Leon raised an eyebrow. "Tether?"
Alexander nodded. "Yes. Corruption isn't native to our world. It's foreign. And Pandora, rejects anything that doesn't belong to it. So, in order to remain here, corruption needs an anchor… something to bind it to our reality."
The Emperor's expression darkened slightly as he went on, voice lowering as if the walls themselves shouldn't hear. "That anchor, that connection, is what we call a tether. It's the first sign that corruption has chosen a place or a person."
Leon leaned back in his chair, thoughtful. The term lingered in his mind, heavy and unfamiliar, yet it felt like something he should've known all along.
"A tether," he murmured under his breath. "Something foreign forcing itself to stay…"
Alexander watched him carefully, measuring every flicker in his expression. "Exactly. Without a tether, corruption cannot sustain itself here. It will wither away — rejected by the world's natural order."
