Water droplets began to fill the air like exquisite glass. They caught the light, refracting it into a brilliant spectrum of colors. Slowly, some of the droplets merged, forming a large, shimmering sphere of water with fluid shapes dancing at its core—butterflies, blooming flowers, and shifting silhouettes.
The crowd was unable to contain themselves. A collective gasp of wonder rippled through them, followed by thunderous applause and hushed murmurs of disbelief. Everyone was mesmerized.
But… something felt off.
"That is on another level," a woman marveled, her voice breathless with awe. "I have never seen anything like this before." She reached out, extending a finger to graze one of the floating spheres. "Just... wow."
Then, an amplified voice boomed throughout the square.
"A game!" the voice began, smooth, almost amused. "A simple game—whoever answers correctly gets the boooon." he said playfully.
A quiet laugh followed, edged with something unhinged.
"Tell me… what is justice?"
The droplets quivered faintly, and the entire crowd fell silent—caught between awe and unease. It seemed I wasn't the only one who felt that something was wrong.
"Is this what they call Justice?" he continued. "The comfort you live in? The abundance? The luxury of breathing without fear?"
His tone sharpened.
"While in Aris… people starve. They rot. They die in silence, choked by disease and hunger."
Another voice joined—colder, steadier, carrying a restrained madness.
"We were there. We lived it. We watched everyone we loved disappear—one by one—claimed by the plague. We were meant to disappear with them… when it claimed us."
A pause.
"Are we lucky… or cursed to wake and find that everyone we have ever loved is dead?"
His voice trembled, lowering dangerously, as if he were holding something back—something close to breaking, to crying.
"And after all that agony," he continued, "your people abducted us. Locked us in laboratories like animals… to study what had changed in our very nature—greedy for what we have, yet unwilling to pay the price to obtain it."
"And yet here you are," the first voice resumed, almost mocking, "untouched. Living your lives in indulgence, surrounded by everything you could ever desire."
"Tell me," the second voice pressed, "how do you call this justice?"
The water shifted, its surface rippling unnaturally.
"Zenon was divided under the name of liberty," the first voice said. "A beautiful lie. A promise that everything would be shared equally after the civil war."
Enforcers began to appear from every corner, armed with radiant guns and rifles, their presence cutting through the crowd like a silent warning.
"In truth," the second continued, "Aris was given less—less resources, less protection… and more disease. More suffering. More death."
A sharp, humorless laugh.
"Do you even know why the forty-year civil war was fought?" he asked viciously. "Justice. Freedom."
"To give our people happiness," he continued, his voice rising, "to let them sleep with hope—to wake up with a reason to believe in tomorrow!"
The voices overlapped now, blending into something distorted.
"You built your paradise on our graves."
A low, unstable laugh echoed.
"And now—"
The floating water pulsed in the air. People retreated and shivered.
And everything exploded into chaos.
"It is time," they said in unison, "to take back what was ours from the very beginning."
Water hardened mid-flight, slicing through flesh like glass. A man beside me barely had time to turn before a shard drove straight through his throat. Blood sprayed in a violent arc, staining the cobblestones.
Screams erupted—raw, animalistic.
Bodies collided, people trampling one another in blind panic. The once vibrant square collapsed into chaos, color drowning in red.
More droplets detonated above us.
A woman reached for her child—too slow. A cluster of shards tore through her arm, ripping it open as she collapsed, her scream dissolving into choking sobs.
I moved and maneuvered.
Left. Duck. Turn.
One, two. One, two. Like a dance—at the worst possible moment. I had always found a strange beauty in it, like art unfolding in the heart of chaos. Things like this never truly scared me. My heartbeat remained steady, calm. While I searched for a safe place to watch.
A blade of water grazed my shoulder, slicing through fabric and skin. Heat flared instantly, sharp and alive. I clenched my teeth and pushed forward.
The ground was no longer stable.
Water pooled, then froze.
Ice spread in jagged veins across the stone, creeping over boots, locking people in place. Someone screamed as their legs froze mid-step—then shattered under the weight of the crowd crushing into them.
I skidded, nearly losing my footing.
Damn it—The fucking Elite!
Another volley came.
I dropped low, rolling beneath a storm of glinting shards. They slammed into the wall behind me with sickening force, embedding deep into iron and stone.
I sucked in a breath, forcing my vision to steady despite the chaos tearing around me.
Think.
A burst of movement caught my eye—the Enforcers pushing through the crowd, their radiant rifles firing in controlled bursts. Bolts of searing light tore through the air, striking the suspended water—but it only split, multiplied, reshaped.
A sharp crack echoed overhead.
I looked up.
The massive sphere above had begun to collapse inward, compressing, twisting—its surface rippling violently.
No—
I moved before the thought could finish.
The sphere imploded before it could reach me.
My ears rang.
For a second, everything went dull. Muted.
Then the sound rushed back all at once—screams, gunfire, the sickening crack of bone.
I pushed myself up, breath ragged.
A figure dropped from above.
One of them.
He landed lightly atop a broken pole, water spiraling around his arm like a living thing. His mask gleamed under the fractured lights, tilted slightly as if amused.
Watching.
Hunting.
My fingers tightened around the dagger at my side.
Bad idea. Worse to hesitate.
Ice snapped. I ran. I dived into the heart of the riot, turning the carnage into my greatest advantage. Between the screams and the rising smoke. I moved like a shadow through the wreckage. For the first time in years, the odds felt like they were finally shifting in my favor.