The Broken Halo

"Wind Art. Halo’s Spiral."

Simon held the hand sign before his chest.

Below him, dust moved around a fallen helmet.

It completed one slow circle. Then another.

A demon crawling beneath a cart stopped when the dust brushed his face. He watched a loose ribbon rise from the wet road and begin turning without falling.

The blood rain continued beyond it. So did the war of the dead.

But this was different.

The cart creaked.

"Wait..."

Its wheels rolled sideways.

Simon opened his eyes. Demonic energy passed through his hands and entered the gathering air.

He had built this technique himself.

His previous life had taught him what a storm could do to a fortified city. His Wind affinity let him feel the currents well enough to shape one, while his control supplied the precision needed to keep it together.

He did not simply command the air to spin.

He drew wind upward through the centre, curved it outward, and fed it back around the growing column. Each completed turn strengthened the next. Demonic energy held that circulation together while the surrounding air was pulled into it.

The ribbon disappeared.

Tiles scraped across the nearest roof.

A hanging sign snapped from its chain and circled the rising dust. Then the cart lifted, exposing the demon beneath it.

He dug his claws into the road.

"Help!"

A neighbour reached toward him.

The wind took both.

WHOOOOOOOOOO!

The column rose through the rooftops.

A balcony struck its side and broke apart. Timber and stone climbed around the dark-emerald centre, hiding it behind a spinning wall of debris.

Simon separated his index fingers.

The tornado widened.

Its base spread more than a hundred metres across. Above it, the twisting column climbed nearly a kilometre, its upper reaches spreading over buildings that had not yet felt the pull below.

The front of an inn tore outward.

For a moment, its rooms stood open to the street. Demons huddled behind overturned furniture stared at the storm.

Then the floors beneath them began to lift.

CRAAAAACK!

The building came apart from the roof downward.

Tarvak made a sound inside his sphere.

Simon raised the captive higher and moved him behind the developing storm. He reinforced the sphere’s circulation before fixing it within a quiet pocket of air.

The vessel had to survive.

The city did not.

Simon let the tornado move along its assigned course.

A reserve of demonic energy maintained the circulation after he withdrew his hands. It would not last indefinitely, but he would not need to direct every turn himself.

Nine would be enough to begin.

He had already chosen their starting points- broad junctions, a market, a warehouse quarter, and open spaces among the more distant buildings.

Velmora was too large for him to reach every location from where he stood.

So he vanished and teleported.

A merchant looked up in shock as Simon appeared over the market.

"Blackmoon?!"

The same hand sign formed.

A handful of coins rose from an abandoned stall. They spun around an empty basket, struck one another, and vanished inside a gathering ring of dust.

The merchant turned to run.

The second tornado swallowed his stall before he reached the next building.

Simon teleported again.

The third formed beside a broad road.

The fourth rose among warehouses.

The fifth and sixth began at distant junctions, while the seventh and eighth climbed from opposite sides of a crowded residential quarter.

At each location, the wind offered a few seconds of warning.

A sleeve pulled in the wrong direction.

A shutter banged against its frame.

Someone looked down and saw pebbles circling their boots.

Then the air became a roar.

Simon appeared above the final square.

A group of guards had gathered there, their captain shouting over the hallucinated armies marching through them.

"Stay together! Do not attack anything until-"

Dust touched his cheek.

He looked up.

Simon’s fingers separated.

The ninth tornado rose.

Nine immense tornadoes now stood across Velmora. The narrowest exceeded a hundred metres at its base. Where streets opened into squares, their turning walls spread farther, lifting roofs whole before breaking them against the debris already circling above.

Their shadows crossed the city beneath a sky that still rained blood.

Simon exhaled.

The Miser’s Ring eased the expense of his demonic energy. It did nothing for the concentration required to monitor nine storms while the mask continued feeding fear into Velmora.

An ache settled behind his eyes.

He did not create a tenth because of the mental strain.

Below him, the guard captain drove his shield into the paving stones.

"BEHIND ME!"

His companions crowded into the shelter of his demonic energy.

The wind struck their barrier and flowed around it.

For an instant, they held.

Then a roof beam spun out of the storm and hit from behind.

Three guards fell. The captain turned, his shield tilted, and the tornado drove through the gap.

His next order broke into a scream. He struck the circling debris before his shield hit the ground.

Farther away, a demoness clung to a window ledge while the room behind her emptied into the street.

A bed passed over her head.

She pressed herself against the wall, fingers bleeding against the stone.

"Please! Someone!"

The wall began leaning.

She looked toward the masked figure moving above the roofs.

"I’ll give you everything!"

Simon passed without turning.

The wall vanished into the storm with her still holding it.

At a crossroads, a Greater Demon braced between two pillars and spread his demonic energy over the frightened figures behind him.

The pillars held.

Their foundations did not.

The whole entrance lifted, carrying him upward. A revolving cart struck his legs, and his grip broke.

The demons beneath him scattered.

Half ran toward the imaginary soldiers blocking the street.

The others fled into the real tornado.

There was no moment in which Velmora could understand one horror before another reached it.

A horned giant from the mask’s visions stepped across a roof. The building collapsed beneath a genuine stone slab, and those watching screamed as though the giant had crushed it.

A human warrior raised a broken sword beside a well.

A demon stabbed through him.

The weapon struck someone hiding on the other side.

The wind tore both living figures away while the dead human continued smiling.

"None of this is real!" someone shrieked.

A severed arm struck him across the face.

He fell, tasted blood, and could no longer remember which terror he had meant.

Fire spread from overturned furnaces. One tornado drew the flames upward, wrapping its lower half in burning fragments that scattered across neighbouring roofs.

A bell sounded twice above a distant street.

On the third swing, the tower’s upper floor turned with it.

BOOOOOOM!

Stone poured between the buildings. A real cloud of dust swallowed the phantom armies, but their swords could still be heard inside it.

The storms moved without waiting for Simon to follow.

One curved along an avenue. Another ground through a row of storehouses. Two passed on opposite sides of a broad block, pulling its walls outward until the roofs dropped between them.

Bodies fell from the spinning darkness.

Some struck walls. Others landed upon the rubble, broken but recognisable. Blood ran through cracks beneath the false red rain and soaked the earth exposed where buildings had stood.

Simon returned to the centre.

Tarvak hung where he had left him, alive inside the rotating sphere. His eyes followed a falling figure until it struck the street.

Then he looked at Simon.

There was no accusation left in his face. Only terror.

Simon surveyed the nine storms through the mask.

Still no City Lord.

He summoned the Chaos Blade.

Black steel settled into his right hand, its crimson edge gleaming beneath the blood-filled sky. His white hair stirred once before the air around him became still.

Beyond that quiet space, rooftops revolved. Fires climbed. The living begged while the armies of his memories continued killing.

Simon lowered the sword beside his leg.

Nine tornadoes moved around the city.

At their centre stood one masked figure, untouched by the destruction he had set in motion.

A broken tower hurtled toward him.

He tilted two fingers.

It curved around his body and fell back upon Velmora.

Simon never looked away from the city.