Kikaru's head turned, her breath catching as the stands above erupted in light, the ninety‑one Shard Users vanishing into particles that shimmered like fireflies before fading into nothing.
The sound of the crowd's sudden absence hit harder than any roar—one instant a wall of tense murmurs, the next a vacuum that swallowed every stray echo.
Holo‑screens winked out, leaving behind dark glass panes that reflected a realm now stripped of witnesses, and the temperature seemed to drop with the spectators' departure, as though their collective life‑heat had been fueling the arena's glow.
Small, pale forms remained—ghostly echoes of their Ikonas, trembling in the air—before they, too, dissolved, leaving the platforms empty, the realm silent save for the hum of the portal and the faint pulse of the veins beneath.
That portal's green‑black cyclone growled on, its static crackle gnawing at the edges of her hearing, a reminder that the rules she trusted were already bending.
