Damian's eyes burned from the light and his ears rang with a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else.
One moment he'd been standing on the terrace beside Elizabeth and the others.
The next, he was hundreds of meters away, his boots touching ground that should have been solid pavement but was just dust and shattered concrete.
'W-what just happened?'
His vision swam as he tried to focus, tried to understand why the buildings around him had disappeared, turned to powder and ash that floated in the air like snow.
Then he saw them.
Thousands of children from the orphanage, their small faces twisted with terror, some crying and some too shocked to make any sound at all. The staff members clustered around them, trying to shield them with their bodies despite having no idea what they were shielding them from.
Elizabeth knelt a few meters away, blood running from her nose, her purple hair disheveled, her chest heaving as she gasped for air.
