Leon stepped through the silver portal and arrived somewhere quiet.
No Seraphine. No Ira. No Pyrans adjusting to their first hours in a world that didn't smell of sulfur and heat. Just the tower rising above him with its familiar impossible height, and the particular stillness that existed in parts of his dimensional world that hadn't been touched by other people yet.
He'd come here for a specific reason.
The World Fragment sat where he'd left it—small, spherical, radiating that quality of contained significance that made it feel heavier than its appearance suggested. He'd earned it the same day he'd earned the Primordial Void Heart, and while the Void Heart sat in its own entirely separate category of value, the Fragment was something he hadn't properly attended to since acquiring it. Moving it into his soul-bound inventory was the obvious next step—nothing could reach something stored there without going through him first, which made it the most secure option available.
