The world was collapsing.
Shattered houses, injured people, ash and dust, gunpowder smoke, and scorching air, accompanied by piercing screams and the hissing spray of ruptured underground pipes, formed a cruel scene of Catastrophe.
His senses gradually returned. Luther slowly made out the wreckage inside the building, and the ringing in his ear began to fade.
"What happened?!"
Luther saw Leonard shouting with his mouth wide open, looking completely lost. His voice faintly reached Luther's ears.
"It was an attack! Nighthawks headquarters was bombed!"
Luther shouted as well, scrambling up from the ground. "Get out of here, now!"
He grabbed Leonard and shouted at him several times before the other man finally came somewhat to his senses. Leonard turned and pulled Klein and Grela up from the ground. The four supported one another as they staggered out of the damaged, leaning hotel.
They barely made it down the collapsed stairs, crossed the hotel lobby strewn with rubble, and stepped out through the front entrance. Before them lay a devastated street. Carriages had overturned, the road had caved in, broken water pipes spewed water, all the windows of the building opposite had shattered, and pedestrians lay on the ground, clutching their wounds and crying out.
Luther looked toward the building beside the hotel—the place that had once housed Enmat Harbor's Nighthawks headquarters—
The Anglers' Club in that two-story building had vanished. It was as though a huge mouth had greedily bitten into its center and swallowed an astonishing chunk of it whole. Broken stones and debris lay scattered outward in all directions, the floor had been blown away, and only half-ruined walls remained on either side to prove that a building had once stood there.
"My God..."
Leonard murmured beside him, filled with shock.
Amid the ruins lay scattered mangled corpses.