The memorial vigil was organized by a coalition of survivor groups, church congregations, and a scrambling city council.
Three thousand names read aloud in Liberty Square. Candles held against the September chill.
It was the exact kind of enormous, grief-saturated gathering Adrian had been dreading for weeks.
"It's a bad idea," he said for the third time, watching Sophia pin the event flyer to their corkboard. "Three thousand people, all actively grieving in one enclosed square. That's not a vigil. That's an all-you-can-eat buffet for curses."
"It's also the first real chance this city's had to grieve together instead of alone," Sophia replied gently. "You can't tell people to stop mourning because it might attract monsters, Adrian."
She wasn't wrong. Which only made the risk assessment more terrifying.
Two days earlier, Reyes had confirmed his fears. DODC sensors were already flagging elevated cursed energy readings around Liberty Square. Faint and diffuse, but growing steadily denser as the event approached.
"We can't cancel it," Reyes had told them in the back booth of the diner. "Not without a concrete threat. 'A diffuse energy reading might theoretically become dangerous' won't override a City Council event three thousand people are counting on. The best I can do is quietly deploy extra security and make sure you're inside that square when it happens."
Liberty Square filled as dusk settled. Candles passed hand to hand until the plaza glowed with thousands of flickering lights.
Adrian moved through the crowd in plain clothes. No hood, no sunglasses. Just blending into the sea of mourners.
His Six Eyes swept the crowd continuously. Ambient cursed energy climbed in steady increments as names were read aloud from the stage. Each name hit like a stone dropped into a lake already overflowing.
Grief feeds them. I've known that since week one. But I've never watched it happen across three thousand people at once.
Then, the mood shifted.
The heavy sadness in the air curdled into something sharp and anxious, spreading outward from the center of the plaza.
A woman near him gasped, clutching her throat. A man two rows ahead stumbled, his breathing suddenly ragged.
Individually, it looked like panic or exhaustion.
To the Six Eyes, it was a terrifying pattern.
[WARNING: AMBIENT CURSED ENERGY COALESCING]
[SOURCE: DISTRIBUTED]
[NO SINGLE POINT OF ORIGIN DETECTED]
It's not manifesting from one direction, Adrian realized. It's coming from all of them. From the crowd itself.
He pushed toward the center of the plaza, weaving through the mourners. The candlelight flickered violently. Shadows stretched at impossible angles.
On stage, the reading of names continued, unconsciously feeding the fire.
Adrian reached the heart of the plaza and stopped.
Rising slowly from the space between mourners was a entity birthed directly from trauma.
It didn't look like any curse he'd fought before. It looked like a distorted crowd—hundreds of half-formed faces pressed together into a single, shifting mass. Limbs fused and overlapped, each face contorted in raw panic.
It towered twelve feet tall, expanding and contracting with the crowd's emotional rhythm.
[GRADE 2 CURSED SPIRIT DETECTED: THE CROWD]
[TECHNIQUE: CROWD COMPRESSION]
[WARNING: THREAT SCALES WITH PROXIMATE POPULATION DENSITY]
[CURRENT ENVIRONMENT: MAXIMUM RISK CONDITIONS]
Perfect. The one time I need an open field, I'm stuck in the middle of three thousand civilians.
The Crowd's aura rippled outward.
Mourners nearest the epicenter began moving in unnatural, synchronized lurches. They were no longer walking on their own; they were being pulled. Funneled toward the monster's shifting mass like water down a drain.
Screams erupted at the edges as panic broke out.
It's not just feeding on their grief, Adrian realized. It's herding them. Compressing them into fuel.
He was facing a nightmare scenario.
Every technique he had trained—reinforced strikes, joint breaks, deflection—required isolated targets. He couldn't unleash high-output destructive moves without vaporizing the innocent people trapped in the creature's pull.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: DESTRUCTIVE TECHNIQUES NOT RECOMMENDED]
[CIVILIAN CASUALTY RISK: EXTREME]
Thanks for the input, System. Got any actual solutions?
Silence.
A woman stumbled past him, eyes glazed, drawn helplessly toward the epicenter. Adrian grabbed her wrist.
The moment his skin made contact, his Six Eyes picked up the mechanism: a thin thread of cursed energy extended from her chest directly into the creature's core.
It was reeling her in.
Adrian pulsed a precise thread of cursed energy through his fingertips, severing the connection.
The woman gasped, blinking rapidly as the trance broke. She took one look at the twelve-foot mass of writhing faces in front of her and shrieked.
I can sever the threads. One at a time. But there are three thousand people here. In ninety seconds, this turns into a fatal stampede.
Desperate, Adrian summoned his status window.
[SKILL PROGRESS: CURSED ENERGY MANIPULATION (LV. 2)]
[DEFLECTION TECHNIQUE AVAILABLE — INSUFFICIENT FOR MASS-SCALE]
[HOST ADVISED: ISOLATE PRIMARY THREAT. TERTIARY CONNECTIONS MAY DESTABILIZE UPON PRIMARY DISRUPTION]
If I hit the core hard enough, the threads collapse.
It wasn't a clean plan, but it was the only option on the table.
Adrian shoved through the surging press of bodies, channeling every drop of cursed energy into both forearms. The Six Eyes scanned the shifting mass of faces, searching for the core structural anchor before the crowd trampled itself to death.
The Crowd's hundreds of mismatched eyes suddenly snapped toward him in unison.
It felt his presence.
The massive entity surged forward, roaring with the collective trauma of a damaged city.
Behind it, the speakers on stage droned on, reading another name into the night.
Adrian planted his boots, locked his frame, and met the Grade 2 curse head-on.