Y'all, in Void Paradox there are two people from other realms who could be the great hero meant to fight the void alter, right? Jayden from Estorra and Laurance from MCD. What if it was only meant to be Jayden?
Hear me out: Jayden had already been there for a while by the time Laurance appears, he's been there long enough to study the local town and set up camps and explore around a bit. Modzilla explains that there's a sort of grace period between when the hero appears and when the alter does, but it starts going after Laurance & Aphmau the day Laurance appears. Plus, the way the void works is that it kills the hero and then eats the dimension and it's never been beaten before, so it's possible that with two heroes it was beaten or sealed away (which we don't really see) and they both return to their home dimension, but maybe Laurance returns to his home dimension because he was never meant to be killed by the void.
My idea is that Laurance slipped through the cracks between dimensions and landed in the MMW/VP dimension by mistake and his unexpected arrival corrupted the alter's form. The alter's whole thing is that it copies the hero's everything, and that would include Laurance's Shadow Knight stuff. Maybe it changed into Laurance specifically because it could tell just how powerful his Shadow Knight form makes him (ridiculously powerful compared to most other Shadow Knights according to canon) and that, because of his Shadow Knight form, of the two heroes it's been presented with Laurance is the stronger one, so if it took the form of Jayden Laurance would beat it. But perfectly mirroring the hero means that the alter also gets the hero's weaknesses, and with Shadow Knights that means it has to deal with the Calling, which is why it's so obsessed with Aphmau, because she's similar enough to Laurance's Lord Aphmau to have a little bit of the Calling latch onto her. The alter keeps winning because it has none of the morals Laurance has and no fear of using his Shadow Knight abilities, whereas Laurance is afraid that if he relies on them then it'll be harder and harder to resist the Calling.
I also think he's probably way more freaked out internally than we see considering he's from fantasy medieval times and I refuse to believe he speaks the same language even though I can totally believe that Jayden does. For as often as he's used for very serious exposition, Laurance is amazing at deflecting with humor and covering up his real feelings. He uses flowery language and long-winded speeches to buy time and dance around his real points, and he does this to spare Aphmau's feelings when he's under the impression that she's his lady, opting not to tell her Garroth was the one who knocked him out and took the amulet he was guarding at the end of MCD S1 and moving on before she can ask anything about it.
He's been scheming in his head the whole time, is what I'm saying. Collecting all the thoughts he has on realm travel to see if he can puzzle out a solution, and recognizing that the thing in Polly & Laila's basement is a portal is what makes him decide for sure to go along with everything.
