The arena had slowly but surely evolved into something unrecognizable as the spectators now had no idea what they were staring at. This made many of them stare at the large screens floating in the air rather than at the arena itself.
Platforms continued to rise and fall like waves caught in storm swells. The void between them had begun to hum—rippling with deep, pulsing magic essence that made it dangerous even to look at too long.
The heat from the earlier phases had burned away the early tension. Now it was survival—nothing more elegant than that.
But survival didn't always mean slaughter.
Sometimes it meant calculation.
And the smartest predators knew when to pause the hunt.
Kaelis stood on the shifting edge of a crag-like platform, her long glaive lowered but not sheathed.
Her long hair whipped around her pale face as she stared across the gap at Damon's team, the ElderGlow beacon still pulsing behind them.
