Halvren's first mistake was believing a crowd was the same thing as support.
His second mistake was believing he could "fix" a crisis by making it louder.
By midday, posters bearing his name had appeared as if they'd grown from the walls overnight—bold ink, sanctimonious phrasing, smiling sketches that did him too many favors. The slogans were all the same flavor of heroic nonsense: UNITY, SAFETY, DECISIVE ACTION.
Aiden saw one and felt his stomach turn.
"He's posing like he's already won," Seris muttered.
Liora stared at the same poster with narrowed eyes. "He doesn't even know what he's touching."
Inkaris didn't comment. He watched the street the way a scholar watched an unstable experiment: not with excitement, but with grim interest in what it would reveal.
They tried to keep moving. They tried to stay invisible. They tried, for once, to let the city tear itself apart without placing their hands in the gears.
The city did not permit it.
A messenger found them anyway—breathless, frantic, clutching a stamped notice that looked freshly minted and still warm from the press.
Seris read it first.
Her face went still.
Aiden recognized that stillness now. It wasn't calm. It was the instant before a storm.
"What is it?" he asked.
Seris didn't answer immediately. She simply turned the notice so Aiden could see.
PUBLIC RELIEF DEMONSTRATION.
HOSTED BY LORD HALVREN II.
LOCATION: EASTERN WAREHOUSE CONSOLIDATION DISTRICT.
MANDATORY WATCH ATTENDANCE. CIVILIAN PARTICIPATION ENCOURAGED.
CIVIC OBSERVATION SUBJECT REQUESTED.
Aiden blinked. "He wants me there."
Liora's voice sharpened. "He wants you seen there."
Seris folded the paper with slow, controlled precision. "He's going to use you."
Aiden's throat tightened. "Or accuse me when it goes wrong."
Inkaris spoke at last. "It will go wrong."
They all turned to him.
Inkaris' expression remained unreadable, but his gaze was fixed on the words Eastern Warehouse Consolidation District like they were a noose.
"Those warehouses weren't built for crowds," he continued. "Not for food distribution. Not for speeches. Not for panic."
Aiden swallowed. "Then we stop it."
Seris hesitated—just a fraction. Not because she didn't want to. Because she knew what stopping it meant.
Public. Visible. Dangerous.
Liora nodded anyway. "We have to."
And Aiden—who had spent too many chapters learning that "doing nothing" was still a choice—felt his chest harden with something that wasn't courage so much as refusal.
"Okay," he said. "We go."
---
The warehouse district was already swelling when they arrived.
Guards ringed the perimeter in uneven lines, some wearing city insignia, others wearing nothing but armbands and borrowed authority. The gates were half open, like a mouth deciding whether to bite.
Inside, the warehouses had been transformed into holding pens with temporary fencing, stacked crates, and hurriedly hammered platforms. People milled in tight clusters—families with bags at their feet, older men with eyes like flint, mothers holding children too tightly.
Aiden felt the air thick with it.
Not magic.
Need.
Desire, raw and pressing, layered so densely that it made his skin crawl.
Seris touched his arm briefly. "Keep breathing," she murmured. "Don't listen to the noise in your head."
"It's not in my head," Aiden whispered back.
Liora's jaw clenched. "This feels like a powder keg."
"It is," Inkaris said.
Then Halvren appeared.
He emerged onto the central platform as if stepping onto a theater stage, bright sash across his chest, hair styled into deliberate perfection. He raised both hands dramatically, and the crowd—already primed to believe someone could fix this—quieted in ragged waves.
"My people!" Halvren called, voice booming through a cheap amplification charm that crackled at the edges. "Today, we reclaim order from chaos!"
Aiden felt Seris go rigid beside him.
Halvren continued, "We have suffered uncertainty. We have suffered fear. We have suffered… mysterious incidents!"
A murmur rippled. Some people looked over their shoulders as if expecting a miracle to leap out and bite them.
"And so," Halvren said, smiling too wide, "we will respond with unity and strength. With transparency! With action!"
He gestured grandly toward a line of crates stacked near a warehouse entrance. "Supplies. Food. Relief. A demonstration of what proper authority can accomplish when we stop cowering!"
Aiden saw the crates and frowned.
They were stacked too high. Too tight. The boards looked new, not reinforced. The base crates had been placed on uneven stone.
Someone had arranged them for appearance, not stability.
"Those are going to fall," he muttered.
Seris' eyes narrowed. "That's not the worst part."
Halvren lifted his hands again. "And in the spirit of transparency—"
Aiden's stomach dropped.
"—we have invited the subject of civic concern," Halvren announced brightly, "to stand before you, so you may see with your own eyes what you fear!"
People turned. Heads snapped. Eyes searched.
Aiden felt the attention hit him like a physical shove.
Seris moved instinctively—half a step in front of him.
Halvren's gaze swept the crowd, hunting, then landed on them. His smile sharpened in triumph.
"There!" he declared, pointing. "The anomalous one!"
The crowd surged—not forward exactly, but closer, like a tide pulled by gravity.
Aiden's hands went cold.
He did not climb the platform. He did not move toward Halvren. He simply stood, visible now, and tried not to look like prey.
Halvren's voice sweetened. "Come, boy. Show them you're harmless."
Aiden felt his instincts scream.
Not to attack.
To answer.
To do something. Anything. To respond to the desire pressing against him.
"No," he whispered.
Liora leaned close. "Aiden. Don't."
Seris' voice was tight. "Halvren! This is not procedure. You can't compel a—"
"Procedure?" Halvren laughed, loud and performative. "The Duchess hid behind procedure while people suffered. I will not."
Aiden's heart hammered. "This isn't about helping them," he said, raising his voice. "This is about you."
The crowd reacted—some with shock, some with anger.
Halvren's smile faltered for half a second, then returned brighter, sharper. "And look! He speaks. How fortunate."
Aiden's throat burned. "Don't use them."
Halvren's eyes glittered. "I'm not. I'm saving them."
Then he made his third mistake.
He raised a hand and activated the amplification charm again—pushing it harder, louder, brighter.
The spell crackled.
The air vibrated.
A child screamed, hands over their ears.
And the stacked crates shuddered.
Aiden saw it happen in slow motion: the base crate shifted a fraction; the weight above it leaned; a rope snapped; a plank splintered.
The entire stack began to collapse inward—toward the densest part of the crowd.
"MOVE!" Seris shouted.
Panic exploded.
Not as a roar—panic never starts as a roar. It starts as confusion.
Then someone trips.
Then someone falls.
Then everyone realizes they might be next.
The crowd surged sideways all at once.
Aiden saw a woman go down, crushed by bodies, a child clutched in her arms.
He felt something inside him snap.
Not power.
Resolve.
He ran.
Not toward Halvren. Toward the falling crates. Toward the human knot that would become a stampede.
Seris swore and followed.
Liora followed too—face pale, eyes fierce.
Aiden threw himself forward, hands out, trying to physically brace the first crate as it fell.
It was too heavy.
The crate hit his shoulder and knocked him sideways.
Pain flared.
He didn't care.
He grabbed the plank that had splintered loose and jammed it under the sliding base crate like a lever, muscles shaking. His divine clothing—whatever it truly was—tightened around his body like it was trying to be armor without being asked.
He felt the crowd pressing behind him, bodies moving like a river.
He didn't use a wish.
He used strength and desperation and the fact that he could not stand watching someone die because of someone else's vanity.
"SERIS!" he shouted. "Get them back!"
Seris raised her hands and flung a wave of force—not violent, not lethal, just enough to push the front ranks away from the collapse zone. People stumbled backward, bewildered, then turned and ran the other direction.
Liora grabbed the fallen woman by the shoulders and dragged her free, teeth clenched. She yanked the child up next, sobbing but alive, and shoved them toward open space.
Aiden strained against the crate as another toppled. It clipped his back, sending him sprawling. He rolled, wings flashing faintly—just a ghost of shape—then vanished again as if ashamed to exist.
He got up anyway.
He didn't know how long it lasted. Seconds. Minutes. Forever.
All he knew was that the stampede slowed. The collapse zone became visible. People began to move around it instead of through it.
Someone started yelling instructions.
Someone else started helping.
The disaster didn't end.
But it stopped getting worse.
And that was enough.
For a heartbeat.
---
Halvren stood frozen on the platform, staring down at the chaos he'd created.
His face had gone slack—no longer heroic, no longer smug, just horrified.
His amplification charm sputtered uselessly.
"Stop!" he shouted, as if his voice could unbreak a crowd. "Stop, I said!"
No one listened.
Varros wasn't there. Not in the open.
But somewhere—always somewhere—he was watching.
And this was exactly the kind of messy, human spectacle he could turn into a weapon.
---
When the worst of it passed, the warehouse district was filled with sobbing, shouting, angry voices.
Not dead silence.
Not yet.
But close enough.
Aiden stood shaking, blood on his sleeve from a scraped arm, breathing hard.
Seris grabbed his shoulders. "Are you hurt?"
"I don't—" Aiden started, then realized he genuinely didn't know. Pain was everywhere. It was hard to tell what was his.
Liora looked sick. "This was going to kill people."
Aiden's eyes flicked up to Halvren.
The noble looked like he might vomit.
Good.
Then Aiden's gaze shifted to Inkaris.
Inkaris hadn't moved much during the collapse. He'd watched angles, exits, crowd behavior. He'd stepped in only when he had to—directing a guard here, forcing a gate open there, using words that sounded like authority because they were spoken with infernal certainty.
Now he looked at Aiden with something like grim approval.
"You chose correctly," Inkaris said.
Aiden's voice cracked. "People still got hurt."
"Yes," Inkaris replied. "But fewer."
Aiden swallowed. "And now they saw me."
Inkaris' gaze drifted past him, toward the platform, toward the onlookers, toward the way rumors were already forming.
"Yes," he said again. "Now they saw you."
Aiden's hands trembled. "Varros is going to—"
Inkaris cut him off.
"No," he said quietly.
Aiden blinked. "No?"
Inkaris' eyes were flat, older than the city, colder than the stone beneath their feet. "Varros is not the only one moving."
Aiden's throat tightened. "What do you mean?"
Seris leaned in slightly, listening.
Liora's eyes narrowed. "Inkaris—"
Inkaris held up a hand—not to silence them, but to slow the moment, like a judge controlling a courtroom.
"There is an entity," he said, voice low, "who enjoys turning desire into outcomes."
Aiden stared. "Desire?"
"I am not explaining," Inkaris continued, tone sharpening. "I am naming."
He looked directly at Aiden.
"Caelum."
The name landed like a weight.
Aiden felt it—not in magic, not in power, but in the way the syllables carried implication. Like a title spoken too casually.
"Who is that?" Aiden whispered.
Inkaris' expression did not change. "A problem."
Seris' voice was careful. "Is he involved in this?"
Inkaris glanced toward Halvren, who was being shouted at by his own guards now, flailing helplessly.
"Yes," Inkaris said.
Liora swallowed. "How do you know?"
Inkaris' gaze sharpened. "Because incompetence does not gain that kind of momentum overnight without help."
Aiden's heart pounded. "So… someone granted him something."
Inkaris didn't confirm it outright.
He didn't have to.
Aiden looked back at the crowd—at the injured, the frightened, the furious. At the way some people were now staring at him not with fear, but with something worse:
Expectation.
He felt sick.
"I didn't want to be seen," he whispered.
Seris' hand tightened on his shoulder. "You did what you had to."
Aiden shook his head. "And now they'll decide what it meant."
Inkaris' voice was quiet, almost clinical. "Yes. That is what cities do."
Aiden's eyes burned. "So what do I do now?"
Inkaris looked at him for a long moment.
"Now," he said, "you learn that saving people is not the same as winning."
Aiden's breath hitched.
"And you learn," Inkaris added, "that some beings grant power to fools because the damage is entertaining."
Aiden stared at him. "Caelum…"
Inkaris didn't elaborate.
He simply turned his gaze upward, as if looking through stone and sky to something watching with amused patience.
Then he looked back down at Aiden.
"Stay close," he said. "Not because you're weak."
Aiden swallowed.
"Because you are visible."
---
By nightfall, the story had already changed shape.
Some claimed the "anomalous boy" had caused the collapse.
Some claimed he had saved dozens.
Some claimed the collapse was staged.
Some claimed Halvren had tried to reveal the truth and been sabotaged.
Varros would pick the version that bled best.
And Aureline—somewhere in the upper city—would receive reports that made her stomach turn, because every act of mercy was now a political weapon.
Aiden stood at the edge of the warehouse district, watching people limp away into the night.
He had stopped a disaster.
He had saved strangers.
And he felt no victory at all.
Only the cold realization that the city had just learned where to look when it wanted something.
And somewhere unseen, a game had acquired a new rule:
When the boy moves, the board moves with him.