The purple canopy finally broke apart above a huge gap in the forest, where the ground dropped into a sunken bowl.
Twisted trees ringed the rim, and the clearing's edges formed a perfect circle enclosed by sheer walls of pale root.
The bowl looked less like a natural clearing and more like a fighting pit somebody had carved on purpose.
Pale roots rose like ribs around the arena, and each purple pulse made the empty floor feel smaller.
Hajin stopped several steps beyond the treeline and scanned the bowl from edge to edge.
Sickly purple veins had woven themselves through the root walls here, pulsing thicker than anywhere else they had crossed.
The pressure beneath the soil made the whole pit feel like something waiting to wake up.
Hajin counted the exits out of habit, found two, and disliked both of them on principle.
Cassie and the other two rookies reached him last, exhausted from the march.
They barely had time to register the strange arena before Hajin raised one hand.
