The tournament no longer existed.
What remained of the grand imperial arena could no longer be called a battlefield for students, nor a stage for competition, nor even a place meant for mortal combat. The entire structure had descended into something far more terrifying—a convergence point for sovereign authorities, ancient calamities, hidden organizations, and powers that should never have revealed themselves beneath the skies of the empire.
The once-pristine arena had been reduced to a collapsing wasteland of fractured stone and molten spiritual scars. Entire sections of the battlefield floated in midair after being torn free by unstable spatial distortions, while rivers of silver-gold soulfire flowed through shattered terrain like luminous veins carved into the earth itself.
Above the capital, the sky remained violently split apart.
