This space was vast, open, and deliberately unfinished. Raw stone arched overhead, veins of mana crystal exposed like bone. No construct hovered at the center this time. No guiding voice greeted him.
Instead, the space reacted to his presence all at once.
The ground shifted, reshaping itself into a fractured landscape of platforms and drops, suspended over nothing. The air thickened with resistance, not enough to impede movement but enough to punish carelessness. At the far end of the chamber, something began to form—not an enemy, not exactly.
A scenario.
Merlin took a breath and centered himself. "Calibration," he murmured.
The first challenge was subtle. The space distorted his senses, feeding him contradictory information—distance that didn't match sight, momentum that didn't align with effort. It wasn't testing strength or speed. It was testing adaptability.
