I sat on the rubble, elbows resting on my knees, catching my breath. The burn on my knuckles still simmered. I rotated my wrist slowly, watching the charred fragments of the Apex-Class Entity begin to disintegrate into ember dust.
"Five minutes," I murmured. "Just five to breathe."
I closed my eyes for a moment, but everything suddenly stopped.
The flickering embers froze mid-air. My HUD flickered erratically. Even the internal flow of mana in my body halted for a heartbeat before adapting.
"What…?"
I stood immediately. That's when I felt a pressure.
Not like gravity, not mana, not intent, but something heavier.
The sensation of being beneath the sea, miles deep—crushed beneath eons of weight.
The shadows in the arena peeled backward—like curtains yanked open to reveal a presence standing behind the veil of time itself.
A figure emerged.
Tattered robes of ink-black silk, embroidered with deep cerulean threads that shimmered like a trench in the ocean floor.
