The portal to the Arena opened in the wasteland between territories, a shimmering, chaotic tear in reality. It was not a door to be walked through; it was an abyss to be entered.
"Scout reports from the other side," Mela announced, her voice tight. "It's… bad."
The image she projected showed a world of twisted metal and shattered landscapes. The ground was a graveyard of colossal, bio-mechanical constructs, some miles long. The sky was a perpetual twilight, lit by the constant explosions of a war that had no end.
"Faction-Cluster 9," Vexia said, analyzing the data. "The two warring factions are known as the 'Sentinels' and the 'Reclaimers'. They were once a single, symbiotic species. A civil war, now in its nine-hundredth year, has devolved them into mindless war-machines."
"What are they fighting over?" Matthias asked.
"They no longer remember," Vexia replied. "Their core programming is simple: exterminate the other faction. They are a self-perpetuating apocalypse."
