(Meanwhile, Leo’s POV, A Minutes Earlier)
By the time Leo felt the resistance thin, he could no longer tell whether that sensation was real or simply something his mind had invented to justify continuing forward, because although his body had long since stopped feeling like something he truly inhabited, reduced instead to delayed echoes of intent and motion, his will still seemed to be issuing commands to a vessel that had not yet fully collapsed.
Light appeared ahead of him.
Or at least, he thought it did.
It bled into the tunnel gradually, not as a clean opening or a defined destination, but as a pale intrusion that cut through the distortion in uneven waves, flickering and stretching as though unsure whether it was permitted to exist here at all, and Leo’s heart stuttered painfully at the sight as hope and suspicion tangled together until neither could be trusted.
’Is that it...?’
The thought barely formed, weak and slurred, as his vision swam violently and the tunnel groaned around him, reality creaking like an overstrained hinge while Moltherak’s aura continued to pour through his body unchecked, no longer something he directed or shaped, but something that used him as a conduit simply because he no longer had the strength left to resist it.
*Step* *Step*
He took a couple steps.
Or maybe he was pushed.
The distinction no longer mattered.
All that mattered was that he kept moving, because stopping had ceased to be an option long ago, and even as the tunnel thinned and the pressure shifted, his instincts screamed at him not to slow down, not to hesitate, not to trust the light until he had torn the path open completely.
And so, he lifted his arm again.
Not with intention.
Not with precision.
But with memory.
The motion came from somewhere deeper than thought, twenty-four point two four degrees etched so deeply into his body that even now, even in this half-lucid state where sensation and hallucination blurred together, the angle remained perfect, the slash carving forward through the last resistance with brutal inevitability.
*SLASH*
*FSHHHH—*
The Dimensional Wall ruptured.
Space screaming as the final barrier collapsed under the compounded force of Moltherak’s remaining aura, the tunnel exploding outward into blinding light as the fourth dimension disgorged itself violently into three-dimensional space, reality snapping back into alignment with a thunderous distortion that sent shockwaves rippling in every direction.
*Step* *Step*
Leo stumbled forward.
Or rather, he walked straight through it.
His boots striking solid ground.
Stone.
Cold.
Real.
Yet even then, certainty refused to return.
Because although he felt the difference beneath his feet, although the distortion thinned and the pressure changed, his mind could not accept that the journey was over, his thoughts lagging behind events as he continued to push forward automatically, aura still pouring outward because he did not know how to stop it anymore.
’Keep going...’
The command surfaced again, hollow and detached.
’Don’t let it collapse...’
His mind said, as he raised the aura dagger again and slashed...
*SLASH*
But this time, there was no tunnel to widen.
No corridor to stabilize.
No distortion to absorb the force.
The aura had nowhere left to go.
So it went outward.
Moltherak’s condensed killing intent, compressed and redirected for fifteen unbroken minutes, exploded from Leo’s body in a silent, invisible wave that rolled across the outer edge of the Chakravyuh formation like an extinction event, space itself trembling as the pressure erased resistance rather than colliding with it.
Twenty-five million lives ended in an instant.
Not with screams.
Not with resistance.
They simply ceased.
Soldiers manning the outermost arrays collapsed where they stood, bodies dropping as though the concept of life had been revoked mid-thought, sigils flickering violently before shattering outright as the formation lost an entire section of its living anchor points.
Leo did not see it.
He did not register it.
He only felt a brief easing of pressure, a momentary lightness that convinced his fractured mind that the tunnel had finally stabilized, that the danger had passed, and that continuing forward was still the correct choice.
Behind him, the world erupted.
Cult destroyers burst through the still-roaring rift in rapid succession, engines screaming as they cleared the distortion and immediately split formation, weapon systems lighting up as they identified hostile positions and began firing without hesitation, energy lances ripping into disorganized enemy lines while additional ships surged out in waves.
Some pushed forward into battle.
Others dropped altitude sharply and landed hard around Leo’s position, hulls slamming into stone in a protective ring as shields flared to life, creating a temporary barrier that cut off sightlines and blocked the cameras scrambling to reacquire the scene.
Inside that ring, Leo finally faltered.
The light dimmed.
The pressure vanished.
And without it, there was nothing left holding him upright.
*THUD*
His knees buckled, not violently, but as though they had been waiting patiently for permission to fail, and once that permission came, Leo collapsed forward onto the stone without ever realizing he was falling, the aura dagger dissolving between his fingers as the final remnants of Moltherak’s power bled out of the fractured orb within him.
Silence rushed in.
Not peace.
Just absence.
His vision darkened completely, thoughts unraveling into nothing as exhaustion finally claimed what the tunnel had not been able to take, consciousness slipping away the moment his body hit the ground.
Voices reached him faintly.
Distant.
Urgent.
Healers.
Medics.
Hands lifting him.
Shields tightening.
But none of it registered.
Because Leo could already feel his consciousness slipping away, his body finally surrendering after carrying an army, a Dragon’s power, and the weight of an entire war through a dimension that should have killed him ten times over.
And although he knew he could not afford to rest, although he understood that his army still needed him, the truth was unavoidable.
At this moment, he needed a few minutes of reprieve, because without it, his mind simply refused to remain conscious any longer, having already supported him far beyond what it was ever meant to endure.