then came the aggression.
The energy didn't seem to respond to its bearer's will, it seemed feral. As if it wanted to break free and run.
Without warning, one student shoved another with absurd, disproportionate force, sending him flying backward to slam into the corner of a table.
The sound of bone hitting wood was nauseating.
A chair was hurled across the room, smashing into the blackboard and exploding into splinters of wood and metal.
Screams overlapped, confused, desperate. It was pandemonium.
The room, which had once been a refuge of controlled anxiety, turned into absolute, primitive chaos in a matter of seconds.
Social barriers had melted away.
"Get out! Get out of here!" someone yelled near the window, trying uselessly to open it.
I backed up, my back hitting the wall again, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.
My eyes swept over the apocalyptic scene.
My analytical mind tried to find a pattern, a solution, however there was only one logical conclusion: get out. Now.
There was no way to understand the complexity of the magical phenomenon at that moment.
No way to help thirty people losing control at the same time.
This was beyond anything normal, beyond my capacity to contain.
If I stayed, I'd be swallowed by that madness or beaten by someone out of their mind.
And I needed to find Helena.
If this was happening here, it could be happening in the hallway too.
I turned to run for the door, seizing an opening in the writhing crowd.
That's when I felt something tear through the air beside me.
A violent displacement of wind.
A girl, uniform disheveled, hair covering half her face, burst out of the chaos.
Her eyes were bloodshot, red as if the vessels had burst, and her expression was twisted into a grotesque mix of excruciating pain and murderous fury.
She didn't look at me like she recognized me; she looked at me like an obstacle to be destroyed.
She charged straight at me, a guttural growl escaping her lips.
"Hey!" I shouted, raising my hands, more out of defensive reflex than any combat strategy.
She didn't respond. There was no one home behind those eyes.
The impact came too fast.
I tried to twist away, but her shoulder slammed into my chest with the force of a battering ram.
She was smaller than me, but the strength… The strength wasn't natural.
I was thrown backward, my feet losing traction on the waxed floor.
I hit the ground hard, landing seated, the impact sending a shock up my spine to my neck.
The air burst from my lungs in a painful "oof."
"Fuck…" I forced the word out, trying to catch my breath as my vision blurred for a moment.
The taste of blood filled my mouth where I'd bitten my tongue.
She didn't give me time to recover.
She came again.
Her movements were erratic, spasmodic, like a glitching video, but they were fast and lethal.
She lunged at me, hands outstretched like claws, aiming for my neck or face.
She couldn't see properly. she was attacking blurs.
I rolled aside at the last instant, survival instinct screaming louder than the pain in my back.
I felt the wind of her strike pass where my head had been seconds earlier. Her nails scraped against the linoleum, leaving white marks.
In her hands, energy claws formed, probably the result of an activated mark.
I staggered to my feet, using the wall for support, instinct finally taking full control over fear.
I wasn't a professional fighter, but I knew that if I stayed on the ground, I'd be trampled.
"Stop!" I shouted, my voice hoarse but commanding. "You're hurting everyone! You're going to get hurt!"
No response. Just a low, animalistic snarl.
She turned toward me, teeth bared, saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth.
She charged again, blind with magic-induced fury.
This time, I was ready. Or as ready as one can be in a situation like this.
When she threw her right arm in a clumsy punch, I dodged left.
I grabbed her arm by reflex, trying to restrain her—but it was like trying to hold back a hydraulic piston.
I felt brute strength that didn't match that girl's slender body. My fingers slipped on her sweat.
I was dragged along by her momentum, losing my balance again. My hip slammed into the side of a wooden chair.
The chair shattered with a sharp crack, and pain exploded in my side.
"Damn it!" I growled through the pain, anger starting to mix with fear. I shoved her with my shoulder, using my body weight to create distance.
The shove worked just enough to make her stumble back two steps, tripping over the chair's debris.
I seized a fraction of a second. I couldn't fight this. Not here, not now. I needed space.
I broke free of her reach and sprinted for the exit, dodging two other students wrestling on the floor amid torn backpacks.
She came after me. I could hear her heavy footsteps, the sound of wood breaking and tables overturning echoing behind me like an avalanche.
I reached the door. The handle was slick with sweat from other hands that had tried to open it.
I twisted it hard and shoved it with my shoulder.
I almost tripped as I burst out into the courtyard.
The scene changed abruptly. I went from the classroom's dimness to the gray, diffuse light of an overcast day.
Cold air hit my face, carrying the smell of rain and wet earth, but it brought no relief.
The chaos wasn't confined to the classroom. The courtyard was plunged into generalized disorder.
People were running in all directions; some still seemed to have control of their senses and tried to flee or break up fights unfolding among the out-of-control students.
The door slammed behind me, but didn't close.
The girl followed immediately, bursting through like a bull in an arena. She paused for a second, eyes scanning the open courtyard until they locked onto me.
I was the only possible target. The sole focus for that supernatural rage.
She was breathing hard, the sound ragged, but she didn't look tired. She looked energized by her own madness.
I stepped back two paces, raising my fists to face level, a defensive stance I'd learned during lessons with Miguel.
My legs trembled, but I forced them to stay firm.
"Alright…" I muttered through clenched teeth, feeling the throbbing in my hip and the burn in my scraped hand.
Adrenaline now surged hot through my veins, muting panic and sharpening my senses.
The world seemed clearer. Slower.
"So that's how it's going to be…"
I braced myself, bending my knees.
She let out a piercing scream and ran at me, no technique, just pure fury.
That insane day was far from over…