While the battle in the castle was reaching its conclusion, the Hiyori Nightclub had taken on a very different quality.
The main dance floor on the first level had been cleared. The people who had been brought here against their will, human and beast-kin both, were seated on the floor in concentric rings, arranged outward from the center according to the severity of what had been done to them.
The outer ring had received the least damage. Mostly young men and women who had arrived more recently, their collars not yet triggered, the sacrifice process not yet underway on their bodies.
They sat with expressions divided between confusion and fear, watching the old man who was pacing back and forth near the inner ring's edge.
Archbishop Michelle stood at the boundary between the rings, holding a magic circle open, his focus directed inward toward the more severely affected.
