The ornate doors groaned open with the weight of centuries, revealing a space that defied every assumption Alex had made about architectural possibility.
The Grand Arena stretched before him like a small nation unto itself. The central fighting pit alone could have swallowed the Academy's entire campus, its floor a mosaic of materials that shifted and changed as he watched stone becoming sand becoming crystallized essence in patterns that spoke of adaptive battlefield manipulation. The ceiling soared so high it disappeared into manufactured twilight, pierced by shafts of light that felt more conceptual than physical.
But it was the audience that made Alex's enhanced perception recoil in involuntary recognition of his insignificance.
