Falling should have been simple.
Yet as Leonidas plunged through the rift, there was no sense of descent—only the disorienting feeling of being torn apart and reassembled with each heartbeat. Colors that did not exist in the mortal world smeared across his vision. Sounds came from directions that defied geometry.
Then, suddenly, there was ground.
Leonidas struck it hard, rolling across a surface that felt neither stone nor soil. He pushed himself up, vision swimming, and looked around.
He had arrived.
Wonderland.
The realm stretched into an impossible horizon. Trees of crystal and bone twisted upward, their branches spiraling like hourglasses caught mid-turn. The sky was a storm of drifting islands, each floating in a slow dance of orbiting ruins. Rivers shimmered with dark light as they flowed against gravity, climbing cliffs like serpents made of water.
The very air felt alive.
Watching.
Judging.
His grip tightened around his sword."What… is this place?"
A soft chime echoed through the forest—like bells tolling underwater.
And then he heard it.
Footsteps.Uneven. Dragging. Multiple. Too many for one creature.
Leonidas turned just as figures began emerging from the crystalline trees.
Human shapes… at first glance.But as they limped closer, the truth twisted into view.
Their limbs bent in the wrong directions.Faces cracked like porcelain masks.Eyes empty—yet the hollowness pulsed with faint runic light.
Leonidas staggered back, recognizing the insignia etched faintly on their broken armor.
"These are… knights."His knights.But warped—rebuilt by some cruel hand, stitched together by Wonderland's unnatural laws.
One stepped forward, jaw unhinging with a sound like grinding stone.
"C̵o̴m̶m̵a̶n̸d̴e̴r̷…"
The voice was familiar.Twisted, but familiar.
"Sir Aldren?" Leonidas whispered.
He had fought beside Aldren in twenty battles. He had trained with him. Bled with him.
Aldren's body twitched as if recognition struggled inside him—but the corruption was stronger. The runes inside his hollow chest dimmed, flared, then burned with a deranged glow.
The corrupted knight lunged.
Leonidas barely dodged the clawlike strike. His runeblade ignited with blue fire as instinct took over. He swung in a wide arc, shearing through Aldren's arm. The limb dissolved into particles of pale light before it could hit the ground.
The other twisted knights shrieked and charged.
This was not a battle.It was an execution.
Leonidas parried, blocked, dodged—his body moving like a memory trained into his bones. Every strike from the warped knights echoed with the weight of forgotten loyalty.
One by one, they fell.
When the last knight collapsed, dissolving into a cloud of shimmering dust, silence returned… but heavier, as if the forest mourned with him.
Breathing hard, Leonidas lowered his blade.
Wonderland was trying to break him.Not with monsters—but with ghosts.
A rustling sound drew his gaze upward.
On a floating cliff overhead, a figure watched him—draped in royal colors that fluttered in a wind that did not exist. Too far to see clearly… but the silhouette was unmistakable.
A crown.A regal posture.A presence that commanded the air itself.
Leonidas' heart stopped.
The King.
Alive.Changed.Or perhaps something wearing the king's shape.
The figure turned away and stepped into the swirling fog, disappearing like a mirage.
Leonidas felt the world shift beneath him. His oath reignited like fire in his chest.
"Your Majesty… I will find you."
But as he took a step forward, the ground beneath him split open, not into light—
but into screaming darkness.
And from its depths, a monstrous hand of obsidian fingers clawed its way out, grasping for him.
The first true guardian of Wonderland had awakened