Chapter 72: Harmony
"You're saying they're under a spell?"
Caelan rubbed his thumb hard against his temple, feeling another throbbing headache build right behind his eyes.
Nothing was going right today. Not a single thing.
"I'm not just making it up!" Nuri insisted, leaning over the stone railing to point down at the front rank. "Look at their eyes! There's a weird, cloudy haze over them. Half of them aren't even looking at us, they're staring through us!"
Caelan squinted down through the sheets of rain.
Nuri wasn't wrong.
The citizens shouting at the gate had dull, glassy eyes, their pupils blown wide despite the daylight. They were waving axes and screaming, but their movements were jerky, unnatural, like puppets getting dragged along by invisible strings.
Fine. Suppose it was a mind-alteration hex. How was he supposed to break a mass spell covering five hundred panic-stricken people without frying their brains?
‘There is a way.’
A quiet, serene male voice echoed straight inside Caelan's mind.
It was so soft, so perfectly balanced, it sounded like the God of Harmony himself was sitting in his skull.
‘Is there?’ Caelan thought back, his tone laced with heavy doubt.
‘Yes... though it will be delicate. It requires absolute control over your output.’
The voice sounded faintly annoyed, like an instructor forced to explain basic magic to a slow student.
Nothing ever came free with divine magic. But as long as it cleared the plaza, Caelan didn't care about the effort.
‘Gather your magic,’ the voice instructed cold and clear. ‘Build enough pressure to shock their nervous systems, but keep it below the threshold that causes permanent neural trauma. Then push it outward. Be precise.’
The voice faded into nothing, leaving Caelan alone with a ridiculously hard task.
"What are we doing?" Turman whispered, his voice shaking as he looked over at the crowd. "If they breach the iron, the knights are going to have to draw steel!"
Fear was taking over. If the kids started panicking on the upper wall, the recruits down below would lose their heads next.
Caelan didn't waste another second. He took two steps forward to the edge of the stone steps, ignoring the cold rain drenching his face.
He closed his eyes, lifted his right hand, and spread his fingers open toward the crowd.
Behind him, Nuri, Alina, and the nearby guards instantly shut their mouths. The heavy silence set in, broken only by the roar of the mob.
Caelan breathed in deep through his nose. He reached inward, grabbing the swirling, volatile mana pooling in his core, and squeezed it down.
He refined it, compressing the raw energy until it turned into a pale, thread-thin pulse, then snapped his wrist forward.
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SWOOSH.
A silent, ripple-like wave of pure, refined mana swept through the plaza, washing over the crowd like a heavy gust of wind.
The shouting abruptly died.
The man in the front row carrying the rusted wood-axe blinked rapidly, his jaw slackening. The dull, glassy haze in his eyes vanished, replaced by sudden, bewildered clarity.
"What... what am I doing here?" a woman near the back muttered, looking down at the heavy stone she was holding in her bare, muddy hand. She dropped it into the puddle with a splash.
People looked left and right, staring at each other like they had just woken up from a collective sleepwalk.
Nobody asked questions. Nobody demanded answers.
They were cold. They were soaking wet. And the freezing rain was soaking through their coats.
One by one, the citizens turned their backs on the gate, shuffling away down the wet cobblestones to get back to their fires. Within three minutes, the plaza was empty, leaving behind only discarded signs and muddy footprints.
Caelan let out a long, ragged breath, his shoulders dropping two inches as he lowered his hand.
He turned back around.
Four pairs of wide eyes were staring at him in complete, dead-silent shock.
"Captain..." Nuri breathed, his jaw slightly open. "What was that? How did you flush out a spell that large without an incantation?"
"I'll explain it another time," Caelan said, forcing a faint, polite smile onto his tired face. "I have a parliamentary briefing in ten minutes."
He didn't give them a chance to ask follow-up questions. He brushed past the group, striding down the grand corridor toward the city council sector.
"Scarvy," Caelan muttered into the empty hall, his voice turning ice-cold.
A shadow shifted behind a stone pillar, and a slim, masked figure dropped onto the flagstones behind him. "Sir."
"Find out who cast that mass-array in the market district," Caelan ordered, not slowing his pace. "I want the source before nightfall."
"Understood." Scarvy vanished back into the rafters as quietly as she had appeared.
The parliament wing was completely devoid of guard posts, most of the watchmen had been pulled to reinforce the perimeter during the riot.
Caelan didn't bother knocking. He shoved the double oak doors open and walked straight into the high council chamber.
The air inside was worse than the storm outside.
A dozen ministers were screaming over each other across the mahogany table, waving papers, red-faced and spit flying, completely ignoring the fact that the knight commander had just stepped inside.
Caelan felt a sharp spike of pain pierce his temples again.
Why does my head hurt every time I deal with these politicians?
He genuinely wished he could take a month off. Just go down south, find a beach where it didn't rain twenty-four hours a day, and sit under the sun until his skin baked.
"Could you gentlemen make yourselves look any more pathetic?" Caelan's razor-sharp voice cut clean through the noise.
The shouting stopped instantly.
Every minister turned toward the door. A few of them wrinkled their noses, looking down with visible disgust at Caelan's soaked tunic and muddy boots dripping onto their expensive velvet rug.
Caelan saw it, but he didn't care enough to call them out. Fighting old men over rug stains was a waste of breath.
"Sirs, have you reviewed my mobilization proposal for Adul yet?" Caelan asked, walking up to the edge of the long table. "Because if you keep delaying the military deployment, today's riot is going to look like a festival compared to what's coming next."
He slammed his flat palm onto the mahogany.
Silence stretched across the room. The ministers shifted in their high-backed chairs, suddenly finding their parchment files very interesting.
Finally, Minister Vane cleared his throat, adjusting his silk collar while keeping his eyes glued to the table.
"I'm afraid... going into Adul is out of the question, Captain," Vane mumbled softly. "I know you've been demanding full deployment for over a year, but the local garrisons are handling the borders fine, aren't they? I am sure you can manage without expanding the Order's authority..."
The man's voice trailed off as he stared down at his desk.
A hot, dangerous pulse of rage bubbled up in Caelan's chest. He wanted to drag the man out of his seat by his silk tie and throw him out the window into the rain so he could see what 'managing fine' actually looked like.
Instead, Caelan slowly drew his hand back from the table, his fingers curling tight into a white-knuckled fist inside his sleeve.
"I see," Caelan said, forcing his voice into a flat, level calm. "Thank you for your time."
He turned around on his heel and strode out of the hall, the heavy doors slamming shut behind him.
For the first time all day, Caelan felt a cold, bitter realization settle deep in his gut. Reason wasn't going to work with these fools.
If they refused to give him permission when asked nicely...
He would just have to create a disaster so big they had no choice but to hand him the authority.