(Meanwhile, Leo's POV, A Minutes Earlier)
By the time Leo felt the resistance thin, he could no longer tell whether that sensation was real or simply something his mind had invented to justify continuing forward, because although his body had long since stopped feeling like something he truly inhabited, reduced instead to delayed echoes of intent and motion, his will still seemed to be issuing commands to a vessel that had not yet fully collapsed.
Light appeared ahead of him.
Or at least, he thought it did.
It bled into the tunnel gradually, not as a clean opening or a defined destination, but as a pale intrusion that cut through the distortion in uneven waves, flickering and stretching as though unsure whether it was permitted to exist here at all, and Leo's heart stuttered painfully at the sight as hope and suspicion tangled together until neither could be trusted.
'Is that it…?'
