When Ilena walked out of the River of Time, there was no sound in Paradise Lost.
The nearby worlds seemed to have been pinned in place.
The wind stopped.
Rivers hung suspended in midair.
Even a leaf that had just drifted down from the Sacred Tree was frozen less than half a foot from the ground.
Locke stood outside the long river, quietly watching his wife.
The pressure of Level-12 Late-Stage Time Rules was slowly receding from Ilena. She did not deliberately restrain her power, but the rules of Paradise Lost had already begun adapting on their own.
This was Locke's time-space to begin with.
And Ilena was deeply connected to Paradise Lost.
So her breakthrough process was much more stable than it would have been in other Higher Dimensional Planes.
"How do you feel?" Locke asked.
Ilena raised her hand and lightly tapped a fingertip forward.
The leaf that had hung there for so long suddenly fell.
Immediately after, the distant rivers surged again, and the stagnant wind swept across vast stretches of forest all at once.
"Not bad," Ilena said.
As her words fell, the Time Flow Rate around them changed once more.
Only this time, it was not out of control.
It was a conscious adjustment.
After Ilena stabilized her realm, the first thing she did was carve out a special region deep within Paradise Lost.
It had originally been a New Life world that had only recently been born.
There was not much life within the world, and its rule structure was relatively simple, making it perfectly suited for large-scale reconstruction.
Hundreds of time patterns were driven by Ilena into every part of the continent.
Some fell into the mountain ranges.
Some sank underground.
Another portion turned into rule threads barely visible to the naked