The first Dragon's smile widened, sharp and contemptuous. His voice rang out, cold and absolute, and the words sliced through the plaza like a decree.
"Run, all of you. Run now, for you have been marked for execution."
CP4 standing by the Celestial Dragons pulled out pistols and fired... shots fired into the crowd as 5 civilians fell to the ground with a bullet hole in their skulls.
Silence ruptured into chaos. For a heartbeat the crowd seemed to hang between disbelief and the dawning horror of truth, then sound broke free: screams, frantic shouts, the clatter of stalls overturned as people scrambled. Mothers shoved children into fleeing crowds. Merchants who had laughed a moment ago bolted for alleys and boats. The painted masks of celebration became faces of terror in an instant.
Celestia's hand tightened on Argento's shoulder until knuckles blanched. Veyra's whimper was swallowed by the roar as bodies surged past them, a living tide of fear. Cobblestones became a thunderous percussion under pounding feet; a dozen small fires sparked where lanterns were knocked down.
"Stay low," Celestia hissed, voice hard and urgent. She dragged them farther into the deeper darkness between crates and barrels, moving like someone who had practiced disappearing. Her eyes cut to every opening, every alley, mapping escape routes even as the square dissolved into panic.
Around the edges of the plaza, attendants and enforcers moved with deadly efficiency, lowering nets, closing choke points, setting the first traps. Figures cloaked in authority separated the crowd, herding groups toward makeshift pens and guarded corridors. The Celestial Dragons watched from their platform, amusement flickering across their features as if the proper spectacle had finally arrived.
The first Dragon's eyes glinted with cruel satisfaction as he surveyed the chaos below. "Do you see? This is the order of the Gods," he said, voice calm and icy, almost conversational amidst the screams. "Those who resist, those who do not kneel… they are expendable."
Another Dragon stepped forward, gesturing to the enforcers coordinating below. "Ensure none escape. Let them feel the weight of divine judgment." His words carried the precision of command, and the enforcers moved with deadly efficiency, cutting off alleys and corralling terrified civilians toward cages and guarded zones.
The Dragons remained poised above, expressions a mixture of amusement and disdain, watching their "game" unfold. Every movement, every panicked cry from the plaza below, was a mark of the control they wielded, and their satisfaction was palpable.
Celestia lowered her voice, barely above a whisper. "We move only when the chaos is absolute. Not before. Not until the watchers are distracted. Then… we go for the prizes."
Argento's whisper cut through the silence, small and fierce. "We need to sneak into the castle."
Celestia's head snapped up, eyes like flint. For a raw moment she looked as if she would forbid it outright. Then she swallowed, the decision settling onto her like armor. "Stupid," she breathed once, not to him but to herself, and then, softer, "But if you truly mean it, we do it smart. No heroics. No running into open ground."
Veyra blinked, voice a tiny tremor. "The castle? They will see us. They will..."
Argento leaned forward, voice barely more than a breath against the roar of the square. "Veyra… where else do you think the treasure will be?"
Celestia's jaw tightened. For a heartbeat she looked like she wanted to drag them away, to bury them under crates and never move again. Instead she closed her mouth and nodded once, the motion small but absolute. "If the treasures are in the castle," she said quietly, "that changes everything. Soldiers will be thicker there, but the guards are practiced. They focus on entrances, not cellars and service routes."
Argento swallowed. The plan that had felt brazen at the stalls now sharpened into something surgical. "We don't go for the main hall," he said, voice low, teeth clenched. "We go for the cells below. Valuables get moved through the cellar before they go on the platform. If we can get under the castle, past the provisioning rooms and into the vault, we can be gone before the enforcers notice."
They moved like ghosts, pressed against the castle's shadow as Celestia stepped forward with the confident stride of someone who had practiced disappearing into crowds a thousand times over. Her voice carried just enough to split the small crowd at the service door, a sharp command, a practiced stumble... a moment designed to draw eyes and hands away.
"Go," she breathed to Argento, the single word wrapped in iron and kindness. Veyra's fingers tightened in his palm and he nodded. Celestia pivoted outward, lifting her chin as if she were nothing more than a courtesan asking for passage. The sentries blinked, distracted by the boldness of her approach.
Argento and Veyra slipped through the lane, slipped past the cart piled with sacks, slipped into the thin dark between kitchen and storeroom. The world narrowed to the scrape of their shoes, the smell of smoke and stew, the dull slap of drums from the plaza. They moved faster than his fear, faster than the plan, and the door eased open under Celestia's careful pressure.
Inside the storeroom it smelled of onions and old wood. Argento's chest hammered; he could almost taste the prize. He glanced back toward the service door through the narrow slit in the stacked crates, expecting to see Celestia's silhouette merge with the delivery cart and vanish. Instead, a shape folded like a rag against the cobbles outside.
For a beat his brain refused the truth. Then a flintlock cracked, a single, precise crack and the sound ate up the air. A body slumped. The courtyard below erupted into a sound that shredded him into pieces: a scream that was not Veyra's, the scramble of boots, a cry of outrage.
"No," Argento breathed. He forced himself to the crate's edge and peered out. The figure on the ground was unmistakable from that distance, her coat bunched at the shoulders, her head lolling to one side. Blood darkened the cobbles beneath it. His stomach unclenched and then clenched again as a cold, volcanic grief rose like smoke in his throat. The plan had worked... too well. They had made it in... but his mother... Celestia... was gone.