The Departure Hall had a way of making even the largest crowd feel small.
Lin Yue had stood beneath the great arch three times before, and each time the scale of it struck him fresh — a ceiling lost somewhere above the reach of the Hall's pale light, walls that curved outward like the inside of something breathing, and beneath it all, an ocean of players packed shoulder to shoulder, waiting for a door none of them could see to open.
Tonight the ocean was restless.
Somewhere to his left, a veteran with a scar bisecting one eyebrow checked the strap on his blade for the third time in as many minutes, each check identical to the last, as though repetition might change what the buckle told him. Further off, two women traded ration cards in short, clipped sentences, the kind of transaction people made when they didn't trust themselves to linger on a longer goodbye. A man laughed too loudly at something his friend said — the kind of laugh that existed to fill space, not humor.
