The stars rippled as Knox and Seraph tore through the dimensional veil, reentering the battlefield with a sonic boom that echoed across the shattered threads of reality. Fragments of their alternate timeline still clung to them—warm laughter, children's smiles, a peaceful home... gone in a blink.
They landed on a floating shard of what used to be a planet, now just debris orbiting a war unlike anything existence had ever seen.
Nyxara stood waiting.
No longer the Infinite Sovereign—no, she had transcended even that. Her presence cracked the boundaries of linear time. Every move she made distorted galaxies, every breath ruptured probability itself. Behind her, entire universes unraveled, only to reform in new patterns—chaotic, divine, impossible.
Without a word, Seraph launched forward, her six radiant wings blazing like solar furnaces. Each beat of her wings pushed time backward, stars aging in reverse as she raced toward Nyxara. Knox followed, his fists igniting with raw cosmic flame, his system resonating with power that dwarfed even gods.
The clash was instant.
The three titans collided in the space between atoms and the thought between seconds.
Seraph struck first—her palm colliding with Nyxara's chest, a blast of divine light exploding from the impact, cascading into a nearby moon and turning it to dust. Nyxara countered with a twisting arc of paradox, folding her own timeline into a blade and slashing across Seraph's wings. Blood fell—not red, but starlight.
Knox emerged behind them, driving his fists into Nyxara's back, each blow accompanied by the tolling of universal bells. She hissed, turning, and with a flick of her finger, reality inverted.
In a blink, Knox was gone.
He crashed through a hundred timelines in a breath, his body flung through the gears of time like a stone through stained glass. Finally, he landed—hard.
He opened his eyes.
The world was familiar... but different.
Clean cities, towering spires of hope. A skyline that shimmered with peace. And at the center of it all... a stature. Of him.
"Knox?" came a voice.
He turned.
Standing there—taller, nobler, proud—was himself. Clad in a regal version of his suit, this timeline's Knox radiated heroism.
"You're... me?" Knox asked, blinking. "But... you're a hero here."
"I am," the alternate Knox replied, his tone calm but firm.
Knox stepped forward, a heavy weight on his voice. "Then why? Why did you become one? In a world this cruel? After what they did to us? They took our family, our peace—why not take back?"
The Hero-Knox looked at him for a long moment.
Then he spoke:
"Because it would've been easy. Easy to be a villain. To burn, to break, to tear it all down. To become what hurt me. Because I was taken from. My family was taken. My home. My innocence."
He stepped closer.
"Choosing destruction is easy. But saving people? That's hard. That's what it means to be a hero—to make the hard choice, even if it breaks your bones. Even if it crushes your soul and leaves you bleeding. To be a hero is to never give up, to get back up, again and again, no matter what."
Knox swallowed, his blank eyes wide. "And if it's too late?"
"It's never too late." The alternate Knox placed a hand on his shoulder. "But the longer you wait... the more you forget what you were trying to save."
Knox stepped back, a fire building behind his eyes. "Then I made the wrong choice..."
"No," his counterpart said. "You're still fighting. That means you still have time to make it right."
Knox clenched his fist.
He roared, igniting his powers to full force. With a single punch, he shattered the false timeline and burst through the dimensional wall, reentering the true battle.
Seraph was struggling now, pinned against a dying star as Nyxara conjured a maelstrom of inverted light. Planets wept in the distance. Black hole shrieked.
Knox returned with a vengeance.
He tackled Nyxara with the force of collapsing suns, driving her across a dozen realities, each one breaking apart like glass under a hammer. Behind him, cracks split open the multiverse—crimson and silver light spilling through them. Within the crack, watchers stirred—ancient, nameless beings beyond the scope of thought. They watched... fascinated.
One universe bent inward, collapsing into a new one.
Another exploded outward, birthing twin realities that spiraled into existence.
A third twisted violently, reshaping itself around the battle, its inhabitants looking to the skies in awe and terror at the war that defied all meaning.
Seraph soared beside Knox now, her wings reshaped—each one now a blade of judgment and a shield of mercy. "You're back," she said.
He looked at her, the memory of their alternate lives still in his heart. "I had to see what could be," he said. "But now, we fight so we earn it."
Together, they crashed into Nyxara once more.
The battle surged into new extremes—punches that warped logic, kicks that shattered history. Time stopped, rewound, accelerated, split. Every motion they made was a symphony of cause and effect, rewriting destiny with each breath.
Nyxara screamed—a sound that turned comets to sand and rippled across dimensions.
Knox and Seraph were bruised, bloodied, but unbroken.
And as the battle escalated beyond all things, the fate of reality itself began to quiver in the balance.