Eighty thousand people.
Gone.
Cassius walked faster, his composure intact but his mind running calculations at full speed. He checked streets, checked buildings, checked alleys, checked every space his senses could reach.
No bodies. No blood. No signs of violence. No evidence of disease or plague.
No footprints leading out of the city. No cart tracks suggesting mass evacuation. No discarded belongings along the roads. Nothing that said people left here.
Just absence. Clean, total, impossible absence.
He'd been inside the city for twenty minutes when one of Loki's fighters — a young demon named Reth who handled scouts' assessments — found him near the central plaza.
