The Ampers stood scattered around the throne hall, their reflections glinting across the radiant floor of Grant's palace. Above them, the Zenith Watch revolved, stars whispering in endless motion.
Brakkon slammed a fist into the floor, the echo cracking like thunder through glass. "Enough riddles!" he roared. "Enough glowing lights and divine speeches! What the hell is this place, Grant?"
Grant's gaze was cold, unreadable. "I told you. The Palace Beyond, the Zenith Watch."
"You think that means anything to us?" Brakkon barked. His patience frayed, always barely restrained, finally snapped. "We didn't come here to play gods or listen to your new messiah complex. We came to end this nightmare."
Aldus muttered under his breath, rubbing the edge of a spectral sigil between his fingers. "We were never meant to see this place. This isn't ours to touch."
The others looked uneasy—Acuent, Nullis, Slha, Xylo—each instinctively stepping away from the radiant walls as though their humanity might burn off if they lingered too long.
But it was Acuent who finally spoke up, calm and steady amid the tempest. "If this multiverse thing is real, and we're actually fated to die…" he took a breath "then we will. We don't care. Just send us home."
The words hung in the air like a knife.
Grant descended from the throne, each step echoing with restrained power. His eyes glowed faintly, the crimson tint of his pulse threading through the palace walls themselves.
"You won't survive long enough to die as you're fated," he said. His voice reverberated like distant thunder rolling across eternity. "Gravax will unmake your world before the sun rises."
A flicker of fear passed across Nullis's face. "Before the—?"
"Yes," Grant cut in. "I've seen it. The destruction begins tonight."
The Ampers froze.
Brakkon squared his stance, muscles tightening, his Gift humming just below the surface. "Then maybe it's time you stopped watching and started helping."
"I am helping," Grant said, calm but sharp. "By keeping you here. By keeping you alive."
"You're trapping us," Brakkon growled, glancing at Nullis as if to shield her with the words.
"Protecting you," Grant corrected.
Brakkon's jaw tightened. "To us, that's the same damn thing."
Energy rippled through the room. The Ampers instinctively drew closer together, a practiced formation from years of battle, their bodies aligning into a silent declaration of intent.
Aldus' aura flickered gold. Slha's skin shimmered like quicksilver. Nullis's eyes glazed with light. Even Xylo's fingers twitched toward the pulse-blade at his hip.
"Don't," Grant warned, his tone darkening.
But they had already closed ranks. If he wouldn't release them—they would make him.
Jazmine felt the tension crackle through the air, sharp and electric. Every breath in the chamber seemed to weigh against her chest. Brakkon took a step forward, his shadow cutting across the radiant floor, and something inside her broke loose.
Her pulse quickened. The air shimmered around her hands.
Grant turned, sensing the shift—but too late.
Jazmine's eyes flared red. Power surged through her veins, raw and alive. Light bled between her fingers as a weapon began to form—a spear of black, red, and pink energy, humming with an otherworldly vibration before hardening into something real.
"Back off!" she shouted.
The spear shot from her hand like lightning, striking Brakkon square in the chest. The explosion rippled outward, a shockwave of color and sound that knocked him from his feet. He hit the ground hard, the impact cracking the floor beneath him.
Smoke rose from the wound. Brakkon groaned, pushing himself up—but then stopped, confusion freezing him. Blood was running down his chest, dark and steady.
He tried to heal. Nothing happened.
His expression shifted from rage to disbelief. "What… did you do to me?"
The Ampers stood frozen. No one moved, no one breathed. Even the hum of the Zenith Watch above seemed to falter.
Grant was at Jazmine's side in an instant, his tone sharp but steady. "Calm down. We have a plan to make… partner."
The word struck through her fury like light through glass. Her breathing slowed, the red glow in her eyes dimmed. The spear in her hand unraveled into mist, dissolving into the air.
The chamber was silent but charged. The Ampers exchanged wary looks—uncertain whether to lower their guard.
Anna's gaze stayed fixed on Jazmine, sharp and simmering, jealousy flickering behind her composure as the girl instinctively leaned closer to Grant's arm.
Grant lifted his hand, cutting through the tension.
"She's not your enemy," he said. "Jazmine is the daughter of Celestius—the creator of the multiverse. Her mother was mortal. That union gave her something unique. She has no doppelgänger, a trait only we, the Protectors, share. When she spoke the oath, she became one of us."
A stunned silence followed.
Brakkon's voice broke it, rough and edged with pain. "And that explains how she almost killed me?"
Grant met his glare and shook his head. "No," Grant said. "Her Gift is rarer. She doesn't just wield power—she gives shape to imagination itself."
The words hung heavy in the air.
Jazmine looked down, guilt and confusion flickering across her face, her hands trembling faintly.
John Charleston stepped closer, his tone quiet but edged with fascination.
"Fascinating," he murmured, almost to himself, studying her.
The others remained frozen, caught between awe and fear—unsure whether to see her as a miracle or a warning.
John Charleston broke the silence. "Then tell us, Quish—what is your Gift now?"
Grant met his gaze, expression unreadable. "My Gift started the same as Brakkon's—regeneration. Simple enough." He paused, eyes flicking to Brakkon's wound. "But after the Voltair incident, the lightning changed me. Amplified everything. The healing… the speed…"
He lifted his hand, watching faint red light pulse beneath the skin.
"If Brakkon regenerates in five seconds, I do it in a fraction of one."
A low murmur rippled through the group.
Slha muttered, almost to herself, "Making you immortal."
Grant nodded once, the gesture heavy.
Nullis stepped forward, her voice taut. "Then how could you paralyze me before? With just a gesture?"
Astegger added, tone wary. "And how can you keep us out of your head? Neither John nor I can read you."
Grant said nothing. He turned toward the heart of the room, where the air began to twist and shimmer. A vortex unfolded—dark and soundless, drawing in the light around it.
Only he and Jazmine could see its true form: a black hole threaded with faint lightning.
When he spoke, his voice was low but carried like a pulse through the chamber.
"Because I've done things you never thought I would."
The void expanded, swallowing the edges of the chamber. Light bled into darkness, the air rippling with heat that shimmered off the marble floor.
The Ampers staggered back as the temperature spiked. Sparks leapt across the crimson veins on Grant's arm, feeding the vortex.
"Grant, stop!" Anna shouted, forcing her way forward—but the heat pushed her back, searing the air between them.
Jazmine stood firm beside him, eyes glowing faintly, transfixed by the swirling darkness. She didn't flinch.
Grant's voice cut through the chaos, calm and resonant.
"That's the Citadel. Where Protectors go when there's no war. Where power becomes sport. The arena of eternity."
The void deepened, revealing a horizon of molten towers and thrones carved from dying stars. Above it all, chains of broken moons drifted in the dead air, their fragments grinding endlessly together.
"There, we fight to the death," Grant continued. "Kill another Protector, and you strip their immortality. Take their powers. Survive, and you inherit everything they were."
The words sank like lead. Silence spread through the Ampers.
Brakkon's growl broke it. "So you've killed."
Grant didn't answer. His gaze stayed fixed on the darkness, its reflection burning in his eyes. His silence was enough.
John Charleston exhaled, but this time his voice held unease. "Then tell me—how much more have you taken?"
Grant turned to him, expression hollow. "And now, she does too."
He gestured toward Jazmine.
Their eyes met—Protector and heir—and for a moment, the world fell away. A pulse of red and pink energy bridged them, mind to mind.
It was wordless. Boundless. The first link ever forged between Protectors.
Jazmine froze. Her hand lifted, trembling, toward the great table of spheres.
"Something's wrong," she whispered.
Grant followed her gaze. The sphere representing Earth pulsed erratically, its light flickering between blue and red, static crawling across its surface like veins of corruption.
He moved to her side, his palm hovering over the projection. "Show me."
The Watch obeyed. The sphere expanded, filling the chamber with its glow until the floor fell away beneath them.
One by one, Grant reached out—touching Aldus, Brakkon, Anna, John, Acuent, Nullis, Astegger, and Slha.
In an instant, the palace dissolved.
The stars vanished, replaced by a crushing silence and the endless black of potential—the space between timelines.
Before them, Earth burned.
Cities lay reduced to skeletal ruins. Fire rolled across continents. The ocean steamed into vapor. The White House was a crater. The Amper school—a charred scar in the landscape.
Ash drifted upward instead of falling, suspended like dying embers caught between moments.
Acuent's voice cracked through the stillness. "Why did this happen?"
Grant didn't look at her. His eyes stayed on the inferno, the reflection of it twisting in the red glow of the Watch across his face.
"That's what I'm trying to find out."
No one spoke again.
The burning world loomed before them, a silent countdown written across its sky—twenty days until collapse.
The light of it burned in their eyes.
Twenty days. That was all Earth had left.