The evening air in the lower districts of Forest City was a thick, intoxicating cocktail of humid summer heat, the sharp scent of ozone from the hovering Energy Screens, and the distant, rhythmic thrum of industrial machinery. As the sun dipped below the skyline, casting long, jagged shadows against the neon-lit facades of the tenements, the streets began to pulse with a different kind of life. This was the world beneath the gleaming spires of the Spirit Martial Academy—a place where the Spirit Revival hadn't just brought wonder, but also a more predatory kind of desperation.
Leo Shaw pedaled the rusted bicycle with an effortless rhythm that betrayed his newly acquired Spirit-Forged Body. Despite the heavy, clunky frame of the pre-Spirit Revival era vehicle, he moved through the thickenin
