Twenty minutes.
That was it. Just twenty miserable minutes. That was the absolute total amount of time that had passed since he watched those heavy iron doors of the Western Gate slam shut and lock him out of the city. But time out here was a complete joke. The Elinor Woods didn't care about the ticking clocks back in Albion's towers. Out here, time just stretched out and ruined your head until twenty minutes felt like three grueling, exhausting hours of walking in circles.
He wasn't walking. He was fighting the ground. Every step was a stupid, pointless wrestling match just to lift his foot. The ground here was completely irrational. It wasn't just mud. It was this dense, acidic dirt that smelled like rusted iron and old rot. He was stepping into it and instantly calculating the drag coefficient on his boots. Every time he picked up his foot, the suction fought back. It was exhausting, sure, but mostly it was just incredibly annoying. He was a Level 1 Supreme. He shouldn't be struggling to walk through some wet dirt. His legs burned, but he refused to slow down. He just yanked his boots out of the muck, annoyed that the terrain was actively ruining his pace.
And the noise. God, the noise was absolutely the worst part of it all.
The silence wasn't actually silent. Albion had a hum—a constant, vibrating background noise of magic cores, wagons, and people yelling. Out here, the quiet was just a blank canvas for tiny, horrible details that made Leo's skin crawl right off his bones. A sudden drop in temperature hit the back of his neck. Normal people would probably think it felt like a ghost or some creeping hand, but Leo just analyzed the wind chill. It was a rapid atmospheric shift. Still, his body reacted before his brain could stop it, and a hard shiver rattled his jaw. He hated that. He hated his body acting without his permission.
He looked down at his right hand. He was gripping the hilt of the Sting way too hard. He knew that. He was smart enough to know that over-gripping ruins your wrist mobility for a quick slash. But his fingers refused to listen to his brain. The cord wrap on the handle was cheap and getting slick with his own sweat. It was freezing out here, yet his palms were sweating. Biological nonsense. He wanted to scratch his palm, but letting go of the weapon was a tactical error he absolutely refused to make. He kept his head on a swivel. Up at the canopy. Down at the roots. He was analyzing every gap between the trees, mapping out potential ambush points. There were way too many blind spots for his liking.
Void State. He needed to use the Void State.
Trice had beaten the concept into his head back at the manor courtyard. Drilled it into him until his nose bled. Breathe out, Leo. Empty your lungs. Be the wall. Be the stone. Stop existing. 'Empty your mind,' she had said a hundred times. What a load of garbage advice. You can't just magically turn off your brain when your adrenal glands are actively flooding your system with survival chemicals. His heart was beating so hard it was vibrating against his ribs. He needed that adrenaline to fight, not to sit around being calm like some useless monk. He couldn't just tune out the panic. He had to use it to stay sharp.
He was over-focusing. He realized it a second too late. He was staring so intently at a patch of moving ferns ahead of him, doing rapid mental math on whether a wild dog could clear the distance, that he completely neglected his rear guard. It was a stupid, rookie miscalculation. He didn't even notice the atmospheric pressure drop right behind his own head.
And then, a massive, solid weight slammed down onto his left shoulder.
He swallowed hard and choked on nothing. He tried to pull in oxygen to yell, but his vocal cords just locked up, letting out this pathetic little squeak that instantly pissed him off. He hated looking weak. Panic—messy, unfiltered biological panic—bypassed his logic and took over his motor functions. He spun around to face the threat. His boots hit a patch of moss and he lost his friction completely. He slipped. His arms went wide to fix his center of gravity. He barely stayed on his feet, avoiding a totally embarrassing fall into the mud.
He went for the quick-draw. But his angle was off by maybe two degrees. The blade caught on the inner lip of the stiff leather sheath and scraped loudly. It was an ugly, amateur delay. He mentally kicked himself. That half-second mistake would get him killed against a real threat.
He finally cleared the leather and leveled the blade. His chest was moving too fast. He forced his breathing to slow down. His gray eyes were wide, scanning the target, trying to blink away the blur from the sudden adrenaline dump.
Art.
Just standing there. Leaning his shoulder against a twisted oak tree like he owned the forest. Like he owned the dirt and everything walking on it.
He didn't look like a tired old grandpa sitting behind a desk anymore. The sickly green moonlight filtering through the leaves changed his face. The green light made his deep wrinkles look like severe trauma scars. He didn't look old right now. He looked like an apex predator evaluating if Leo was actually worth the effort of killing.