Lilith suddenly pressed a hand to her chest.
A flicker of confusion—and an inexplicable pang—passed through her azure eyes.
"Father… there's something inside that black hole. It feels… familiar, and it makes me a little sad?"
She tilted her head, uncertain.
Leo's gaze grew unfathomably deep.
Taking Lilith by the hand, he stepped once—and in that single stride they arrived outside the event horizon of the enormous, motionless black hole.
With power at the Sanctuary Rank—Peak, he could sense the vast force and forbidden presence here, far beyond the scale of this universe's plane.
Just as he was about to probe further, a voice—ancient yet brooking no refusal—rang out in this void where even light was swallowed.
"Stop, outsider!
This place is not for the likes of you."
Space wavered before Leo, and a figure slowly emerged.
He wore an exceedingly old gray mage's robe caked with star-dust, as if it had not moved for countless years.
His beard and hair hung to his chest, both snow-white; his face was withered, yet his eyes—eyes that had watched innumerable stars go dark—held endless wisdom.
The old man barred the way between Leo and the static black hole.
Leo's eyes fell on the gray-robed elder.
The stranger's aura was ancient and obscure, as though fused with this anomalous space itself; the power within him surpassed any being Leo had seen—save Leo himself.
"Leave this place."
The old magus's voice carried an irrevocable finality.
He repeated himself, those star-spent eyes sharp with vigilance—especially after sensing the faint, near-imperceptible ripple on Lilith. A flash of doubt crossed his withered features.
"This is the Gate of Oblivion—a portal sealed forever."
"What lies beyond?" Leo asked.
"It opens to a higher, deadlier plane—a world that for us spells doomsday.
If ever it opens, it will mean utter annihilation for this universe."
Leo held the old magus's gaze, understanding dawning.
No wonder he had scoured the boundless cosmos and never found a trace of his wife.
He had suspected she might be gone—but Lilith's reaction confirmed it: her mother's quiet departure was bound to whatever dwelt within this black hole.
This shut "gate" might be the key.
"The gatekeeper?" Leo asked mildly.
The old magus inclined his head.
"You may call me that.
My lineage has guarded this place for generations, ensuring the door never opens. That is the sole purpose of our existence."
His eyes swept over Lilith; his brow tightened.
"This girl's aura—why does it resemble that which lies beyond the door… No. This is not for you to know. Leave at once!"
His tone sharpened.
Leo felt no malice—only a duty rooted in the elder's very soul.
He could clearly see that the man's life had already been bound to this gate.
Through endless ages his strength had been spent to maintain this place; without his profound cultivation, his lamp would have burned out long ago.
Leo looked at the still black hole, then at Lilith—curious, tense—and at the pendant in his hand, now faintly warm.
The truth seemed to wait just beyond the door.
He patted Lilith's hand, calming her.
"One door away—lies doomsday?
To this realm, what waits behind it is a natural catastrophe?"
Rather than retreat before the warning, Leo took another step forward.
Light as it was, the move plucked taut the old magus's nerves.
"Stop!"
The elder growled. The miniature black-hole model atop his gnarled staff spun violently, trying to shove Leo from the area.
But that fearsome force—enough to dim the stars—struck an unseen wall around Leo and was snuffed out without a sound.
Leo's cloak did not so much as stir; he stood there as though nothing had happened.
The old magus's pupils shrank; disbelief broke across his withered face.
Power drawn partly from the Gate of Oblivion itself—his full might—had no effect on this man?!
"Y-you… what are you…?"
His voice scraped dryly. Wariness and dread peaked within him.
He had watched this door for aeons and seen many mighty beings try to approach—
but never one so unfathomable, so seemingly unbound by this world's laws.
Leo did not answer. All his focus was fixed beyond that absolute darkness, sensing its hidden truth.
Behind the death-still black lay a vast, raging ocean of energy—mass and intensity beyond imagining.
It was no mere mana, but a high-dimensional, invasive force.
Even the faintest seepage caused this realm's spatial laws to warp—subtly, irreversibly.
The elder had spoken no lie.
Yet for Leo personally, it mattered little; with the System, even in that other plane he would be the unquestioned strongest.
"Other than breaking the door—does any path lead across?" he asked.
"No!" The elder's tone was grave. His gaze flicked to Lilith; after a pause he added,
"At most, slivers—pinholes—might seep from that plane into ours, and those are utterly one-way."
"The far side is a nightmare beyond your worst imagining.
It is not war, nor conquest, but total overwriting and assimilation.
"To certain beings beyond the door, everything in our universe is but a lower-dimensional, incomplete pasture—awaiting 'completion' or 'harvest.'
If the gate opens, all known arcane laws, magical energies—even life itself—will be forcibly twisted, devoured, folded into their maddening system.
Then all things perish, and the universe falls silent."
A faint tremor threaded his voice, as if recalling the ancient records of whispered horrors and minor calamities from rare infiltrations.
It would not be a battle—only the despair of ants beneath a collapsing sky.
"If so," Leo said, eyes deepening,
"why merely seal it, rather than destroy it outright? Generations of guardianship exact a vast price—and are not foolproof."
At that, bitterness and helplessness touched the elder's face.
"Destroy it? If only it were so simple.
The Gate of Oblivion is no artifact of hands. It is a 'junction'—a scar—formed naturally when universes of different dimensions collided at the dawn of creation.
Its essence is beyond our comprehension.
The Silent Conclave has expended the toil of numberless forebears to barely seal it—locking it in 'stasis' to prevent tampering from either side.
To annihilate it entirely? Perhaps only the creator gods of the cosmos themselves could do that."