The competition ground was selected at Magical City's southern edge gate, which was near the forest and had been transford overnight.
Once, there was just an open area of packed ground between the city's final permanent structures and the tree line of the Forbidden Forest. But now, it is a whole different scene—teeming with people, designed with a clear purpose, and buzzing with the kind of energy that suggests this place has been anticipating sothing big and has finally seen it co to life.
Temporary elevated viewing platforms stood along the eastern and western edges—wooden structures built solidly enough that the several hundred people now occupying them produced no concerning movent in the fras. The platforms were full. The open ground between them held the overflow—cultivators and rchants and city residents standing in the morning light with the particular forward-facing quality of people waiting for sothing to begin.
The forest began thirty ters beyond the ground's southern boundary.
Dark. Dense. The tree line was solid and unbroken from this distance, the interior invisible behind the first row of trunks and the shadow they cast against each other.
A single wide entry path had been cleared through the outer tree line—the only visible break in the wall of it, marked on both sides with Grey Shadow Hall boundary stakes bearing the organisation's dark mark pressed into pale wood. Beyond those stakes, the forest proper began, and the cleared path disappeared into the interior within twenty ters of entering.
Grey Shadow Hall personnel were positioned throughout the ground in an organised way, as an organisation conducting sothing it had conducted before—present at every necessary point without clustering, visible without being intrusive.
Elder Veylan Lie stood tall on the raised platform at the centre of the grounds. The morning light danced across his Celestial Brook City senior robes, reflecting the sa calm authority that he exuded. In his hand, he held the formal structure of the competition, but he did not need to look at it—he was already well aware of its contents.
To the right of Elder Veylan Lie, on a slightly raised platform, stood Aria Valen with Varis by her side, just a bit behind and off to the side.
She was not in charge; she was rely observing. The morning light danced along the edges of her pale outer robe, highlighting it in that understated way that only fine fabric can—nothing dramatic, just quietly there.
Her dark hair was neatly pulled back from her face. She wore her usual composed expression, giving nothing away to the crowd beneath her. Her eyes moved through the assembled groups, taking in every detail with a kind of attention that processed everything without locking onto a single thing.
She took in the five clan groups much like she did with most things—as a source of information rather than a display to watch.
Varis stood beside her like a fixed point that the morning had been organised around.
The five clan groups had assembled along the ground's northern edge in their designated positions—each group in its marked area, separated enough that the distinctions between them were imdiately visible.
The Brown Clan stood with Conner Brown at the front—his broad, patient face looking at the forest entry path without particular expression, his staff secured across his back in the carrying position of soone for whom that weight had long since beco simply part of how he moved through the world. Dustin is beside him, leaner and quieter in his stillness than Conner's grounded version of it. The rest of the Brown group is behind them.
The Clark Clan was compact and self-contained, with Rachel Clark at the front with the organised stillness she brought into every space she occupied—the surrounding air slightly different from the air around the people near her in the way that her cultivation level quietly produced without her assistance. Evan Clark to her right, lean and ready in the efficient way of soone who had been trained out of anything unnecessary.
The Brooks Clan was slightly more spread than the others—Max Brooks was visible at the front, his restrained power present in how he occupied his standing position; Zara Brooks was near the group's edge, looking at the observer platforms with the sa sharp environntal attention she had applied to every new space since arriving in Magical City.
The Walker Clan stood with a quality of collective stillness that was different from the other clans' stillness. Less waiting. More ready. Harvey Walker was at the front—his broad-shouldered directness making him imdiately identifiable even from the observer platforms above. Aaden to his left, his lateral awareness operating continuously even in this stationary position. Drake Walker was near the group's rear, watching the crowd's edges rather than its centre.
The ten junior mbers behind them in the particular contained state were people who understood that today was not their day and were watching with the focused attention that ca from knowing it would be eventually.
And at the end of the northern edge—the Osborn Clan.
The smallest group present. The least established na among the five. Robert and Sai at the front, Ronan, Sarah, Taylen, and Eissa behind them. No senior elder was visible in their formation in the way the other clans had positioned theirs. No display of resource or history in how they stood. Just six people in a marked area at the end of a line of significantly better-resourced clans, the morning light falling across them the sa way it fell across everyone else.
Robert looked at the forest entry path.
He did not look at the other clans. He did not look at the platforms.
Five clans. One forest. Two representatives from each clan. The crowd buzzed with opinions on how this would all play out. But the forest? It would not care about any of it. Elder Veylan Lie spoke calmly, his voice just loud enough to carry across the clearing.
The forest hunt would last three days and two nights. Each pair operated independently inside the forest — no communication between pairs from different clans was permitted from the mont of entry. Scoring was determined by beast cores collected and delivered to the designated extraction point at the forest's interior marker at the competition's end.
The pair with the highest combined score across the three days won.
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