"Don't you think something feels a little off?"
Johnny pushed his beloved Yamaha V-Max, looking around at the streets. Every house was shut tight, the area eerily deserted. The nearby silence was so complete that not a single sound could be heard.
Sean and Mordo got out of the car and exchanged a smile. The latter shook his head and said, "The darkness hanging over this city is like a layer of storm clouds. Even when I observe it through magic, I can't see any trace of human beings."
Johnny's face filled with shock, and he shouted, "Did they massacre everyone?!"
The sudden question darkened the Black sorcerer's expression further. He turned away, ignoring the jumpy Ghost Rider, and explained, "Probably not. I haven't sensed any large-scale slaughter. Bucharest has a population of over two million. If Mephisto had launched an extermination, the repercussions would have been far too great. The Sorcerer Supreme definitely wouldn't have ignored it."
The wind swirled, carrying a flyer into Sean's hand. It was an emergency evacuation notice. The Blood Clan had likely used its influence within the upper ranks to move most of the residents out. Romania's capital lay in the center of the Wallachian Plain, with broad, open terrain, and the Danube ran through the city. Evacuating more than a million people on short notice was not actually as difficult as it sounded.
What the young man wondered was what exactly Mephisto intended to do. From clear satellite images, he could see that all of Bucharest was covered by a massive blood formation. Using the city streets and prominent landmarks as nodes, it traced out and wove together an enormous scarlet eye. Hundreds of millions of bizarre patterns overlapped and intersected, merging into intricate, obscure markings.
It looked as though the Hell Lord,