The staging hall of Lower Heaven stretched like a cathedral built for war.
Its floor was a single, unbroken slab of pale stone veined with slow-moving currents of mana, each pulse synchronized to the heartbeat of the realm itself. The light rose and fell beneath the surface like breath beneath skin. Vast pillars climbed into a ceiling too high to see clearly, their faces etched with names—deployments, victories, failures, annihilations. Some inscriptions were sharp and recent. Others had been worn thin by centuries of passage, as if Heaven itself had tried to forget them.
It never did.
Atlas arrived without announcement.
He did not need one.
Conversation didn't stop all at once. It faded outward in ripples—voices trailing off mid-sentence, laughter thinning into silence—as he crossed the threshold. The hall seemed to lean inward, attention drawing tight around him.
