[The First Day of Destruction, 18:15] [The Middle Wall — North Gate Plaza]
Torchlight snapped and hissed in the brutal drafts whipping across the North Gate Plaza, casting long, frantic shadows over a sea of condemned humanity. The air tasted of old copper and smoke. At the edge of the horizon, the sky did not merely burn; it bled a bruised, necrotic green that stripped the night of its natural dark. Beneath the chaotic din of a hundred thousand voices, a low, vibrating rumble shuddered through the paving stones, carrying the sickly-sweet, rotten-herb stench of an alchemy gone to hell.
Footsteps, usually a rhythm of city life, had devolved into a frantic sound of rats trapped in a closing barrel.
The Middle Wall loomed ahead, a sheer cliff of unyielding stone, utterly indifferent to the tide of flesh breaking against its base.
Jonas could no longer feel his feet. The cooper was suspended in the crush, a single, agonizing pressure point within a mindless organism of terror. The heat radiating from the bodies packed around him was suffocating, thick with the stench of sour sweat and voided bowels.
"Move! Move, damn you!" a man roared somewhere to his left, the words dissolving into a wet, rattling cough.
"My son!" a woman shrieked, her voice dropping an octave as she was pulled under. "They're trampling my boy! Please! Someone save him!"
"Mama!"
The plea was abruptly silenced. Jonas squeezed his eyes shut. His hands were locked in a desperate grip on the leather belts of the strangers beside him. A sudden, violent surge in the crowd forced a heavy shoulder into his jaw. He bit the inside of his cheek. Hot blood flooded his mouth.
Right next to his ear, a sickening, wet snap echoed over the roar. The man pressed against Jonas's right side went entirely rigid, a collarbone shattered under the immense atmospheric pressure of the mob. The stranger's head lolled, dead before he could even fall, his corpse held upright by the sheer density of the panicked refugees.
"Papa... my leg hurts."
The voice was a fragile whisper against his head. Mina. His six-year-old daughter was perched high on his shoulders, her small, trembling thighs bracketing his neck. Her tiny fingers were woven into his hair, gripping so fiercely it felt as though she might tear the scalp away.
"I know, baby. I know," Jonas gasped, his chest straining against the rusted chainmail of the mercenary crushed in front of him. He snapped his head sideways, fighting the tide to locate his wife. "Elara! Elara, stay close to me!"
"I'm here!" Elara's voice was ragged, stripped of its usual melodic warmth. She was wedged under his left arm, her flour-dusted apron torn and smeared with someone else's blood. She was using her sharp elbows to viciously jab at a burly, wild-eyed blacksmith who was blindly clawing his way forward, tearing at her shawl. "Back off! You're crushing her!"
"There's no room!" the blacksmith spat, flecks of saliva hitting Elara's cheek. His eyes were wide with pure madness. "They aren't opening the gate! Look! The bastards kept the main doors shut!"
Jonas forced his chin up, squinting through the stinging ash raining from the sky. Above the surging heads, the massive iron-reinforced gates of the Middle Wall stood perfectly sealed. Only the tiny wicket gate, a service door barely wide enough for two men to pass shoulder-to-shoulder, was open. Plated guards were dragging people through one by one, holding up lanterns, checking faces, staring into their eyes with naked disgust.
They aren't saving us, Jonas realized, the cold calculation piercing through his panic. They are filtering us. They think we carry the plague.
"If I go back into the fire..."
A hand, slick with blood and sweat, clamped onto Jonas's wrist. It was an older woman, her face bruised and half-hidden by torn gray hair. She was holding up a limp, soot-stained toddler. Her eyes were vacant, utterly hollowed out by fear.
"If I go back to hold them off," she bargained, her voice a reedy hiss, "will you take my grandson? Just through the door. Please. He doesn't weigh much."
Jonas stared at the boy. His own heart screamed to reach out, to take the child, to be the hero from the bedtime stories he told Mina. Just one more. I have strong arms. But his mind saw the brutal physics of the crowd. If he reached down, he would lose his balance. If he fell, Elara and Mina would fall with him, swallowed by the trampling boots.
"I can't," Jonas choked out, hating the sound of his own cowardice. "I'm sorry. I can't."
The woman didn't curse him. She just stared at him. Before the crowd surged again, dragging her and the boy under the churning sea of shoulders.
"Open the gate!" someone screamed from the vanguard. "It's coming! The Green Death is coming! It's burning us alive!"
As if summoned by the wail, a deep tremor ran through the bedrock.
BOOM. 💥💥