Chaos has a momentum. It flows toward exits, towards light, towards the illusion of safety. For a few frantic minutes, that momentum carried the stampede through the lecture hall's great doors, out into the sun-shocked courtyard. Screams echoed through the Academy's halls, a virus of panic spreading from the epicenter.
I stood against that tide, a stone in the stream. My shouts had created a fragile order—a ragged line of the able-bodied helping the injured along the wall, away from the deadly crush at the doors. However, the dust-choked hall drew my eyes and everyone else's back to the abyss. The groaning had subsided into an awful, watchful silence, broken only by the faint, ghostly cries drifting up from the blackness.
Then, the world broke again.
