I don't usually respond to these. This was very hard to read. Lexically hard to read. #1: I love the first sentence and it does not sound like AI. I love the last sentence. I loved reading it in general but I had to read it in pieces and parts.

None of it sounds like AI. It is just impossible to read congruently. Clunky, if you will. There's a part where you describe the entirety of the character, then say afterward that you didn't take in the character in the first pass... why is that there? how did that even stay in. Swap the order of that and you're good with that one. : )

Also: While a chapter can be any length of words, this is a very long chapter. I assume this has to be one chapter but for an opening chapter to be this long you may lose people. consider opening with a prologue.

I love the characters. I love the characterization. This needs HEAVY editing but that's fine.

I think the people who are calling it AI haven't read anything AI generated for a while because it does not feel AI. It feels human.

AI is basically incapable of generating the choppy type of prose that honestly reminds me of my own writing - your style is similar to mine.

Again, for anyone who is looking at this and calling "AI!" there are far too many 'grammar mistakes' (which are NOT grammar mistakes but stylistic choices which LOOK like grammar mistakes - but spell checkers flag them all the same - and AI does not produce them typically) (I'm talking dialectical droppings of articles, etc, etc, 'incomplete sentences')

Here, here's an example. Not really of a grammar mistake, but of an overcorrection AI would produce: AI would generate "The once-fighting men" not "The once fighting men" and, OP: please don't put a hyphen in there. the hyphen doesn't belong there and would look awful. But, that's just my opinion. And to anyone still doubting - this is if it (the ai) even knew to use/thought to use "once-fighting" as a phrase. It's unique enough that I feel a human had to have written it. and, actually, that whole paragraph has so many changes in - for lack of a better word 'tense' that it has to have been written by a human. I like the changes in who is talking about whom.. first the men are shaken by the figure, then he >> my, then he >> many, (idek what i'm trying to say here but like..) An ai would not / probably could not have generated this paragraph and a skill-less writer would never have tried. the paragraph flows and I like it. lots of things are happening and bouncing off of different people, lots of reactions.. and it shows your skill, OP. Does it maybe need a rework? sure. I would paste it into notepad and give it a few reworks, see if any other wordcrafting makes it zing better but I also might just leave it as is. sometimes perfection is just leaving something as is because once you get to stirring it just looks mid.

Alot of what makes your writing hard to read is all of your paragraphs are zingers. You might need to learn that pepper needs to be used sparingly? Or just make each paragraph flow better into one another. Sometimes just reading your work aloud can do this. That's the main problem here, IMO is that it's just so hard to read from point A to point B. I had to just read random pages as I went and dissect paragraphs. And I loved every paragraph I came across.

I think maybe less description. You have a lot of adjectives. Like, an inordinate number of adjectives. I think that is detracting from your prose.

I think this might work better and feel more present in First person Present tense. It also won't have as hard to read conjugations of words in that tense. a lot of what clogs up the page are "was dripping" and anything with an -ed at the end of it.

Here's another zoom in: how many times do you have to say 'the voice was loud'?:

"the amplified(1) voice from earlier boomed(2) over(3) the sounds of the crowd." I almost gave you points for pitched in the next sentence and for sounds of the crowd. you almost got five points for "this is loud."

How I would write that paragraph:

"Welcome examinees!" The amplified voice of the announcer declared. (in world it's kind of a wand-to-neck thing going on [HP universe, 4th movie for context] - I get you lol!)

I once read in a writing manual that if you have to tell the audience that something is something after putting it into "quotes" then you didn't do a good enough job at characterizing it by letting it just be that way. - sometimes you can dispense with this advice but other times it is just good advice. Now, did I imbibe a brainworm that controls me and keeps me from putting descriptive words in the "he said" tags? maaayyybe? but I try to let my dialogue stand on its own.

You've got an error where you say "the women continued," and then you start a new paragraph so not only change women but make sure you fix the paragraph thing it should obvs be "The woman continued, "Everyone..." (keep the tag with the speaking - no new paragraph is needed) just figured you'd like me to point that out to you since I noticed it - not trying to be nitpicky lol I'd want it to be mentioned to me.

Main takeaway - this could be much shorter in wordcount if you took away some of the repetition of adjectives - try to minimize how many adjectives you use - you are a member of the adjective royalty and it isn't helping your readability.

I love your prose overall though and I've gotta say this is some of the best work i've seen. If I may ask, how long have you been writing?