The Trial of Plundered Luck began not with thunder, but with silence.
The golden realm that stretched around them was vast and surreal, an endless sky beneath their feet and a flowing ceiling of starlight above. Colossal floating platforms drifted in the distance, each connected by thin, glowing bridges made of rotating fate runes and beams of compressed light.
Suspended in the air like lanterns were spheres of swirling energy, faintly translucent, each one pulsing with a peculiar rhythm. They flickered in soft hues of gold, violet, and pale blue, floating just out of reach, too real to be dismissed, too insubstantial to grasp.
Damien narrowed his eyes. Above each participant, barely perceptible, hovered a thin, shifting thread of light. Some were thick, golden, burning like coiled suns. Others were dimmer, flickering and frail, like dying stars.
Ancient luck. Visible not through the eyes, but through the soul.
