The moment Leon and Elizabeth stepped through the archway of the Crucible, the noise swallowed them whole.
Outside, the crowd had sounded loud enough to shake the trees.
Inside, it felt like they'd walked into the heart of a living storm.
The roar hit them from every direction at once—voices layered over voices, a rolling tide of excitement that vibrated through the stone beneath their feet.
Leon paused just inside the entrance, eyes narrowing as he took in the scene.
"Now that's something."
Elizabeth leaned closer, her gaze drawn upward. "How did it get so big…?"
The arena at the center shouldn't have fit into the building they had walked into.
From the outside, the Crucible was enormous, but the battlefield stretching before them was impossibly vast, a floating island of stone and shifting terrain suspended in a pocket of distorted space.
Waterfalls poured into nothingness along the edges.
Lightning crackled around distant pillars. The entire battlefield breathed.
