(Inside the Jet, Ascending from the Time-Stilled World, Leo's POV)
Once inside the jet, Leo did not take a seat.
He couldn't.
Instead, he simply stood at the jet's window, fingers clawed around the back of the seat in front of him, knuckles white, shoulders hunched forward as he pressed his forehead against the cold pane, watching—waiting—as the scenery below began to blur into rapid ascent.
47… 48… 49…
The numbers echoed in his skull like war drums, not loud but persistent, each tick a hammer to the nerves threading through his spine.
The jet roared louder now, engines straining, tilting the aircraft sharply as it climbed toward the exit portal…. towards freedom….
And yet Leo didn't feel free. Not yet.
56… 57… 58…
The g-force slammed the rest of the passengers back into their seats, some groaning from the pressure, some gripping their harnesses with pale, trembling hands, but not Leo.
Leo stayed standing, legs braced, hands trembling from exhaustion as he held on with everything he had left, the strain in his forearms a whisper compared to the weight pressing on his mind.
'Come on… come on… just a little more—'
He whispered it like a prayer, like a mantra, as his gray eyes refused to blink, refused to leave the window. As if him looking away would change the odds of his survival.
65… 66… 67…
It was at this point that he finally saw it.
A shadow spreading far faster than anything natural, devouring the world below like spilled ink, as the already dim skies turned pitch black, darker than night, darker than death itself—as if the God they'd stolen from had finally opened its eyes.
*Lub… dub*
*Lub… dub*
*Lub… dub*
The sound of his heartbeat grew louder in his ears, louder than the engines, louder than reason, louder than fear—until all he could hear was that horrible, suffocating rhythm pounding through his veins.
And still the darkness rose.
Closer. Closer.
His throat was dry. His lungs wouldn't move.
He couldn't even scream.
He could only watch, eyes wide, lips parted, as the edge of that abyss raced toward them.
"Hey guys, is anyone else seeing this? Why is a dark shadow engulfing the entire world below us?" One of the other passengers asked worriedly, as his question drew the gazes of many towards the window pane, only for their view to be abruptly cut off when the jet approached the exit portal threshold.
*Shift*
Once the jet reached the exit threshold, the edges of the world below began to ripple, the gray haze beneath them peeling away like discarded skin, replaced not by light, but by the familiar, endless black of space.
The teleportation boundary.
They'd crossed it.
The jet lurched one final time as the realm below severed its grip, hurling them into interdimensional airspace, out of reach, if only just.
'I did it…. I actually did it—' Leo thought, as although he did not collapse into a puddle, his fingers did slip slightly from the seat, muscles no longer able to hold.
He exhaled. Once. Twice.
Then finally slumped into the chair behind him.
He didn't need to count anymore, but he did so anyway.
69.4 seconds.
Give or take.
That's what it had taken from the moment his fingers touched the cursed blocks of Origin Metal to the second they'd broken free from that world.
Just a little over a minute.
But it had felt like an eternity.
Like the longest and most stressful seventy seconds of his entire fucking life.
And yet, somehow… he had survived.
Somehow, 'TheBoss' had prevailed yet again.
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Leo stared blankly through the window, the abyss outside now calm, cold, and lifeless, utterly indifferent to the storm he had just barely escaped.
And then…..
He laughed.
At first, it was a quiet sound, a breathless puff of disbelief, like a dying man coughing out seawater after crawling onto the shore.
But then it grew.
"Haha… ha… ha—HAHAHAHA!"
The sound escaped his lips like a crack in his sanity had burst open, as if the sheer pressure of surviving something that no one was supposed to walk away from had finally snapped something loose inside him.
He tilted his head back, laughter pouring out of him like blood from a slit artery, as his body shook with each wheezing breath, pain forgotten in the wave of absurd, elated hysteria that washed over him.
A few passengers turned.
Then a few more.
Brows furrowed. Eyes wary. One man even reached to unclip his belt, just in case.
"The hell's wrong with him…?"
"Was he infected by the taint?"
"I—I think the world below scrambled his brain…"
But Leo didn't care.
He didn't even hear them.
He just kept laughing like a madman, one hand slapping his own forehead over and over again, chuckling through gritted teeth as the enormity of what he had just pulled off finally hit him.
"Ah—Ouch… shit—Ouch…" he hissed, as the adrenaline finally began to fade, the world slowly sharpening again around him as sensation returned—first to his spine, then to his arms, and finally to his hands.
That's when he saw them.
His palms.
Seared.
Bleeding.
Branded.
Two ancient symbols had been scorched into his flesh like molten iron, their edges raw and blackened, steam still rising faintly from where the blood mixed with the arcane burn.
And Leo recognized the text instantly.
'THIEF.'
He didn't need a translator to tell him what it was. He knew the language of the ancients and he knew what it meant.
"…So the heat wasn't just from the metal…" Leo whispered, his voice low now, his lips twitching in a smile that was somewhere between awe and dread.
It was a curse. A mark. A branding spell left by Zhanrok himself—so that no matter who stole the origin metal, they would never be able to hide.
'Fuck… if I was still in that world… this mark would have made sure there was nowhere left to run—no crevice dark enough, no cave deep enough, no spell strong enough to mask me.'
It was a death sentence.
Delayed only by distance.
He winced, sucking in a breath through his teeth as he wiped the blood from his palms with the edge of his coat, watching how the symbols glowed faintly, as if still alive—still watching.
But he didn't flinch.
He reached into his storage ring with practiced ease, and pulled out a healing potion, uncorking it with his teeth and gulping it down in one go, the smooth taste refreshing him.
*Glug*
*Gulp*
The blue aura of joy and relief, pulsed from within him, at this moment, as he truly felt the happiest and most accomplished he had ever felt in a long time, right at this moment.
'I did it! I am the fucking man!' He told himself, as he relaxed his back and steadied his breathing.
Then, in that single, suspended moment where no one was trying to kill him, where he wasn't bleeding from a dozen places, where he wasn't calculating his odds of survival every second—
Leo smiled.
Truly smiled.
Because against all odds… he'd done it.
He had stolen from a God.
He had broken through a time-frozen fortress.
He had lived.
And that meant only one thing—
He was one step closer.
One step closer to reuniting with his family.
One step closer to getting his old life back together.
'Ha… hahaha…' he chuckled internally, as this time the laughter did not originate from madness, but rather hope.
Hope for a better future.
Hope, that made the blue aura around him burn brighter than the sun.
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End of volume 3.
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