Stormstack Burgers Explodes

The attack did not arrive wearing a cult symbol.

It came from a burger machine.

Stormstack Burgers had built its whole pitch around spectacle: stag burgers cooked by electricity, sizzling like the gods had signed off on lunch. Then the machine screamed. Lightning crawled over the cobblestones. Fire burst through the square. Children were close enough to be turned from festival-goers into casualties before most adults understood the danger.

Jonah moved first where it mattered most.

He called on Preserve Life and pulled the children back from the edge, scorch marks fading as they gasped through the shock. Oskar answered with wings and sword, flying into melee against the malfunctioning construct. Insight pushed people toward awareness, not always clearly, but with enough truth underneath that Jonah later found the missing safety pieces he had been trying to point toward.

Ash destroyed the machine.

The victory cost him. The construct detonated in lightning and fire, dropping Ash and Panthera in the blast. Beefington rushed to Panthera. Flamer crossed to Ash and stabilized him, offering a hand once the fire left her own.

When the smoke cleared, the square was alive but shaken. Some civilians had survived because Jonah had gotten to them in time. Some had not.

Nick found three cooked stag burgers in the broken machine, absurdly intact and magically potent enough to strengthen the body against force for a while. It was a strange prize from a disaster that could not stay funny.

Then more explosions rang out across Stormcall.

The burger machine had not been the crisis.

It had been the opening note.