Leo Shaw sat cross-legged on the wide bed in his spacious bedroom, the faint glow of the setting sun filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Phoenix Academy villa. The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the air conditioning and the occasional distant sounds of students training in the academy grounds outside. Around him, more than a thousand Spirit Stones—each the size of a fist or smaller—were arranged in a perfect circle on the thick carpet. These stones shimmered with a faint inner light, their dense Spirit Energy slowly leaking into the air.
As he breathed steadily, the Spirit Energy in the room and inside the stones began to move. It rushed toward him in an invisible torrent, forming a vortex centered on his body. To anyone watching, it would have looked like not
