Perspective: Alessio Leone
The days passed slowly.
Too slowly.
The sun rose and fell over the savanna in a lazy rhythm, and time seemed to crawl like a river of golden honey beneath the constant heat.
At first, Alessio still tried to keep count — carving imaginary marks in the ground, tracking the moonrise to measure the passage of days.
But after a while, even that lost meaning.
By his own estimation, it had been a little over a month since he and Sith had arrived in that reality.
An entire month as lions.
A month living from the land, from the hunt, from survival.
A month without clothes, without weapons, without a shield — and, strangely enough, without hurry.
That last part, perhaps, was the strangest of all.
In the first days, Alessio woke each morning with the urge to find a way out.
He scoured the horizon, searching for any sign of change in the sky — a break in the endless monotony of the plains.
But as the days went by, that impulse began to fade.
And in its place, something different took root.
Calm.
Instinct.
Animal stillness.
He could feel the lion within him — its fury, pride, and territorial impulse — slowly merging with the rationality that remained of his human self.
At first, it was a war: the man trying to master the beast, the beast trying to devour the man.
But, over time, the two began to fuse.
A fragile balance — but a real one.
As if every roar, every breath, brought a little more harmony to that duality.
The effects of that fusion were visible.
He moved with more confidence, reacted with more precision, and controlled his body with a natural ease he could never have imagined.
Mind and instinct began to operate in unison, and Alessio finally understood what the test had always demanded of him.
The man and the lion had to coexist.
And, somehow, he was succeeding.
Throughout that month, the territory he'd claimed remained mostly calm.
No other lions dared approach after the last battle — his scent and Sith's marked the area strongly enough to keep rivals away.
But the savanna was a living world, and absolute peace never lasted.
Twice, hyenas ventured too close.
Hungry and reckless, drawn by the leftovers of the kills he and Sith left behind.
The first time, Alessio hesitated — still adapting to the body, still trying to remember he was no longer a man wielding a shield.
But the body answered for him.
Rage.
Strength.
Instinct.
All at once.
And when the second pack of hyenas came, the result was swift and brutal.
None survived.
None returned.
The territory was safe again.
The savanna, silent.
Life, predictable.
Well… almost.
Because there was still Sith.
Life with her was anything but simple.
Even in the body of a lioness, she retained that same magnetic aura, that commanding presence Alessio had come to know so well.
Sometimes she was calm, serene — lying beneath the sun as if nothing in the world could disturb her.
But one look — a single look — and all the balance within him would collapse.
She was still beautiful.
Strong.
Unpredictable.
And no matter how many days passed, Alessio couldn't decide whether Sith was his partner, his rival, or something in between.
Sometimes she hunted with him, side by side, in perfect sync — two predators moving as one.
Other times, she disappeared for hours, even days, returning with the scent of the hunt upon her fur, or with that distant look in her eyes — the look of someone who had wandered deep into thoughts he couldn't reach.
She was an enigma, even here.
A living, untamable force.
And, in a strange way, Alessio liked that.
There was something deeply human in realizing that even in the bodies of beasts, they still challenged each other.
Still tested limits.
Still provoked one another — with glances, with gestures, with silence.
It was a complex relationship.
Instinctive, yes — but charged with something more.
Something beyond the body, beyond flesh, beyond survival.
And as the sun set, painting the horizon in crimson and gold, Alessio watched Sith resting under the tree, her silhouette cut against the light.
And he thought, silently, that maybe this was what the Black Tower had wanted to show him all along.
That when everything is stripped away — the body, the weapons, the titles — what remains is instinct.
And instinct, in the end, reveals who we truly are.
Perhaps things would calm down now, or so Alessio thought.
It began as something almost imperceptible.
A faint shift in the afternoon breeze, a subtle new scent mixed with the dry air of the savanna.
But to the lion within Alessio, it was as loud as thunder.
He lifted his head from where he lay beneath the shade of the great tree, ears twitching, trying to decipher what instinct already knew — something new was in the air.
Something warm.
Alive.
Familiar.
For a moment, the man within him tried to rationalize it.
The analytical mind of Alessio — trained in logic, cause and consequence, and planning — tried to fit the sensation into some simple explanation.
But the Black Tower never dealt in simplicity.
The scent was Sith's.
But not the same scent that had filled his world for weeks — the wild, intoxicating smell that had burned through his mind that night.
This one was different.
Heavier.
Deeper.
And somehow… calmer.
The lion within him roared silently — not in sound, but in certainty.
An instinctive, primal recognition etched into every cell of the body he now inhabited.
He knew what it meant.
Sith was changing.
Her scent carried a new weight — an echo of continuity, a promise of life.
And when instinct processed that truth, the man within Alessio finally understood.
"She's pregnant…"
The thought came like an absurd whisper — impossible, yet utterly clear.
There was no room for doubt.
No space for logic.
And then, for the first time since becoming a lion, Alessio felt true fear.
Not fear of death.
He had faced death too many times — in the game and outside it — to be shaken by it anymore.
No, this was something else.
A fear far more human.
Far more real.
The fear of responsibility.
That body, that life — those lives — now rested upon him.
And somehow, the Black Tower had decided that this, too, was part of his trial.
He breathed deeply, feeling the weight of that revelation.
With every inhale, the scent grew sharper.
There was no mistake.
It was the same instinct that true lions carried — and now, it was his as well.
The man in him wanted to laugh — but the sound that escaped his throat was a low, confused growl.
Laughing at the irony.
At fate.
Father.
The word sounded foreign even in his own mind.
He — a veteran player who had returned in time, a strategist with meticulously calculated plans to rebuild his empire inside the Tower — was now about to become the father of lions.
For a brief moment, the absurdity of it made him doubt everything.
Was this part of the test?
An illusion conjured by the Tower?
Or something more — something symbolic, a living manifestation of his own Essence taking form, growing, becoming real?
The Tower always spoke through metaphors.
But the scent… the scent was far too real to be just illusion.
The lion in him rose — instinctively protective — and turned toward the golden horizon where Sith hunted.
A low growl rumbled in his chest — not of threat, but of declaration.
That territory, that mate, that future litter… they were his to protect.
And the man within — the one still walking the fragile line between reason and instinct — felt something he could not name.
Not quite pride.
Not quite fear.
But something that bound the two together — a weight and a strength, inseparable.
Perhaps that was what it meant to ignite one's Essence.
At least for him.
It meant understanding that real power didn't come from force —
but from what one chooses to protect.