The golden clouds beneath their feet shifted gently, creating a soft, glowing landscape beneath the gathered cultivators. The atmosphere felt unnaturally still, yet it thrummed with the low, omnipresent hum of divine fate, like a storm gathering at the edge of reality.
Above them, the spinning celestial gears glinted with power, marking the center of the inheritance realm, the final convergence.
Damien stood silently with the other drow near one of the floating pillars, his arms folded, his presence calm but unmistakably heavy.
The drow had gathered into a tight formation, thirty in total, all bearing the marks of their brutal trial through the staircase. They were leaner now, sharper, their arrogance replaced with tempered focus. Their numbers were the smallest of all the gathered factions, and that fact had not gone unnoticed.
