The morning after the basin's awakening broke with a strange, muted stillness—an eerie quiet that felt less like the calm before action and more like the island itself was listening. The sun had only just begun to rise, pale gold leaking through the thick canopy overhead, but the expedition camp was already alive with activity. Students moved through the trees with disciplined urgency, packing gear, checking weapons, rolling up reinforced tents, and double-checking health elixirs whose colors shimmered faintly under the early light. The air hummed with unspoken tension, as though everyone felt the weight of the previous day's discovery lingering over them—the colossal obsidian "spire," half-swallowed by terrain and sealed with runic panels no one on the island could decipher.
But no presence in the camp radiated more pressure than Arios Pureheart.
