The training hall transformed into a small hellish trench. The gravity runes lit up—sixty times for the core, thirty times for the breaching squad—and the air itself seemed to thicken, pressing down on shoulders and lungs like a hand testing how much weight a body could hold before it folded. The air vibrated heavily every time I said, "Start," a low bone-deep hum that made the torches gutter sideways for half a second before straightening.
Selena repeated the Halberd Form—Eternal Winter pattern under load, each rotation splitting the mist into ice crystals and then dissolving into black vapor. Frost climbed her forearms every third rotation and she let it, never once breaking the rhythm to shake it off.
Rena held Chaos Domain in tight mode, switching on and off every twenty seconds—a domain stamina exercise that left faint burn marks trailing from her fingertips whenever the dark flared too close to the surface.
