(Leo's POV, the Fourth Dimension)
Leo stood perfectly still within the silent expanse of the Fourth Dimension, his eyes closed as his consciousness spread outward while a thin veil of aura slowly dispersed from his body, forming a faint circular ring around him as he allowed it to drift naturally through the strange environment.
Four hundred and thirty-two days had passed since he first began searching for the gradient of time.
Four hundred and thirty-two days of failure.
Four hundred and thirty-two days of uncertainty.
Yet today… something finally felt different.
At first the sensation was so subtle that Leo almost dismissed it entirely, because what he noticed was not a sudden distortion in space, nor any visible ripple within the Fourth Dimension itself, but rather a small irregularity in the way his aura expanded outward as time passed.
Initially he assumed that the inconsistency came from his own aura control.
