The Rift Hall had never felt this heavy before.
Players gathered in scattered clusters across the vast expanse, standing or sitting in uneven formations like fragments of something that had been forcefully broken apart and carelessly left behind.
The usual low hum of conversation that once filled the hall was completely absent, replaced instead by a thick, suffocating silence that pressed against the air and settled deeply into the bones of everyone present.
It wasn't just quiet, it was the kind of silence that came after chaos, after loss, after the realization that things would never return to how they once were.
This was no longer a place of preparation. It had become a place of survival.
