The floor was cold.
That was Jin's first thought—bone-deep, polished stone cold, like the room itself had never seen warmth. The second thought came sharper: he was lying down. Not in a cube. Not in some suspended pod or glass-walled prison. Just stone beneath his back and stale air in his lungs.
His eyes opened slowly.
The ceiling above him stretched endlessly—a vast dome of engraved obsidian, lit by faint pulses of white-blue light that flickered like veins. Murmured whispers of power ran along the cracks between tiles, humming gently, almost alive.
He sat up.
Others were doing the same.
Not everyone, though. Not the full arena of hundreds. Just twenty.
A circle.
All of them had been arranged equidistant from each other—placed, not dropped. No chains. No binds. But the tension? Thick enough to cut with a blade.
Jin's eyes moved across the circle.
