Nova stood tall, blue light crackling around her gloves. Her silver hoodie shimmered like fractured glass, as if it was stitched from time itself. Behind her, a wave of corrupted students lay unconscious.
Kaiya blinked. "Nova… you're alive?"
Nova smirked. "You think I'd let Project Lux win without a fight?"
Adrien stepped in, lowering his blade slightly. "You vanished during the Collapse. We thought you were dead."
"I was," Nova said. "In three timelines, actually."
Kaiya stared. "Then how are you—?"
Nova raised her hand, and a shimmering device pulsed from her wrist. "I've been traveling through rejected realities, hopping between failed Lux outcomes. The code's falling apart faster than Dylan realizes. And I've found something."
She turned, facing the glowing Lux Node as it pulsed brighter and brighter.
"There's a master node," Nova said. "One Lux Core that controls all timelines. Destroy that, and the clones, the corruption, the rewritten memories… all gone."
Kaiya narrowed her eyes. "Where is it?"
Nova took a breath.
"…It's buried beneath Timeless High."
Everyone froze.
"You're kidding," Liam muttered.
Nova shook her head. "The school was always the source. Lux disguised it as a test facility. Even the paradox book—Zane didn't find it by accident. It was planted."
Adrien's voice was cold. "So none of this was fate."
"No," Nova said. "It was a setup."
Suddenly, alarms blared.
> LUX NODE 3 ACTIVATED. SUBJECTS DEGRADING.
Golden cracks split across the sky. The corrupted clones began glitching. Time stuttered, lights blinking, sounds looping like broken music.
Dylan appeared on a screen overhead, his eyes empty. "You tried to break the system. Now the system will break you."
Nova turned to Kaiya. "You still want to win?"
Kaiya looked around—at Liam gripping a metal pipe with bleeding knuckles, Adrien holding his sword despite a fractured wrist, and dozens of people she cared about glitching in and out of reality.
Her voice was calm, steady, final.
"Show me where to bury Lux."