The pull intensified again, and now they were moving fast. Julian could feel the pressure building around them as they fell through the void. His daughters were struggling, and he could sense their distress even without seeing them.
"Father!" Seraphine's voice came. "The pressure—it's crushing me! I can barely breathe!"
"My armor's cracking!" Lyanna gasped, her arms flailing helplessly around her. "The joints are—I can feel them bending!"
Cassandra groaned as well. "Everything hurts. Father, please—"
"Channel your mana!" Julian commanded, his own power already surging to life around him. "Now!"
Immediately, he channeled Heaven's Energy, and a golden aura erupted around him, visible even in the absolute darkness of the void. It formed a sphere of protective energy that pushed back the crushing pressure.
But his daughters were still out there, struggling against the forces they had never encountered before.
"Channel your mana!" he repeated urgently. "Create barriers around yourselves! Use everything I taught you! Do it now, or the pressure will crush you before we reach the other side!"
Through the void, he sensed that his daughters were responding to his command.
Seraphine was the first. Her lightning energy erupted around her in a purple aura. The sphere of protection that formed was smaller than Julian's, less refined, but enough. The crushing pressure eased immediately.
"It's working!" she gasped, relief evident in her voice. "I can breathe again!"
Lyanna followed moments later, her fire-based mana exploding outward in a sphere of burning red energy.
"Got it! Father, I've got it!"
Cassandra took slightly longer, her ice magic requiring more focus than others. But when her barrier finally formed, it was perhaps the most efficient of the three.
"Mine's stable," she reported, her voice steadier now. "But Father, how long can we maintain this?"
"As long as necessary," Julian replied. "The hole is pulling us toward it—don't fight the pull; you'll only exhaust yourselves faster. Let it carry us, but maintain your barriers. We're being pulled to our destination."
They were moving faster now, accelerating as the hole's gravitational pull intensified.
But then, something changed.
Julian's entire body went rigid, his senses suddenly sharpening to an almost painful degree. The void around them, which had felt empty and lifeless, now carried something else.
A presence.
Massive and utterly overwhelming.
For the first time since achieving God Realm, Julian felt something he had almost forgotten—genuine fear.
"Father?" Seraphine's voice carried concern. She certainly noticed his sudden tension. "What's wrong?"
Julian didn't answer immediately. He was extending his senses outward, trying to pinpoint the source of that presence. It was like trying to see through fog—the void distorted everything and made it impossible to get a clear read.
But he could feel it getting closer. Or rather, they were getting closer to it.
"Everyone," Julian said, his voice taking on a quality his daughters had never heard before. "Tighten your barriers. Prepare for combat."
"Combat?" Lyanna's instincts immediately fired. "Father, what's—"
"Now!" Julian commanded, and the force in his voice made all three daughters respond instantly, reinforcing their protective spheres without question.
The pull toward the hole continued, dragging them forward through the void. But now Julian could feel it more clearly—the presence was near the hole itself, as if guarding it.
And then, suddenly, they saw it.
Even in the absolute darkness of the void, they could see it—because it was even more dark. A shadow within shadows.
Soon, its figure emerged.
It was a dragon.
But not like any dragon that existed in the Throne of Gods or had ever lived in Julian's memories. This was something far older, far more terrifying.
The creature's body stretched for what must have been miles. Its scales were not any single color but seemed to shift and change—sometimes reflecting images of stars, sometimes of dying galaxies, and sometimes even the birth and death of an entire universe. Each scale was the size of a castle, and there were countless thousands of them.
Moreover, its head was massive beyond comprehension—easily the size of a mountain with three sets of horns. Its eyes, when they opened, were like looking into the depths of time itself.
But most terrifying of all was what those eyes contained. Intelligence. Ancient, vast, incomprehensible intelligence that dwarfed anything Julian had encountered.
The dragon's mouth opened, revealing its jagged teeth, and when it spoke, its voice resonated through the fabric of reality itself.
"INTERESTING."
The single word crashed over them like a tidal wave. Julian's barrier flickered and strained. Behind him, he heard his daughters cry out in pain as the mere voice of this being threatened to shatter their protections.
"Shield your minds!" Julian shouted, pouring more Heaven's Energy into his own barrier and extending it as far as he could toward his daughters. "Don't listen to the voice—block it out!"
But the dragon was already moving.
Despite its massive size, it moved fluidly. One gigantic claw reached out toward them, almost as if teasing or testing them.
Julian didn't hesitate.
"SCATTER!" he roared.
Seraphine, Lyanna, and Cassandra immediately broke formation, each shooting off in different directions as their father had drilled into them countless times during training.
The massive claw passed through the space where they had been, and where it moved, reality itself seemed to crack like glass.
Julian channeled Heaven's Energy to its absolute limit, golden lightning erupting around him in a sphere so bright it illuminated the void for miles in every direction. He shot forward, directly toward the dragon's massive head.
"Come on!" he shouted, both a challenge and a desperate attempt to keep the creature's attention on him rather than his daughters. "If you want a fight, fight me!"
The dragon's eyes focused on him, and Julian felt the full weight of its attention like a physical blow.
"A YOUNG GOD," the dragon's voice resonated through reality again. "BARELY ASCENDED. UNSTABLE FOUNDATION. INTERESTING INDEED."
Its jaw opened wide, and Julian barely had time to register what was happening before the dragon breathed. But this was not fire or ice. This was something far more fundamental—a breath of pure time?