Magnus tried to stand his ground against the overwhelming might of the crowd surrounding him.
'The square shouldn't be this crowded. There isn't anything major scheduled that I know of.'
That was the first thing Magnus thought as he was swept along with the flow of bodies, pulled off his usual route to the station after work by a tide of people moving in one direction.
The main town square.
It was early evening, the sky still bruised with lingering daylight, and yet the place throbbed with noise.
Of raised voices, grouped murmurs, and the edge of agitation.
Someone grabbed his sleeve. Another bumped his shoulder. Before he could orient himself, Magnus was spat out into the open space at the centre of the square.
A man stood atop a low plinth where a public art piece used to be before funding mysteriously vanished. He was thin, wild-eyed, hair matted with sweat and rain, arms thrown wide like a prophet carved from desperation.
"The end is not coming," the man shouted. "It's already here!"
The crowd murmured. Phones rose. People listened.
That, more than anything, unsettled Magnus.
"The gods are watching again," the man continued, voice cracking but strong. "They never stopped. Most of us just forgot how to see them. The many eyes above, below, and everywhere in between. They are patient, ancient and counting our sins!"
Magnus felt a cold prickle run down his spine.
"This city. No! This world has grown fat and blind!" The man ranted. "The veil is thinning! You feel it, don't you? The cracks in the air. The wrongness. Something old is pressing through, and the one in the darkness will have its revenge on those who wronged them!"
A few people laughed. Nervous, performative. But others nodded. Some whispered agreement. A woman near Magnus clutched a cheap religious charm so tightly her knuckles went white.
'Why are they even listening? This is a man having a psychotic break...'
Normally this sort of thing was ignored, mocked, drowned out by apathy and disbelief.
Not today.
Private security arrived in a tight formation.
Black uniforms, no insignia at all to identify them.
The men and women were too clean. Too coordinated. And arrived too soon.
They moved quickly, hands already reaching for restraints.
"That's enough," one of them barked. "You're coming with us."
The man on the plinth laughed. A harsh, barking sound. "You see? You see? They silence the truth because they serve it too!"
'That kind of confidence and charisma, even when looking like a homeless man, is sort of... admirable.'
The way the security grabbed him, rough and urgent, sent a ripple through the crowd. It didn't look like crowd control. It looked like containment.
And that's when the followers moved.
They surged forward, screaming, fists flying. Someone smashed a bottle. Someone else went down hard, their teeth skittering across the concrete. Magnus was shoved sideways, elbow cracking into his ribs as the square dissolved into chaos.
Shouts. Blood. Panic.
Then the sound cut through everything.
A gunshot.
It was louder than Magnus expected. Not cinematic. Not sharp. Just a brutal, concussive crack that seemed to punch the air out of his lungs.
Everyone went silent.
One of the security officers dropped instantly.
No cry. No stumble.
Just a body hitting the ground wrong.
Standing facing the security force was one of the madman's followers holding a homemade pistol. The end of the barrel smoked.
Magnus stared not at the gunman, but at the body.
Blood spread beneath the man's head, dark and glossy, pooling fast. His eyes were open, glassy, already empty. A smear of bone and red where the bullet had exited.
The first corpse Magnus had ever seen.
His brain didn't freeze, and he didn't scream.
The shooter's eyes went wide and his mouth twisted in something like triumph.
Everything became clear to him.
Standing behind the gunman, Magnus moved.
He didn't think or weigh consequences. He just acted.
Magnus lunged.
He hit the man full-force from behind, driving him into the concrete with all his weight. The impact knocked the wind from both of them. Magnus felt the man's hands, arms, and face scrape against the pavement.
The gun skittered away, clattering uselessly across the stone.
The shooter thrashed, trying to roll, but Magnus was bigger.
"Get the fuck off m-"
Magnus planted a knee into the man's spine, pinned his arm, slammed his face into the ground once.
Hard.
"Don't move," Magnus growled, voice shaking with adrenaline and horror.
The man sobbed. Then went limp. He stopped resisting.
Around them, the fight collapsed into noise and retreat. Sirens wailed somewhere distant. The remaining followers scattered like startled birds, dragging the screaming prophet with them into the maze of streets.
Security swarmed in seconds later, weapons raised, hands yanking Magnus back.
"It's him! He tackled him!" someone shouted.
The officers looked at the disarmed shooter, the dead colleague on the ground, then back at Magnus.
One of them clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You saved lives," he said, voice tight. "Thank you."
Their leader lingered longer, eyes hard, appraising. "That was brave," he said. "And stupid. Don't do something like that again if you value your life. Even if you stopped him, people saw your face. Don't become a target just because you want to be a hero."
Magnus nodded numbly.
He didn't remember the rest clearly. Or, at least that's what he told himself. He just let the numbness take over.
Statements. Medics. The body being covered. The square slowly emptying, scrubbed of meaning and blood by procedure, tape, and scrubbing.
On the train home, his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
He stared at his reflection in the window, at the ghost of himself overlaid with the dark rush of the tunnel, and tried to understand the day.
A madman preaching gods and endings. A madman with the charisma to enthrall hundreds of bystanders.
People listening.
A gun fired in broad daylight.
And himself, diving into violence without hesitation.
Something that was so unlike him it made his skin crawl to think about.
'If I died, Lazlo would have starved at the apartment...'
Magnus perished the thought and considered making a friend who would be willing to look after Lazlo if he did somehow die.
He thought about the words of the madman.
"The veil is thinning! The wrongness." Magnus sighed. "Wrongness is all I've felt since playing that stupid game."
The world felt thinner somehow. Like something had been peeled back, just a little.
Just enough.
"I don't know what it is, but maybe I can feel what that lunatic was spouting." He mumbled while looking at a news article with his face already plastered all over it.
Whatever was coming, whatever the man had been screaming about, it didn't sound like madness anymore.
And that scared Magnus more than the blood on the pavement and a corpse ever could.