The air was thick with a tension so profound it felt like a physical weight, a suffocating blanket of anticipation that settled over the two factions gathered at the edge of the Obsidian Forest. The towering, black-barked trees loomed like ancient, skeletal sentinels, their gnarled branches clawing at the bruised, pre-dawn sky. The morning sun, still hidden behind the distant mountains, painted the horizon in hues of gold and crimson—a fitting, bloody palette for what was to come.
Floating mana-crystal cameras, their lenses gleaming like the multifaceted eyes of insects, buzzed overhead, capturing every nervous glance, every whispered word for the academy's spectators. The professors, their faces grim and impassive, moved between the ranks, handing out the so-called "safety gear"—thin, silver suits that clung to our bodies like a second skin, their surfaces shimmering with the faint, pulsing light of emergency teleportation runes.
