It was not supposed to be a revolution. Really, it wasn’t.

The young Nepalis all chafed at the government’s abrupt ban on social media. They all wanted an end to corruption in a country where families of Communist, Maoist and social democrat leaders alike paraded their wealth while the rest of the population seemed to slide into hopelessness.

But a wholesale change in government? Security forces shooting dead at least 19 protesters, including students in school uniforms? The coordinated burning and looting that in a few hours robbed a nation of the physical manifestations of a state — majestic government buildings, police stations and ward offices — all in smoldering ruins, along with hundreds of homes and businesses connected to the political elite?

In a handful of days in September, Tanuja, Misan and Mahesh, Sudan, Rakshya and Dipendra would find their lives transformed. One would be elevated as a leader of the Gen Z movement, even though he was a millennial a decade or more older than the others. Another would watch the protest she helped organize devolve into unrecognizable chaos. Several would bicker about what it was they really wanted. All would be hunted. Two would be shot. One would die.

Across the world, Nepal’s youth have been celebrated as spearheads of a Gen Z revolution, the first to so rapidly turn online outrage at “nepo kids,” as privileged children of the elite are called, into an overthrow of the political system. The trajectory of Nepal’s Gen Z — economically frustrated, technologically expert, educationally overqualified — is part of a wellspring of youthful dissent that has flowed in recent years from Indonesia and Bangladesh to the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

It is rooted in the same dissatisfaction that spurred rebellions and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East 15 years ago. In 2023, a distraught Nepali businessman set himself on fire in front of Parliament, an echo of the self-immolation of a Tunisian fruit seller that ignited the Arab Spring.

But interviews with dozens of young Nepalis, in the wake of the government ouster, make clear that the country’s abrupt and violent shift was not what they envisioned. Someone, somehow appears to have steered the movement in unexpected ways, leaving its youthful engineers dazed, even as they now scramble to help the new government run. A mysteriously sourced call for another anti-corruption protest on Oct. 9 has been met with both excitement and anger from Gen Z groups that say they desire no more upheaval.

After the government collapsed last month, thousands of Gen Z keyboard warriors supported the appointment of Sushila Karki, a corruption-busting former chief justice, as leader of a caretaker administration, making her Nepal’s first female prime minister. Elections in this Himalayan nation, one of Asia’s poorest, are scheduled for March. The three big political parties, which for years traded power and alliances with an exuberant disregard for ideology, have been cowed for now.

None of this, though, was what the young protesters intended when they planned their peaceful rally on Sept. 8, with signs like “Corruption is sus, stop ghosting democracy.”

“We wanted reform, not a revolution,” said Tanuja Pandey, 25, who helped first publicize the protest on her Gen Z group’s social media.

“I don’t know what happened, but the whole thing was hijacked,” she said.

Few in Nepal believe that the elections will result in the fundamental overhaul needed to fix a country so riddled with graft and patronage that its youth must seek their fortunes abroad. (Up to one-third of the country’s gross domestic product has come from these overseas remittances.) Some doubt the polls will happen at all. Others worry that smaller political forces with Hindu nationalist or pro-monarchy ambitions will be given a burst of oxygen. Ms. Karki, the interim prime minister, is in charge of a burned and broken bureaucracy.

Almost by accident, Nepal’s Gen Z revolutionaries helped to overthrow the government. But its youth are now asking: Will Nepal itself change?

“We are all wondering, what to do if everything goes back to the same way, even after we lost our blood and fallen comrades?” said Rakshya Bam, 26, a protest organizer, who missed a bullet by a fateful flick of her head. “What if all this was a waste?”

Day One: Slay, Vibe, Dance

On the morning of Sept. 8, Ms. Pandey arrived with her friends at the chosen protest site in downtown Kathmandu, Nepal’s cacophonous capital, its skies smudged from the smoke of temple incense, sputtering trishaws and dark windowed SUVs. Ms. Pandey, a lawyer, had started off protesting as a high school student, like a Himalayan Greta Thunberg, campaigning to save Nepal’s environment. She was used to small, peaceful acts of dissent, usually with more police officers than protesters.

This march, though, felt different, she said. The online call by Ms. Pandey’s group of activists and lawyers urging fellow Gen Z-ers to rally against corruption and the social media ban had spread fast. Hami Nepal, a civic organization that helped with earthquake and flood relief, added its influential voice. Other youth groups popped up online calling for protesters to join, including one that had rebranded itself from a Hindu nationalist “God of Army” to a clique that supported Nepal’s deposed monarch to — on the day of the protest — Gen Z Nepal (similar to the moniker of the original protesters).

Still, it was a Monday, and some students were taking exams. It was also a day when certain families were meant to worship their dead relatives. Ms. Pandey thought the demonstration might get a few hundred people, a thousand if they were lucky.

By the time she got to the protest site, volunteers from Hami Nepal, led by Sudan Gurung, 36, were already there, setting up a medical tent and piles of water bottles. The police were curiously absent. Ms. Pandey was surprised but pleased. The protest was going to slay, she thought.

Misan Rai, 18, took a college entrance test that morning, but afterward she met a 17-year-old friend who was attending the rally with her mother. It was the girls’ first-ever demonstration. They danced, chanted and vibed. They took selfies. They surged forward at the head of the protesters, now in the tens of thousands, watching in amazement as a column of youthful humanity followed them toward Parliament.

As the crowds jostled and cavorted, Ms. Pandey was struck again by the relative paucity of security forces. Near Parliament, there was little to prevent people from pushing forward. A member of the organizing team urged the patrolling police officers to set up more barricades, lest the throng overwhelm the complex.

By late morning, men on motorcycles arrived, two or even three on each bike. Many wore black. Some waved the Nepali flag with its two red-and-white triangles. Some were Gen Z, but others were not. Ms. Pandey and some other organizers didn’t like the intrusion. They had released an earnest set of protest prohibitions, including no flags or party symbols. They didn’t want old politics to infiltrate a nonpartisan movement.

Mahesh Budhathoki, 22, rode among a fleet of motorcycles, the bikes revving with sharp salvos of noise. These bikes, as well as the entrance of other men — older, tougher, tattooed — changed the protest’s atmosphere, attendees said. The crowd got angrier, the slogans more extreme.

The protesters rushed the gates of Parliament. Men materialized with pickaxes. They attacked a fence. Ms. Rai watched the “goondas,” as she called them, “like bad guys in Bollywood” films. She wrapped her arms around a fence pillar to defend it from the destruction.

“I just wanted to protect Parliament,” she said. “It’s our nation’s property.”

Tear gas exploded around her. Her friend’s mother ordered them to withdraw. The trio escaped down an alley, trailed by clouds of tear gas. The sounds of gunfire came soon after, but it was hard to tell the rev of a motorcycle from the volleys of bullets. Ms. Rai hadn’t eaten all day, apart from a couple of wafers gulped down before her exam. In the alley was a grapefruit tree, and she plucked the bittersweet fruit.

“I feel terrible I was eating when people were dying,” she said.

Near Parliament, police officers took aim, according to videos and witness accounts. They shot live ammunition from buildings and from the street.

Ms. Bam, a protest organizer, felt a bullet rush past her head, the warmth imprinted even now in her mind, like a shadow that cannot be outrun.

Others weren’t as lucky. Dipendra Basnet, 28, had come to Kathmandu from the far hills of western Nepal, part of a flood of young people leaving their villages for the cities. He had found a part-time job as an electrician, but he knew that life in Nepal was stacked against him. To support his wife and 4-year-old child, Mr. Basnet was processing papers to work in Luxembourg, driving or carrying or whatever paid a living wage. He was dressed in a clean white shirt and jeans, chanting anti-corruption slogans with his friends.

The bullet, shot from above, lodged in Mr. Basnet’s head. He collapsed over a barrier near Parliament like a rag doll. His blood pooled on the ground.

By the time the security forces had shot and killed 19 people and injured dozens more, Ms. Pandey had left the protest. Things had moved so quickly and gotten so violent that her group issued an online call urging everyone to leave. But forces that said they were associated with Mr. Gurung’s group, Hami Nepal, issued a counter order, urging people to return.

Hearing that students had been shot made Ms. Pandey feel ill. She couldn’t understand why so many older people had joined, kicking up trouble, revving their motorcycles, throwing stones. She was mystified by the lack of police until, suddenly, they were firing tear gas and then bullets.

Terrified that she would be arrested or shot, Ms. Pandey spent the night at a friend’s house rather than going home. The next morning, she sheltered in place during the curfew that had been called. The government’s social media ban, which was thought to have been designed to squelch online anger about nepo kids, had been overturned. But the victory didn’t seem worth so many deaths.

Day Two: A Nation Burns

By the afternoon of Sept. 9, Ms. Pandey smelled smoke in the air. On her phone, she saw images of Kathmandu on fire. Parliament was burning, then the Supreme Court. The Singha Durbar government complex, home to about 20 ministries and a century-old palace, went up in smoke. In the name of the slain protesters, arsonists were destroying the city. Again, few security forces could be seen. The nausea rose again. Ms. Pandey, who had recovered from a brain tumor three years before, said this was the worst moment of her life.

In another part of town, Mr. Budhathoki and his friends awaited instructions. Unfamiliar men handed them bottles filled with fuel, cloth stuffed in the top. The mob attacked a police station, anger swelling at the force blamed for killing the protesters the day before. From inside the station, a police officer grabbed a rifle and opened fire.

Mr. Budhathoki was a soccer fan who had been set to move to Romania for work before he joined the protest. His mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and the family needed money. A bullet hit him in the throat. He died slung over a scooter on the way to the hospital.

One of Mr. Budhathoki’s friends said he felt like the tendon girding his sanity had snapped. The crowd hurled the Molotov cocktails at the police station. They stalked the officers inside. One terrified policeman stripped off his uniform and tried to flee. The mob found his clothes and discarded pistol, then beat the man in his underpants until he stopped moving, two participants said. Video footage verified by The New York Times shows a crowd surrounding the motionless body. Another policeman ran into a neighboring building, climbing high. The crowd chased him and pushed him off a balcony, the friends said.

A traffic policeman, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, did not escape the mob either. The police said three officers died near the police station.

“We were all killers,” said a 19-year-old protester named Habib.

He said he was proud of having avenged his friend’s death. In his hands, he held the casing of the bullet that he said killed Mr. Budhathoki. He found it on the ground, still hot. Days later, the shell smelled of smoke. He tightened his fist around it.

“We are Gen Z, but we’re just doing the dirty work of the old men,” he said.

An Accidental Revolution

That same afternoon, K.P. Sharma Oli, the prime minister, stepped down, taking responsibility for the deaths of the young protesters the day before. Other members of the government, cabinet ministers and the president, were taken by soldiers to a military compound, some by helicopter. Most were kept there for nearly three days, unable to communicate by cellphone.

As government buildings charred in the capital and elsewhere, mobs set fire to homes of current and retired politicians and their families in cities and towns across Nepal. The original Gen Z protesters, most of whom did not venture out on Sept. 9, started taking stock of what had happened.

On youth-heavy social media platforms like Discord, jubilant voices cheered the chaos. Gen Z had overthrown the government, they crowed. But there were dissonant notes.

As the country seemed to go up in flames, the military was told to stay in their barracks, political insiders said. Many police abandoned their posts, their stations destroyed. Then, the army chief, Gen. Ashok Raj Sigdel, announced that the army was taking charge at 10 p.m. As quickly as the arson and looting had begun, it subsided. Some buildings continued to smolder for days.

On Tuesday night, Ms. Bam, one of the protest organizers, got a call from someone in the army. She did not know how he got her number. In her phone she entered his name as “Army Team.” She was ordered to report to the army headquarters, along with other Gen Z representatives. Ms. Bam was scared. Was it a trap? Would she be arrested or killed?

At the army base, General Sigdel treated the assembled Gen Z protesters kindly, like they were friends of his own children.

Over the next couple of days, the army convened different Gen Z groups. But others came, too, introduced by General Sigdel as “stakeholders,” including older politicians with close ties to the monarchy that was abolished in 2008.

Also present was Mr. Gurung, the head of Hami Nepal, which had arranged the water and medical tent for the protest.

Ms. Bam didn’t understand why some of the others were there. On Discord, tens of thousands of users were voting in polls for who should take the post of prime minister, now that Mr. Oli was out. One choice that bubbled from the ether was Ms. Karki, the retired chief justice. Another was Mr. Gurung. Still another was a popular social media influencer. But Ms. Karki was the overwhelming choice online.

At army headquarters, General Sigdel had mentioned Ms. Karki’s name to members of the Gen Z movement before she became an online favorite. It was strange, they said, like he knew what was happening on Discord before it actually happened.

By Thursday, five young protesters said they were informed by the army chief that from then on they would be represented by Mr. Gurung, the millennial. He was to be the Gen Z leader, even if prominent Gen Z had not chosen him. Eventually, a military vehicle drove Mr. Gurung to meet President Ramchandra Paudel, whose ceremonial role includes formally appointing a new prime minister.

Mr. Gurung said he chafed at sitting in splendor. When a servant came with a bottle of water, he refused it and demanded water from outside. He said he scolded the president’s advisers, with their fine suits and small talk.

“I was so enraged that they were so calm,” Mr. Gurung said. “When my country was burning, they could just relax and have a sip of tea.”

Mr. Gurung said that the people wanted to nominate him as prime minister. But he demurred, he said. He wanted Ms. Karki. Mr. Gurung waited for eight or nine hours in the palace for Mr. Paudel to approve her name. Mr. Gurung wore slippers and occasionally padded around barefoot.

“I didn’t care,” Mr. Gurung said. “We just toppled the government. It’s our palace now.”

When they finally met, the president was gentle and genuine. He cried, Mr. Gurung said.

On Friday night, Ms. Karki was sworn in as caretaker prime minister. Several hours later, in a strange inversion of what the Constitution appears to mandate, Parliament was dissolved. Ms. Pandey and other Gen Z lawyers were puzzled by the breach.

At Ms. Karki’s oath-taking, Mr. Gurung knelt at her feet. She promised to make her priority investigating the deaths of the young protesters. In her first public act, she visited injured protesters in the hospital.

“Now it’s the people’s government,” Mr. Gurung said. “Things can change. We can have a better Nepal.”

‘What Happens Now?’

Two days later, Mr. Gurung organized a late-night protest. His target: Ms. Karki, who had not consulted with him when she named three new cabinet members, he said. He demanded her resignation. He later floated vying for prime minister himself.

In the days and weeks after Nepal’s political chaos, Mr. Gurung said he had slept no more than a couple of hours a night. He had acquired beefy bodyguards, who whisked him to secret locations. Mr. Gurung touched spiritual beads around his neck. People were out to get him, he said. Who they were, he said he did not know.

“They are one big power, and now I’m like fighting with them literally all alone,” Mr. Gurung said. “Even if they kill me, there are thousands more like us now.”

Ms. Rai, the high school graduate, dreams of studying architecture. Kathmandu is back to its frenetic normalcy, but the rest of her college exams were delayed. Much of the country’s paperwork burned in the frenzy of arson. Ms. Rai knows she may eventually have to study and even work abroad.

A photograph of Mr. Basnet flopped over the barricade near Parliament after he was shot became a symbol of police brutality. Surgeons removed parts of the bullet from his brain, but they could not take it all out. He now lies in a hospital bed, forming words slowly as his brain heals.

“No corruption,” he said.

“Two of my friends were killed,” he added.

His father, Dilli Basnet, came to Kathmandu from his village 400 miles away, by foot, then motorcycle, then airplane. At home he is a farmer.

“I’m glad my son is alive,” he said.

Ms. Karki’s government has designated the protesters who were killed as martyrs. She has set up a commission to investigate their deaths.

But with some of the original protesters cut out of talks and the political old guard still circling, it is not clear how much Ms. Karki can change Nepal before the next election. The Arab Spring revolutions largely failed to end autocracy and bring meaningful change.

A week after the protests began, Ms. Pandey celebrated her 25th birthday in Kathmandu. She was still keeping a low profile, fearing arrest or worse.

A hard rain obscured the gaggle of Gen Z protesters splashing across the paving stones to a small restaurant run by sympathizers. Lawyers and environmental activists, influencers and cultural preservationists, Ms. Pandey’s friends toasted with brass cups of milky rice wine. They feasted on deep-fried intestines stuffed with lard and dipped in fermented chile. They sang songs from the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Bollywood.

“To an accidental revolution,” they toasted.

Ms. Pandey looked serious.

“What happens now,” she asked. “Will Nepal change?”

Her friends turned quiet. They swallowed more wine. The rain beat down, fierce and warm.

Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.

Sajal Pradhan contributed reporting.