The numbers came in just after dawn, carried not by courier nor clerk but by the hollow quiet in the shopping districts themselves. Black Friday, once the unofficial civic holiday in Cinniapolis, a day when parking lots filled before sunrise and shopkeepers brewed coffee strong enough to wake the ghost of Ray Cinniapolis, registered the lowest sales in recorded city history.

Merchants across Reunion, Centralis, and the Center Square confirmed the same absence of foot traffic. Walesburg, whose new civic government has been courting shoppers and businesses with incentives Cinniapolis did not match, drew large crowds of transplant shoppers from their former township.

Walesburg’s newly elected mayor, Annabelle Winston, under floodlights and the scent of fresh asphalt, pushed forward a slate of commercial incentives: temporary tax holidays, subsidies for relocated merchants, even free shuttle loops from the border neighborhoods. Residents of East Cinniapolis say the neon signs advertising Walesburg’s “Friday of All Fridays” sale could be seen from their kitchen windows.

“It’s hard to compete with a new town in its honeymoon phase,” said one Cinniapolis market analyst who requested anonymity to avoid “angry calls from the Council.”

The concerns go deeper than a single bad weekend. Over the past year, multiple anchor companies — most notably Yerg Fashion House — have begun or completed their relocation to Walesburg, shifting salaried workers, retail satellites, and the kind of lunchtime activity that keeps smaller shops alive. Without that circulation, many Cinniapolis storefronts have spent the year quietly thinning their shelves.

Yet even longtime pessimists were surprised by the extent of this season’s decline. A preliminary survey from the Civic Ledger estimates a 43% drop in Black Friday revenue compared to last year, the steepest fall since the city began tracking holiday metrics in the 1970s.

City officials have offered little response so far. The Council’s economic committee adjourned early Friday afternoon, citing the need for “further review,” though one clerk admitted that no one expected the downturn to arrive so sharply.

Meanwhile, Walesburg released a brief statement Saturday morning declaring their inaugural Black Friday “a resounding success,” noting “unprecedented retail engagement for a municipality of its age.” The announcement did not mention Cinniapolis directly, however, reading between the lines spelled victory for Walesburg.