A surge of panicked voices and gasps echoed all around, and as I struggled to comprehend what was going on from my kneeling posture on the ground, only hearing a rush of chaos and alarm, I managed to tilt my head just enough to barely see what all the clamour was about.
That's when I saw it.
In the middle of the air, a fair distance above the gallows I was currently positioned atop, a wide circle was drawn in empty space.
Contrasting against the azure backdrop of the sky that lay beyond, the black magic circle opened like a hole in reality itself, and before I realised it, it expanded.
What initially appeared not much more than a single dot rapidly widened, swelling until soon, the circumference appeared to outmatch even that of the visible sun in the sky.
At that moment, there was a pause, before something gradually began to emerge from that ominous abyss.
