The Unity Festival

**[NARRATION]** The Unity Festival had started as a sacred tradition — a celebration of harmony among the followers of the Power Nine. It had survived the centuries, adapted to the Centrum era, and now wore the hollow smile of an event too polite to mention the cracks in the walls.

It was bright. Loud. Almost convincing. The kind of joy you could mistake for safety if you didn’t look too closely. The kind of day where the music played just loud enough to keep you from asking what happens when a god decides to drop out of the sky and erase you.

**[NARRATION]** Baron von Queef held court near a drinks table, grinning at another Dominion loyalist with the confidence of a man certain the future would arrive on a silver tray. His voice carried like he expected everyone to hear him — and assumed they wanted to.

**BARON (smug, easy):** "Doesn’t matter how much I piss her off. She’ll always bring me back. She needs me."

**[NARRATION]** He didn’t say it like a joke. He said it like an inheritance. As if a place in the Centrum were already etched into the family crest, just waiting for him to turn up and collect it.

**[NARRATION]** Across the lawn, Eveline Pringle sat beneath a charm-lit canopy, devouring a bag of crasps. She and her friends weren’t talking about Balance or Dominion, or Albert, or anything that might matter later. They were talking about something small and pointless, and for a moment, Eveline looked completely content. Dangerous thing, that.

**[NARRATION]** Near the Transmutation booth, Astrid Ironhoof chewed through a roasted skewer the size of a short sword while Professor Cornelius Geargoggle tried to smother the smell of brandy with a weak concealment charm.

**GEARGOGGLE (rambling):** "—not that I’m saying _your_ mane looks like the work of a divine stylist, but, ah, if it did, they should be paid more — much more — I mean—"

**[NARRATION]** Astrid nodded without slowing her chewing. Geargoggle’s eyes followed her like a man watching the tide take his ship.

**[NARRATION]** At the festival’s edge, where the noise thinned and the air felt less like sugar and more like iron, Nora Rabe von Queef stood with Magala the Oracle. They weren’t whispering, but their words didn’t belong to the crowd.

**NORA (quiet, certain):** "Are you sure he’s not going to show?"

**MAGALA (pointed, deliberate):** "I’m sure of what I’m telling you."

**NORA (with a tight exhale):** "You know I hate when you say that."