Knox slammed into Nyxara with such force that the dimension cracked like brittle crystal. The aftershock was felt across timelines—skies blinking, oceans reversing, gravity flickering like candlelight.
Seraph was right behind him, her six slicing through collapsing space, the weapons of gods and martyrs alike gleaming along their edges. Her hair burned like solar fire, the halo above her head now a spiraling eclipse.
Nyxara reeled back, and for the first time since her ascension... she bled.
Not blood, but fractured memories, leaking from her like broken poetry.
["She's weakening,"] Luminara said gently in Seraph's mind, her tone a soft flame. ["Her grip on causality is thinking. Keep pushing, my dear. You're the gravity anchoring hope."]
Knox smirked faintly beneath his mask, even as he twisted mid-air to avoid a slash of reversed entropy.
"Kaelina—options?"
["Blitz from above,"] she replied instantly. ["Her left side's regenerating slower. I can route a plasma surge through your kinetic veins for eight seconds. That's all you get, big guy."]
"Give me six. I'll finish it by then."
["Damn right you will."]
Knox soared upward, eclipsing twin Suns as Kaelina supercharged his system. Golden circuits lit beneath his skin, and for a moment, he looked like the wrath of Heaven given form. He dove, punching through realities like they were air. Stars shattered behind his wake.
Seraph didn't wait.
Nyxara opened her arms—her body now fused with constellations, a crown of dying gods hovering above her head—and screamed. A vortex of multiversal ruin erupted from her chest.
Seraph dove straight into it.
"No—!" Knox cried out—
—but Luminara's voice cut through his panic, calm, clear, maternal.
["Trust her, darling. She sees what others fear to look at. Let her be the light in that storm."]
Inside the vortex, Seraph's wings bent, twisted, cracked—and then flared. Each feather ignited with a fragment of the One Law, and the maelstrom began to reverse, spinning inward, collapsing on itself. She roared, and black sun at the vortex's core died.
She emerged on the other side, bleeding starlight, but whole.
Knox arrived a heartbeat later.
"Nice light show," he muttered.
"I missed you," she replied, and punched Nyxara so hard that a timeline folded.
Nyxara fell backward, crashing through a planet-sized mirror of herself, shattering a thousand versions of her own divinity.
She rose slowly, her body flickering—unstable.
Her voice boomed. "I am the Crown of Endless Ends. I am the Final Queen. You cannot—"
Knox grabbed her throat, dragging her upward.
"You talk too much."
And then he threw her into the remnants of a war-ravaged star.
She exploded in light.
But she did not die.
She emerged from the blast, now wielding a scepter made from the fused bones of failed timelines. Her eyes burned with madness and sorrow.
Kaelina hissed, ["Knox, she's bending narrative flow. She's trying to rewrite the ending—for everyone."]
Luminara added gently, ["She's becoming the singularity. You must strike in unity, or this multiverse ends—not with destruction, but silence."]
Knox turned to Seraph.
"I'll take the left."
She nodded. "I'll take the light."
Together, they launched into her with divine synchronization.
Kaelina overclocked Knox's combat reflexes to the microsecond. ["Now dodge. Uppercut. Counter-kick. Turn the timeline against her. Let her past undo her future."]
Luminara whispered to Seraph, her tone rich with reverence. ["Draw from the stars that still believe in you. From every soul you've saved. They shine within you. Let them guide your blade."]
Their combined assault was operatic.
Nyxara swung her scepter and conjured a future where they lost—but Seraph shattered it with a scream that reminded the stars of their purpose.
Knox tore through a timeline where he died as a child, punching through the grief and turning it into strength.
And then—
Crack.
A fissure opened across the sky.
Not a wound.
A window.
Through it, the High Watchers gazed—beings without shape, without origin. They leaned forward from their thrones above fate, above time. No longer indifferent.
Interested.
"Look at them," one said in a voice that shook the dark.
"They dare to challenge a god," whispered another.
They dare to win," said the third.
From across realities, other beings—heroes, villains, civilians—turned their faces to the multiversal sky. Watching the storm of battle. Watching Knox and Seraph.
Believing.
The fate of everything was now tied to this clash.
Nyxara howled, her scepter splitting into a thousand serpents of time. Knox caught one, shattered it, and rippled a piece of future from its gut.
"Seraph!" he called.
She flew to him, took the fragment—
—and thrust it through Nyxara's heart.
The Empyrean Monarch screamed.
The scream of a being who could no longer contain herself.
Reality surged.
Planets twisted.
The void screamed.
Kaelina's voice came through, breathless: ["She's unraveling. Don't stop. One more push."]
Luminara's tone, soft and urgent:
["Together now. For all that was and could still be."]
Knox and Seraph flew, side by side, wings and light and fire and fury—
And struck.
The universe shattered—
And then—
Stillness.