The world shifted without warning, as if an unseen hand had turned a page, and what replaced the enclosed stone arena was something completely different, something vast and open and suffocating in its own way, a desert that stretched endlessly in all directions.
Asea of golden sand that shimmered under a blazing sky where not one, not two, but five burning suns hung high above, each one radiating intense heat that pressed down on the land like a crushing weight, their light overlapping and blending into something almost blinding.
Making the air itself ripple and distort as waves of heat rose from the ground, turning the distant horizon into a wavering illusion that made it impossible to tell where the land ended and the sky began, and the sand beneath everything was not still but alive in its own quiet way, shifting slightly with every faint breeze.
