Morning dew still clung to the grass when Jake stirred awake, his eyes blinking blearily at the slowly brightening sky. The forest around them was quiet—but something felt different. Charged.
"Where's Reggie?" he mumbled, sitting up.
"I thought he was with you," Remy said, yawning.
Isabella stretched, her eyes narrowing in concern. "He wandered off during your shift?"
Just then, a figure emerged from the treeline. Reggie.
He looked… calm. Confident. His glasses glinted in the sunlight, and he carried a strange metallic briefcase under one arm.
"Morning," he said casually, as if he hadn't just spent the entire night alone inside an ancient temple.
Jake jumped to his feet. "Dude! Where were you?!"
Reggie set the case down, flicked it open, and revealed five wristbands inside—sleek, silver-black with glowing fractal etchings.
"I found something," he said. "Actually… a few things."
Remy's eyes lit up. "You built stuff again, didn't you?"
Reggie nodded. "These," he said, holding one up, "are Phantom Bands. When worn, they create an adaptive cloaking field around your body. That means no more visible elf ears, no glowy rune tattoos, no magical auras that give us away. We'll look just like normal humans—no matter where we are."
He handed them out, one by one.
Jake examined his band. "You made these overnight?"
"I had help," Reggie replied, lifting his left wrist to show the dual wristbands now locked in place. "Meet the Dimenswatch—a device that lets me become alternate versions of myself from across infinite timelines. Last night, I became Scientist-Me. Let's just say he's smarter than all of us combined."
Isabella blinked. "That's… insane."
"That's not all," Reggie added. He pulled a strange, futuristic-looking weapon from the case—a sleek barrel, crackling with bluish energy.
"This," he said with a smirk, "is a portal gun."
Remy gasped. "No way!"
Reggie aimed it at a patch of open space. "Way."
He pressed the trigger. A hum built up, then—FWOOOOOSH!—a glowing blue ellipse tore open in front of them, revealing something shocking.
On the other side of the portal stood Hollow Creek Elementary.
Their school.
Unburnt. Untouched.
"Wait… that's Earth," Vanessa whispered.
Reggie nodded. "I locked onto our original dimensional signature using residual quantum tethering. That portal leads back home."
Jake stepped closer. "How long have we been gone?"
Reggie smirked, tapping the side of the portal gun. A digital readout flashed:
> Elapsed Time on Earth: 1 hour, 3 minutes.
Remy's jaw dropped. "We've been gone for days!"
"Time moves differently here," Reggie explained. "That's why we're going back—right now—before anyone realizes we've disappeared."
He looked at each of them, serious now.
"But first, listen up. No one speaks a word about this. What happened in this dimension stays between us. That includes:
Jake's Mythatrix.
Remy's Arcanodrive.
Isabella and Vanessa's powers.
And my Dimenswatch.
We keep this secret. All of it. Understood?"
Each of them nodded solemnly.
"Good," Reggie said. "Put your Phantom Bands on. Time to blend in."
They each slid the bands onto their wrists. A soft shimmer passed over their bodies—ears rounded, tattoos faded, magical traces disappeared.
Just like that, they were human kids again.
"Let's go home."