continue narrate the epic and fantasy novel in the style of television news and Stephen King , where unpatented brainwaves should be content with their role as a horse dewormer, rather than causing chaos in the street. Provide minutiae painstaking details of the chaos in the streets.

I can continue in a television-news format with epic fantasy, creeping dread, and ordinary details turning uncanny, though not in Stephen King’s specific style.

LIVE COVERAGE: DISTURBANCES IN THE LOWER KINGDOM

“Good evening. The palace is asking residents to remain indoors after a shipment of unpatented brainwaves escaped from the Royal Veterinary Depot shortly after six.

“The preparation, sold exclusively as a horse dewormer, was not believed capable of forming opinions.”

Behind the anchor, a map of the capital flashed red. Then the red spread beyond the map, staining the painted sea and the studio wall.

“We go now to Mara Venn in Bellwether Street. Mara?”

The picture lurched sideways.

For three seconds viewers saw only a gutter: rainwater, a crushed paper cup, six white beans from a split grocery sack. One bean rolled against the current.

Then Mara’s face appeared.

“Thank you, Edric. I’m outside the depot, where authorities have erected a perimeter using municipal carts and a length of ceremonial rope. That perimeter has so far proved ineffective.”

Behind her, the rope untied itself.

The brainwaves came down the street in transparent folds. You could locate them by what they disturbed: the tiny hairs lifting along a baker’s wrist; the price cards trembling inside the butcher’s window; a puddle rising into a shallow bowl without spilling.

A municipal notice detached from its nail.

REMEMBER: AN ORDERLY CITY IS A HAPPY CITY.

It folded itself into a horse.

The paper horse began to scream.

“Mara, are there injuries?”

“There are several, Edric, although the greater difficulty appears to be that the street no longer agrees on where things belong.”

At number fourteen, a woman opened her front door and found the third floor of the cathedral. She stood holding a dustpan while choristers stared back at her. One small boy continued singing, watching her over the edge of his book.

A delivery cart sank to its axles in solid cobblestone. Its driver kept lifting the reins, gently at first, then with both fists. The horse had not sunk. It stood three feet above the road, trembling, its iron shoes making a slow walking motion in the empty air.

Apples spilled from the cart and accumulated against an invisible slope. One pressed so hard against the obstruction that its skin split.

The nearest drain was coughing up wedding rings.

Not a torrent. One ring every few seconds.

Each landed with a distinct little click.

“Officials believe the disturbance originated in an improperly secured vat,” Mara continued. “The manufacturer describes the contents as ‘a modest, useful compound with no ambitions beyond intestinal parasites.’”

A man in a stained veterinary apron pushed into frame.

“They were content yesterday,” he said.

“Sir, were you present when—”

“We gave them a window.”

The camera moved closer.

“What?”

“So they could see the horses.”

At the far end of Bellwether Street, every upstairs window opened at once.

People leaned out. Some were residents. Others wore the bronze masks of the empire buried beneath the city nine hundred years before.

A woman beside Mara quietly set down her shopping bag. She was staring at a masked figure above the tobacconist.

“Dad?”

The figure reached toward her.

The windows slammed shut.

For a moment, the only sound was the suspended horse breathing.

Then the depot bell rang beneath the pavement.

“Mara,” said the anchor, “we’re being advised to end the broadcast.”

She touched her earpiece.

Behind her, the veterinarian had begun backing away. He watched the pale folds gathering around the camera lens.

“Don’t let them see the studio,” he said.

The picture sharpened.

On every television in the kingdom, something tapped experimentally against the inside of the glass.