TRUST
There were very few here in the know about what happened in the True Dream Plane. However, those that did understood who Aina was immediately. The trouble was that... they still didn't understand why.
Leonel wasn't a fool, or at the very least, he shouldn't be. Could his success in the True Dream Plane really be luck? No one would believe that. Could it be, then, that some of their other hypotheses were actually correct?
Many thought that there was simply no way for Leonel to succeed the way he did. They watched the event from start to end, but something felt off. Leonel had too much control over the situation, he seemed to get too lucky, his decision making was too perfect.
They wondered if there were some hidden mechanisms of the Life Tablet that they weren't aware of, or maybe if Leonel had brought in a long forgotten treasure of the Creation God Beasts from the Pavilion to ensure their win.
These possibilities were very much possible, and they were much more willing to believe this than anything else.
Looking at Aina now, she was truly extraordinarily beautiful, on the same level as the best of the Pure Blooded Spirituals. In fact, they could even faintly see what Leonel was so boldly snubbing an Owlan for her.
However, nothing else seemed to be special. She was in the Seventh Dimension, but so was pretty much everyone here. In fact, from what they could sense, given the special fluctuations she was giving off, her soul was even tethered to her body.
This wasn't a surprise, this was the case for all humans. The problem was that the humans that managed to break free of that mold all managed to separate the two at some point or another. Even Leonel clearly had, but his wife hadn't?
Would she even be able to make it through the Preliminaries?
The more they observed her, the more confused they became... until they saw the tattoo around her finger and they suddenly understood...
Leonel had lost his mind.
The perfect explanation was right before them and they hadn't even noticed it. It explained everything.
Soul Binds were exceptionally rare, but everyone knew what they represented. They could only form when two people had perfect and unblemished trust in one another. There was more than just one tragedy surrounding the fates of those with Soul Binds. © content.
Those with them couldn't be objective about one another. By definition, they were so in love that everything was sunshine and rainbows. There was almost no room for logic at all when it came to the other person's existence.
The fact that Leonel would snub the Owlans so fiercely only made more sense now, and the fact he would do all of this, seemingly taking such foolish actions one after another almost made sense.
Lumina suddenly snorted. "Nothing but trash."
Her illusory wings spread and she suddenly vanished, moving so quickly that most couldn't even see what direction she went in. No one noticed, though, that Aina's pupils calmly followed her into the distance before snapping back as though they had never moved at all.
Aina felt a tug on her arm and Yuri began to pull her away, a worried Savahn trailing after them.
The two brothers looked toward one another, Zephyr wearing a knowing look.
"I hope you get it now. Don't do anything stupid."
"Okay, I get it. They're crazy. But that only makes the situation worse for them!"
Zephyr didn't respond to his brother's words. All he could remember was Leonel's movement and the devastation he left in his wake...
How could a Fifth Dimensional existence exhibit that level of strength...
Unless he was a Demi-God?
...
"What is going on?!" Yuri was doing everything she could not to panic, but she felt like her hair was on fire.
It would have been fairly easy to slip Leonel and Aina under their umbrella before-or so she thought-but now there was simply no way. It was like they had thrown themselves into a fire pit.
Aina smiled. "You don't need to worry so much. Have you ever seen Leonel fail?"
Yuri opened her mouth to respond, but then she frowned. A part of her wanted to say that that was the Dimensional Verse, but this was the real world... However, she didn't have the stomach to do it.
Back then, she had thought the things he did were just as impossible. The Dimensional Verse she looked down on now was her whole world back then. Even if she had a new frame of reference now, that didn't make the things of back then any less impressive.
"But Aina... you died..." Yuri said, holding onto Aina's hands so tightly they might lose all blood circulation.
Aina smiled both a bit bitterly and understandingly.
"I died... because I didn't listen to him," she said softly.
Aina could still remember the sheer fury in Leonel's eyes back then. He told her to come back but she didn't listen. She could feel that back then, he had almost said words that he might have regretted for an entire lifetime, that was how enraged he had been about her decision.
Leonel and her had gone through many ups and downs, but he had never truly been mad at her. Even after their breakup, his cruel words hadn't been out of spite, they had been out of indifference.
But that day, he had truly been mad at her.
She could feel it almost viscerally. It wasn't her decision that enraged him, but the reason why... because she thought she could protect him, but on a deeper level than that...
Because she didn't trust him.
Right now... She chose to trust.