Raven stood.
His boots scraped across the ash-dusted floor, the last echo of movement in a room now gone still. No stealth, no shadows. Just him, exposed under the sallow glow of failing overhead lamps. Before him, Sentinel AX-Draxos loomed like a monolith waiting for judgment.
The arena around him was less a battlefield and more a repair shop for broken ambition.
Once a Velkarin fabrication garage, the room now resembled a desecrated temple of machinery. Towering husks of prototype constructs lined the walls like statues, silent and incomplete. Some leaned broken against collapsed scaffolds, their spinal frames twisted open, heads caved in from internal detonations. Others were never finished—metal torsos fused into the floor, arms still spread like crucified offerings.
Half-formed spell cores pulsed weakly in shattered crates. Cracked containment lenses still flickered with the ghost of stored power, casting faint shadows that moved on their own.
