"Trial Challenger, we are here…" the parrot spirit announced, its voice eerily calm, floating in the suffocating darkness.
As the words fell, the space around Max abruptly began to twist and distort. A strange pressure surged through him, followed by a wave of vertigo that made his vision blur for a moment. The sensation was like being pulled through a whirlpool of space itself.
Then, in the very next instant, he was no longer in the dark. Max found himself standing on a vast, elevated platform that stretched endlessly in every direction.
It was circular in shape and easily ten miles in diameter, suspended in an unknown realm, neither sky nor stars above, only swirling mists and faint golden strands of energy drifting through the void.
The surface beneath his feet was smooth, cold, and etched with countless ancient runes. They glowed faintly with a pale silver hue, pulsing rhythmically like a living thing.
