Leon's chest felt like it was caving in.
He watched his father go down on one knee, watched the spike tear through him from behind, watched the blood pool dark and fast into the churned earth, and something in him screamed, raw and wordless, demanding he move.
He couldn't.
"I have to go." His voice cracked on it. "I have to go help him."
"You can't." Leon — the other Leon — said it quietly, no malice in it, just fact. "You can't leave this place."
Leonis tried anyway. He reached for that familiar thread of ki that let him step between one place and another, the same thing that had carried him across Beastglade a hundred times without thought.
Nothing answered.
He tried again. Threw everything he had into it.
Still nothing. He was standing in the same white nowhere he'd been standing in since this whole thing started, and no amount of will was going to change that.
