After logging out of Road to Purgatory, I didn’t leave my capsule immediately. Instead, I pulled up the official forum and its list of active life streams, trying to see if anyone was currently active in Hatterion. By official decree, all life-streams came with a delay, making the communication between host and viewers difficult but maintaining a certain distance between the audience and those on Mundus. One of the intentions was to make it difficult for people to actively look into the streams to gain information on their competition but it was a hotly debated topic, with many content-creators preferring direct communication with their audience. So far, Pantheon hadn’t dropped their requirement, but I had a feeling they would or at least give the host the option to remove it.

In this case, the delay was quite useful to me, as the real part of the ritual had only taken an hour, so the effects should still be visible. If I found a streamer with open replays, I’d even be able to see the entire thing.

Looking at the titles, I soon found one titled Hatterion Nightlife and immediately clicked on it, opening two windows, one with the current display, the other allowing me to scroll through the recording and witness the events from the beginning.

In the current view, things looked incredibly dire. The host was a female human and currently pressed into a quite familiar barrier of golden light. While I couldn’t be entirely certain without direct exposure, it looked very much like the one conjured up by Olivia on occasion, making me think that some priest had waggled their fingers and annoyed their divine boss.

Outside of the golden shield, a dense mist was wafting, the white swathes intermixed with clouds of red and black, looking quite intimidating and sinister. Things didn’t get better when the streamer glanced over to a few humans fighting in the mist, striking at each other with the desperation of wounded beasts, even as their bodies were quickly withering from the influence of the magic.

From what I could see, the host wasn’t going anywhere from her sheltered position, so I looked into the other window, scrolling back to a timestamp some fifty minutes earlier. The scene immediately shifted and the gloomy mist and frightening noises were instantly replaced with the hustle and bustle of a thriving city.

It turned out that the host of the stream, or maybe just that particular episode, focused on something I hadn’t seen when it came to playstyles. It was a date stream. And not some sort of scam where a female tried to entice lonely people to donate money for the illusion of a romantic relationship but more akin to reality TV, simply watching the host and her partner, another Traveller, go on a date in Hatterion.

After watching the host babble about some building, introducing its features, I began skipping forward, past a scene where the male host fed the female some strange, sticky candy and a more or less tasteful kiss scene to get to the interesting part. The massacre.

The host was just speaking about a temple when a sudden, loud clanging noise stopped the city cold. Bells were ringing, and not just the usual, slow gong to indicate time but making a racket as if the life of the ringer depended on the amount of noise they could make.

For a moment, nobody in the street was moving everyone just looking around fearfully and confused. The confusion didn’t last as it was utterly swept away when a cracking sound washed over the city and for a moment, the barrier that was supposed to protect the city was visible, before shattering away in golden fragments.

In that moment, silence shattered, too, and the screaming began. People started to run, much akin to chickens with their heads cut off, some trying to get to their homes, others seeking shelter elsewhere. The two travellers remained quite calm in the chaos, moving to the side and away from the teeming masses, at least until the first swathes of mist became visible and exemplified just what was going on.

The silent, slowly advancing swathes of silver, black and red mist didn’t care for the screaming and as they crept forward, people started to flee from it. Nobody truly knew what it was, but everybody could see that it was bad news. For a moment, I could see a person get swallowed by the mist, an elderly male unable to run from it and I could see how his body started to tremble before withering away rapidly. A victim of the Death-Magic invoked with the sacrifice of forty lives and the use of a corrupted Mooncrystal.

As the couple started moving, I noticed a curious effect, the shouting and screaming only came from one direction, from the people already fleeing the mist. In the other direction, out of the mist, there was complete silence, barely disturbed by a few, soft echoes.

Even from the video, I couldn’t help but swallow as I beheld the effects of my magic, the raw panic of the people trying to escape from the devastation. There were a few visible barriers around what I believed to be temples or noble manors, glowing with power and resisting the effect of my spell but also barring the people outside from entry. Some attacked those barriers, only to be engulfed in golden flames, leaving bodies twisted in searing agony, while others just kept running, trying to outrun the devastation.

There was fighting in the streets, as people started to well and truly panic, no longer thinking but only following their instincts, the nature of the beast in man coming to the forefront as the need for survival overwhelmed any societal conditioning.

And yet, even in that devastation, I noticed a few, brief glimmers of hope, the father protecting his children, the mother protecting his back, lovers that worked together to escape. But for every example of honour and heroism, there were ten of cowardice and cruelty. Clothes were ripped away, maybe in an effort to take the purse, maybe in the pursuit of dark lust, the host didn’t have the time, leisure or interest to investigate, leaving me with only a brief glimpse into the horrors of a frightened human’s mind. And frightened, they were, especially those that managed to escape after a brief touch of the mist.

Those especially caught my attention, those with the withered limbs, corrupted by the Death-Magic I had wrought and the wilds eyes as the Insanity of the Dark Moon, channelled and enhanced by the corruption of the Mooncrystal took hold,

The pair I had been watching was separated in the chaos, the male vanishing somewhere while the woman wasn’t looking, leaving her all alone in a mob of fleeing humanity, all running from the mist.

Running, until they couldn’t run any longer, the harbour looming ahead, the dark waters of the Mare Tempest giving them a choice between trying to swim for safety or hoping that the mist wouldn’t kill them. While it wasn’t the depth of winter any longer, jumping into the cold water would almost certainly kill them, a slow, agonizing death as the cold sapped their strength until they finally drowned.

But with the screaming around them and the freezing, foreboding silence from the mist, a few decided to take the plunge while others decided on a third option, trying to kill themselves with whatever weapon they had at hand.

Suddenly, there was a literal light in the darkness, a golden glow quite similar, yet unlike the cold barriers enshrouding the noble estates and the rich temples. It looked more akin to a warm bonfire and the people started to stream towards it, seeking shelter in the light.

For a moment, I was utterly stunned when I saw the source of the light, the statue of my companion, still unmoved, still unmarred, holding her staff just like she had in life, only now forever bound in stone. On top of her staff burned a golden flame, sending out the same warm glow it had before, forming a large area of inviting radiance and the people made for it, moving into the glow, some falling to their knees in abject awe as they prayed.

Others, especially those with wild eyes and blood on their hands weren’t so lucky.

While they didn’t get burned, they also weren’t sheltered and as the mists advanced, they either had to flee or the people sheltered in the light could see up close what happened to those who didn’t flee.

They died, their bodies rapidly withering away, as their mouths screamed in pain and their eyes quickly faded, their minds broken by the Dark Moon.

Curiously, even as the mists lapped at the barrier, I couldn’t see any conflict. It looked more as if the light from the barrier was seeping into the mist, the darkness and the blood in the mist slowly fading away and it was almost as if I could hear my former companion chiding me, reminding me that her path had been the path of Freedom.

But looking at the people she sheltered, the good people who hadn’t given in to their base desires and abandoned their honour in the need to survive, I began to wonder what the ultimate effect of my vengeance would be. What changes would come after?