"Watch where you're standing, you oaf. Some of us have actual work to do."
He turned, his face a mask of slow-burning shock that quickly kindled into fury. "What did you say to me, you little rat?"
I met his gaze, my expression one of pure, arrogant dismissal. "I said move. Or are your ears as useless as the rest of you? No wonder you ended up here with nothing."
I saw the exact moment the last of his restraint snapped. It was in the way his jaw clenched, the way the hollows in his eyes filled with a raw, blinding fire. "My family is dead," he growled, the words ripped from somewhere deep and broken inside him. "You spoiled, pious little—"
"Maybe they got tired of you," I cut in, my voice a cold, sharp blade. My heart was hammering, a frantic drum against my ribs. This was cruel. This was monstrous. But it was necessary. "Maybe they saw you for the worthless burden you are and found a quicker way out."
With a roar that was half anguish, half pure rage, he lunged at me. I was ready for it, sidestepping just enough so his grasping hand only caught my tunic, tearing the fabric. The sound was like a starting pistol.
"Hey! Back off!" A guard—one of the younger ones whose frustration I'd been stoking for days—was there in an instant, shoving the big man back. He saw the torn cloth, saw me—an acolyte, one of theirs—being attacked.
"He attacked me!" I said, my voice pitched high with feigned shock and indignation. "He just snapped!"
The big man wasn't listening. His world had narrowed to the guard and the insult. He swung, a wild, powerful punch that caught the guard on the shoulder, spinning him around.
That was all it took.
Another guard, seeing his comrade struck, waded in with a shout. A friend of the big man, seeing him set upon, threw himself into the fray. A woman screamed. A priest tried to intervene and was knocked aside.
It wasn't a fight anymore. It was an explosion.
Weeks of hunger, of terror, of watching the light die in their saint's eyes, all of it erupted at once. It was a dam breaking. Fists flew. A bench was overturned. The air filled with shouts, curses, the raw, animal sounds of a crowd tearing itself apart.
I stumbled back from the epicenter, my chest heaving. The chaos I'd orchestrated roared around me, a terrifying, living thing. I had wanted a spark. I had created a wildfire.
The guards, outnumbered and panicking, fought to subdue the riot. The refugees, a wave of unleashed desperation, fought back. This was the culmination. Not of my careful whispers, but of their pain. And I had been the one to finally, decisively, light the match.
A guard, his own frustration pushed to the limit, shoved someone back. "You'll show respect!"
It wasn't a debate anymore. It was a spark hitting gunpowder.
A fist flew. A scream ripped through the hall. The scene erupted into chaos. The ruffians, their fear transmuted into blinding rage, lunged. The guards, their discipline shattered by days of pent-up anxiety and my careful manipulation, met them with equal fury. It was no longer a unified community facing a threat. It was a brawl, a schism, a civil war contained inside a single temple. There would be bloodshed, but relatively few casualties I knew. Despite their tensions, the guards were well trained and diligent, even if lacking actual experience. They knew to hold back, to subdue rather than kill or maim.
I stood back, my heart hammering against my ribs, the taste of ash in my mouth. I'd done it. I'd shattered Theron's peace. The path of passive endurance was gone, burned away in the fire I'd lit.
Now, we would either forge a will to fight in this chaos, or we would all tear each other apart before the first monster ever reached our gate. I had gambled everything on the former, and as I watched men I'd eaten beside bloody each other's noses, I was terrified I'd chosen wrong.
'I wonder if this is how Nephis felt, watching Bright Castle tear itself apart? No, that crazy bitch probably enjoyed it. If she felt anything at all. Gods, what did Sunny ever see in that woman?!'