The Grand Arena had never looked like this before.
The combat platforms were gone, cleared away overnight by teams of laborers and low-grade earth mages, and in their place stood a single wide dais draped in the colors of every noble family with a stake in the Trials, green and black for Harwick, blue and silver for the academy proper, and now, threaded through all of it in equal measure, black and gold. Lanterns lined the stands in long, warm rows. The cold had broken sometime after midnight, and the morning was bright and mild, the kind of day the city seemed to have ordered specially for the occasion.
Dorian Hale stood at the center of the dais in ceremonial robes instead of his usual caller's coat, a heavy medallion of office hanging from his neck. His voice, when it came, was quieter than it had been all tournament. Reverent, almost.
