(Within the endless void, Leo's POV)

'I must find a way out, or I'm doomed,' Leo thought as he forced his breathing to slow, even while his heart thundered violently against his ribs, because panic here would not merely cloud his judgment but actively accelerate his death.

He tightened the aura shield around his mind, reinforcing it layer by layer, as he pushed his aura dagger outward in a wide, deliberate sweep, searching desperately for even the faintest trace of temporal resistance that could confirm he was still inside a structured tunnel and not drifting freely into something far worse.

However, unfortunately for him, nothing answered.

The space around him felt unnervingly smooth, not empty in the way a corridor lacked furniture, but empty in the way meaning itself had been stripped away, as though the fourth dimension had erased the concept of walls altogether and replaced it with a gentle, merciless slope that drew everything forward without effort or sound.

'The entry tear should still exist,' Leo thought as he forced his aura outward again, retracing his path in reverse, trying to remember the exact stance of his foot, the precise rotation of his wrist, the intention behind the vector he had carved into the membrane, as he desperately searched for any disturbance he could latch on.

However, although he remembered confidence, the ease, the slice of his hand that should have carved 31.45°, what he could not find was any spatial disturbance.

'Im doomed….'

Leo thought, as he clenched his jaw and took a second step back, then a third, then a fourth, moving slowly enough that he could have stopped at any moment, because the first rule Moltherak had drilled into him was simple—

You do not run inside the fourth dimension unless you want to die.

Yet even as Leo stepped back, the slope beneath him did not rise, it did not lead him toward safety, but rather continued to pull downward as if the tunnel itself had forgotten it ever had an exit.

'What now?'

He wondered, as he stopped moving for half a breath, forcing himself to instead test a different approach, where he swept his aura outward and upward like a net, trying to catch the faintest ripple of the path he had previously carved, because if the tunnel walls were dissolving, then maybe there were remnants, maybe there were scars left in the fabric.

However, unfortunately, all he found once again was absolute smoothness…..

A smoothness so perfect that it felt hostile.

'I might die,'

Leo thought as his pulse slammed harder, his stomach sinking with the weight of it, as the panic finally began to creep in.

He took another step back, then another, as he counted in his mind the way Moltherak had taught him, not because the numbers mattered anymore, but because counting was the only thing that kept the panic from swallowing him whole.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Yet the deeper he stepped, the more the void around him seemed to thin, as the strange colours that once flickered at the edge of his vision began fading into pale gray, and even that gray began to feel like it was stretching apart, as though reality itself was losing cohesion.

'What if I cannot find it?'

He finally wondered, as his breathing became faster and faster.

The idea landed quietly, like a drop of poison in a clear cup, as it did not scream or shout, but simply existed, and the moment it existed, it began multiplying.

What if there was no way back?

What if he had tilted too deep, and the tunnel he opened was not a tunnel at all, but a slide into the endless void that Moltherak had warned him about repeatedly.

'Is this where I die?'

Leo thought as his chest tightened.

He knew very well that the void did not need to kill him quickly, only keep him, and hence, he took another careful step backward, his aura dagger stabbing outward again and again, as he tried to find friction, tried to find a wall, tried to find anything that proved this space still obeyed the rules he had spent months learning.

However, unfortunately, despite his desperate prayers, he still found nothing.

As it was at this moment that his mind finally began to betray him with something worse than fear, as it painted him a cruel picture of Amanda.

Not the Blacksmith Amanda, not the genius inventor Amanda, but the Amanda who smiled when she thought nobody was looking, the Amanda who held their children with tired arms and stubborn pride.

'If I'm not around… what happens to my kids… and Amanda?'

Leo wondered as the image sharpened in his mind, giving him a full blown panic attack.

He saw Amanda running.

He saw Amanda hiding.

He saw her raising two children alone in the shadows, as Elena had once raised him and Luke.

However, this time there was no Earth, no peace, no quiet planet to call home, no chance to breathe.

'They would be hunted relentlessly,'

Leo thought as his throat burned.

He knew very well that the Righteous Faction would never let anyone with confirmed Timeless Assassin bloodline live a long life, and hence, he knew for sure that they would hunt Amanda and the kids down, no matter how long it took.

He imagined his children growing up watching the sky with fear, learning to duck before they learned to laugh, learning to lie before they learned to read, as his vision blurred for a fraction of a second and the loneliness started to press closer.

'What happens to my friends, my family and the Cult?' Leo thought as he tried to steady his breathing again, only to fail miserably again.

He pictured Veyr in chains, the execution drawing nearer, as he pictured himself not arriving, not saving him, not even dying in battle like a warrior, but fading into nothing in a place nobody could reach.

'They would never even find my body,'

Leo thought as the loneliness sharpened its grip, the fourth dimension stripping away his comfort, his certainty, and the sense that anyone else existed at all, as the loneliness attacked him in a way that nothing had ever attacked him before.

It wrapped around his thoughts, whispering that there was nothing outside this place, that everyone he loved was a fabrication, a story invented to cope.

'No… hold it together,'

Leo thought as he layered his aura shield again and again, because Moltherak had warned him what happened when the void touched the mind directly.

As even shielded, he could feel it.

A pressure.

A whisper.

A suggestion.

*Step*

He took another step back.

Then another.

Yet the slope steepened, and the panic sharpened, because the rational part of his mind reached a conclusion he did not want to admit just yet.

'I may have already passed the point of return,' Leo thought as his heart hammered, the inevitability of his situation settling into him, as his vision began to dissolve into a pale, shifting haze.

He tried to twist his vector, to carve a new weak point, but without walls, without membranes, without rhythm, he had nothing to strike.

As he felt like he was swimming in the air, or digging into fog.

'Is this really it? The end of my adventure?'

Leo thought as his mind flashed again to Amanda, to his children, to himself as he ruled over the universe…..

Before even those thoughts began to dissolve into a hopeless, endless black, as he began to lose all hope.

'What a fucking disgrace…. I really thought I would amount to more….'

Leo thought, as just when he started to lose all hope, the smooth grey space ahead of him twitched—

*SWOOSH*

A line appeared.

Thin.

Violent.

Wrong in a way that felt right, as reality split open with brutal authority, a spatial tear ripping through the void as pressure slammed into his aura shield hard enough to make it ring.

"Who?"

He muttered in surprise, as from that tear, something massive surged forward.

Ancient.

Dominant.

Familiar.

As Moltherak emerged with a disapproving frown etched on his face.

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