The most immediate effect of this riot was that people had, instead, moved farther away from death.
Those who toppled the lottery stands and trampled the wooden signs had indeed overturned order, but the rift leading to hell would not widen by even a fraction because of their fury.
The number of demons was limited, and the overfed soul forms would not recover faster because of humanity's anger.
The bonfires and unrest amid the ruins would not improve the rate of consumption. They merely accelerated the depletion of resources and the collapse of bodies, pushing people even farther from death.
Meanwhile, in the Barrens at the edge of the continent, those who had lost their direction were still walking, stretching into a long line with no end.
Though their directions and paces differed, they all extended slowly forward, as though an invisible hand were gradually pushing them deeper into the cracks in the earth.
Viewed from high above, the trails of movement scattered across different continental plates were gradually outlining a migration network unlike any that had ever existed, spanning the entire world.
The order of the entire world was like an old building whose foundation stones had been pulled away, slowly and irreversibly tilting.
The bonfires in the ruins still burned, the lines beneath the rifts continued to stretch onward, and the crowds with no destination still moved, crossing collapsed walls and shattered ground as they poured into emptier plains and dried-up riverbeds.
The wind swept through the ruins across the continent, through the snapped stakes and scorched scraps of cloth, through the bonfires still burning and the embers already extinguished, through the crowds still walking and those who no longer walked. It spread along the horizon toward places farther away, advancing toward every ruin where firelight still shone