Selene's rage reached its crescendo.

  Her beautiful facade cracked completely. The glamour shattered like broken glass, revealing glimpses of the ugliness beneath.

  "You dare? YOU DARE?" Her voice wasn't human anymore. It was the sound of glass grinding to dust. "I have drunk the blood of dragons! I have outlived eras! And you, a CHILD playing with borrowed powers, think you can insult ME?"

  The air around her began to warp fundamentally as reality itself buckled under the weight of her fury.

  Jay felt it in his bones. His danger sense screamed warnings so loud his vision blurred.

  Domino's luck kicked into overdrive. Her instincts, honed by years of survival, painted a single clear picture: they were about to be moved somewhere very, very bad.

  "Jay!" Her warning came too late.

  Selene's hands moved in patterns. Ancient gestures that predated eras, drawn from knowledge stolen from Egyptian priests. Black energy exploded outward from her body, engulfing everything within a hundred yards.

  The sensation hit like drowning in oil. Thick, suffocating and wrong. Jay felt reality peel away in layers. The parking lot's solid concrete became liquid beneath his feet, then vapor, then nothing.

  The transition lasted forever and no time at all. A subjective eternity compressed into a microsecond. His stomach lurched as the taste of copper and ozone filled his mouth.

  The world twisted, and so did their insides.

  And then snapped back into horrible, alien focus as they materialized somewhere else.

  The first thing Jay noticed was the heat. Not like fire or desert sun but the heat of a forge. The kind of heat that made breathing feel like inhaling knives. Each breath scorched his lungs, dried his throat and made sweat evaporate before it could form on his skin.

  The sky was wrong. Black clouds roiled overhead, lit from within by crimson lightning that never quite struck the ground. Even the lightning moved in ominous patterns.

  The landscape stretched away in impossible directions, angles that made his eyes water when he tried to track them. Mountains floated inverted in the distance, their peaks pointing down at nothing. Rivers flowed upward into the black sky, defying gravity with casual contempt.

  They stood on a platform of obsidian that reflected nothing. The stone was perfectly smooth, perfectly black, and perfectly dead in a way that made the lizard part of Jay's brain scream to run.

  Around them, the architecture was a nightmare fusion of ancient temples and visceral biology. Stone columns carved with faces that screamed silently, their mouths opening and closing in rhythm with a pulse Jay could feel through his feet. Walls that pulsed with a rhythm like a massive heartbeat, veins visible beneath semi-translucent stone.

  This wasn't like the Mirror Dimension Jay had experienced at Kamar-Taj. That place had been reality's reflection, twisted but fundamentally safe. A training ground for sorcerers learning their craft.

  This was Selene's domain. A pocket dimension she'd carved from hell itself and shaped to her will over millennia. Every inch of this place answered to her, obeyed her and existed because she allowed it to exist.

  Betsy stumbled, her psychic senses overwhelmed by the ambient wrongness. "Bloody hell... where... what is this place?"

  "Her home turf." Jay's voice was grim. His enhanced vision swept their surroundings. "A pocket hell dimension. Every inch of this place answers to her. We're fighting in her playground, by her rules, and she's had thousands of years to perfect the home field advantage."

  "Correct, boy." Selene's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. A chorus of her voice, layered and distorted, coming from the walls themselves. She materialized on a throne of bone that hadn't existed seconds before, lounging like a queen receiving subjects. The bones looked human. Femurs for armrests, skulls decorating the backrest and some of them still had flesh clinging to them. The missing glamour was back, but more translucent. "Welcome to my private domain. Here, I am not merely powerful. Here, I am God eternal."

  She raised one hand. The gesture was lazy, almost bored.

  Reality rippled like water.

  Figures began emerging from the walls themselves, pulled from the living stone like sculptures birthed from solid rock. Stone parted like curtains, liquid for a moment, then solid again behind the emerging forms. But these weren't her demons. Jay's enhanced vision picked out the details immediately.

  Humans.

  They wore robes of deep crimson and black, marked with symbols. Their faces were expressionless, but their eyes burned with fanatical devotion. Each one radiated magical power, dark and twisted and utterly corrupted.

  "My followers," Selene purred. "Dark sorcerers who surrendered their morality for power. Who gave themselves to me, body, soul and sanity, in exchange for secrets the Ancient One would never teach. Secrets that require... sacrifices. Of others, of themselves and of everything that makes them human."

  More and more emerged. Dozens, then hundreds. An army of corrupted mystical masters, each one individually dangerous enough to level city blocks, now moving with unified purpose.

  Jay felt his stomach drop. Not from fear that would have overtaken his body just a few months before, but from calculation and the cold realization of what he was about to have to do.

  Hundreds of human beings. Corrupted, yes. Evil, probably, but still human.

  The weight of it pressed down on him like the dimension's oppressive heat.

  But the alternative was worse. The alternative was losing, letting Selene keep the Braddock brothers and allowing this ancient monster to build her empire on stolen bodies and violated minds.

  So he made a choice. A terrible, necessary choice.

  "Fuck this." The words came out flat and empty. The voice of someone who'd stopped caring about consequences.

  Jay's hands moved automatically. He reached for his blade, fingers finding the Muramasa in his hand. Blood welled up as he cut his palm deliberately, deeply, feeling the cursed steel drink his essence. As he absorbed its powers inturn.

  Carl Creel's ability activated. The absorption was nearly instant, but Jay felt every microsecond of it. Felt the Muramasa's properties flow into him like liquid metal in his veins. His skin rippled, darkened, and became black as midnight with a dark sheen.

  The transformation spread from his bleeding palm outward, consuming his body inch by inch. Red lightning crackled around him in patterns that reminded him of techniques he'd practiced in Kamar-Taj's training grounds, but darker and hungrier. His eyes finally blazed crimson.

  But he didn't stop there. White Lightforce blazed from his right side while black Darkforce coiled around his left. The two energies spiraled together, creating a corona of absolute contrast that made him look like a living yin-yang symbol. Light and dark, Creation and destruction and finally, Life and death made manifest in human form.

  Selene's smug expression vanished. Her eyes widened, and for the first time in millennia, genuine fear flickered across her ancient features. That weapon. That cursed katana she'd sensed earlier. She remembered its reputation and what it could do to beings like her.

  Now this boy had absorbed its very essence into his body.

  "It's not possible." Her voice cracked slightly as control slipping and her composure fracturing. "That blade... I thought you were weak to magic? How can you wield something that negates the mystic arts?"

  Jay's smile was predatory and hungry. The smile of something that had stopped pretending to be civilized.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "You thought a lot of things, old wretch. Most of them were wrong."

  He moved.

  The distance between them closed in a heartbeat. One moment, he stood fifty feet away. The next he was there, his hand wreathed in anti-magical energy reaching for her throat. His transformed body moved with speed that shouldn't be possible.

  His blade, an extension of his arm now, transformed into a cutting edge that radiated power designed specifically to unmake mystical forces. The strike came down like an executioner's blade, trailing dark energy that ate the light around it.

  But Brian Braddock appeared between them.

  The Sword of Might came up in a perfect guard position. The textbook defensive form Brian had spent years perfecting. Steel met transformed steel with a sound like the world breaking. The impact created a shockwave that shattered the obsidian platform beneath them, sending cracks spider-webbing outward for a hundred feet.

  But Brian's mystical might, all of it, meant nothing against Murasama's anti-magic properties.

  In this dimension, Brian's connection to the British Isles was severed. Cut off by dimensional barriers. The Sword of Might, that legendary blade that had stood against demons and dark gods and threats to all of Britain, simply couldn't hold against a weapon designed to unmake the very concept of magic.

  The enchantments that made the Sword of Might legendary unraveled. Centuries of mystical reinforcement dissolved like sugar in water. The blade that could cut through anything magical became just very good steel.

  And very good steel broke.

  The Sword of Might shattered as Pieces flying in different directions. The sound it made was almost sad.

  Brian flew backward like he'd been hit by artillery. His armor, that mystical protection that had weathered countless battles, cracked as fractures spread across the breastplate. The impact of Jay's strike had been too much.

  His body carved a trench through the obsidian, stone breaking beneath him, before slamming into one of the pulsing walls. The wall absorbed him partially, biological stone trying to consume him before spitting him back out. He lay there, unmoving and armor smoking.

  Jay didn't hesitate and didn't even check if Brian was alive.

  He rushed forward again. His blade swept in a devastating arc aimed directly at Selene's neck. The strike was meant to decapitate. To end this in one blow and kill an External who'd lived for thousands of years.

  Her magical barriers came up instantly. Layer upon layer of protection, each one strong enough to stop artillery shells. Defensive spells that had been refined over centuries. Protection that had kept her alive through the fall of empires. All of it powered by this dimension itself where she was effectively a god.

  Jay's strike connected and her barriers shredded like tissue paper.

  The anti-magical properties of Murasama didn't just cut through mystical defenses. They negated the very concept of magical protection. Each layer simply ceased to exist as his blade passed through it, unmade at the fundamental level. Spells that should have held became nothing.

  Selene threw herself backward off her throne. The movement was frantic, ungraceful and desperate in a way she hadn't been in centuries. Terror finally replaced ancient pride.

  Jay's blade missed her throat by inches. Close enough that a thin line of blood appeared where the edge had barely grazed her perfect skin.

  Before he could follow through, red strings wrapped around his arms.

  Jamie Braddock stood where he'd materialized, reality warping around him like heat shimmer. Both hands extended, fingers splayed as dozens of reality-warping threads connected him to Jay, each one pulsing with power that could unmake life itself. His dead eyes, still crimson and empty, fixed on Jay with mechanical focus.

  The strings tightened and constricted. Jamie's power surged, and reality itself bent to his will. The fundamental laws of physics started to unwrite themselves around Jay's body. The very concept of "Jay" began to blur at the edges, his existence becoming uncertain and his probability of survival collapsing toward zero.

  Atoms should have begun separating, and molecular bonds should have dissolved. Even his very existence should have started to erase, reality forgetting he'd ever been born.

  But against all expectations, nothing happened.

  Jay stood completely still. The strings remained wrapped around his arms, glowing with enough power to rewrite laws of world. But they might as well have been ordinary rope for all the effect they had. His adaptation to Cosmic power, like Franklin's and his newfound resistance to reality warping, made Jamie's manipulation felt lacking, as if a child trying to move a giant.

  Jamie pulled harder. Confusion flickered behind the dead eyes as his corrupted mind couldn't understand as more strings manifested, wrapping around Jay's torso, his legs and finally his neck. The air shimmered with exotic energies as reality tried and failed to rewrite itself. The pocket dimension itself groaned under the strain, its walls cracking and the heartbeat pulse stuttering.

  Still nothing.

  "Again." Selene's voice was shrill. Desperate in a way that made her sound mortal again. "Use everything! Unmake him! Tear him apart at the quantum level! Make him never have existed!"

  Jamie obeyed. His entire body began to glow crimson as he channelled every ounce of reality-warping power he possessed. The kind of power that could reshape nations, that could make water flow uphill and fire burn cold, and that could convince the universe that the difference between being dead and alive was merely his whim. The strings multiplied, became hundreds, then thousands. The pocket dimension itself began to warp under the strain of so much localized reality manipulation. The obsidian platform started to melt and the screaming faces in the columns began to scream for real.

  But Jay just turned his head slowly and deliberately, looking directly at Selene through the web of red strings. His crimson eyes blazed with power and pure violence.

  His smile was as cold as the smile of a predator that had cornered its prey and knew it.

  "Your tactics mean nothing. Your planning is worthless." His voice cut through the dimension like a blade through silk. Each word deliberate and nail in her coffin. "This form negates your magic completely. My null field shuts down mutant abilities before they can touch me." He paused, letting the implications sink in like poison. "And after adapting to cosmic-scale reality warping during the resurrection? After having that kind of power run through my body for hours while bringing back twelve hundred souls?" His smile widened, showing too many teeth. "This low-level shit isn't even an itch."

  He flexed.

  The red strings broke with a wail. One moment, they were there, glowing with impossible power. The next they were gone, unable to maintain coherence against someone whose body had been permanently altered by exposure to forces that could create entire universes.

  The backlash hit Jamie like a physical blow. He staggered and gasped as the strings unravelled back into his hands with enough force to tear skin. Blood welled up from his palms where the strings had been anchored.

  Jay started walking toward Selene. Each step taken deliberately, like a hunter who knew the prey had nowhere left to run. His transformed body left footprints of light energy on the obsidian, burning patterns into stone that should have been indestructible.

  The black sorcerers finally charged.

  Hundreds of corrupted magic users, each one individually capable of leveling city blocks, attacked as one. The sound of their footsteps created thunder, and their combined magical auras turned the air visible.

  Spells that could boil blood launched from dozens of hands simultaneously. Curses designed to rot flesh from the inside out, to turn bones to powder, to make organs liquefy. Even, hexes that could shatter minds, trap souls, rewrite memories until the target forgot they'd ever existed. All of it launched simultaneously in a coordinated assault that should have killed anything living.

  One sorcerer, his face scarred from ritual sacrifice, screamed something in Latin, and fire erupted from his hands, purple and hot enough to melt steel.

  Another, a woman with symbols carved into her skin, wove ice from nothing as frozen spears materialized and launched with enough force to puncture tank armor.

  A third created a swarm of shadow creatures, things with too many teeth and not enough form, that rushed forward with hunger made manifest.

  Jay's null field expanded to its maximum radius.

  Combined with his Murasama-enhanced body and Kim Il Sung's evolved functionality manipulation, the effect was devastating.

  Spells simply failed. They stopped working the moment they entered his field, their mystical frameworks falling apart. The fire died, and the ice shattered mid-flight, sublimating directly to vapor; even the shadow creatures dissolved into smoke.

  Curses unraveled mid-flight, their dark purposes forgotten. Hexes dissolved into harmless light that sparkled and died. The concentrated magical assault of hundreds of trained sorcerers became nothing but wasted effort.

  But Jay didn't stop there.

  The first sorcerer reached him, hands still crackling with residual dark flames. The scarred man's eyes were wide with fanatical devotion, mouth open in a battle cry that praised Selene's name.

  Jay's blade swept through the man's defenses like they didn't exist. Through his protective charms, which had protected him for decades, then through his reinforced robes and finally through his flesh.

  The anti-magical edge cut clean. So clean the sorcerer didn't even realize he'd been bisected. He kept running for two more steps before the top half of his body slid away from the bottom. His scream cut short as shock killed him before blood loss could.

  The second sorcerer, seeing his companion fall, tried to teleport away. Yellow light gathered around her as dimensional barriers began to thin, and escape was seconds away.

  Jay's null field disrupted the portal mid-formation, and the dimensional gateway collapsed while the sorcerer was halfway through. The result was immediate and horrific. What remained couldn't be called a body anymore. Just poorly butchered meat.

  The third sorcerer, the woman with carved symbols, managed to conjure a physical barrier. Stone and metal, nothing magical. This was the kind of defense that should have worked regardless of anti-magic properties.

  Jay punched through it like cardboard. His Murasama-enhanced strength turned supposedly solid matter into powder. The barrier exploded inward, fragments catching the woman in the face and chest. She fell, bleeding from a dozen cuts, choking on blood and broken teeth.

  Jay's boot brutally came down on her throat and crushed it, and she finally died gurgling.

  Carnage spread outward from his position like wildfire through dry grass.

  But the sorcerers kept coming. Suicidal in their devotion and fanatical beyond reason. Each death meant nothing because there were always more. Because Selene had promised them power, pleasure, immortality and whatever lies they needed to hear to surrender their humanity. And they believed her so completely that dying for her was an honor.

  "For the Black Queen!" One of them screamed, throwing himself at Jay with bare hands when his magic failed.

  Jay gutted him without breaking stride.

  "Selene eternal!" Another cried, tears streaming down her face as she charged.

  Her head left her shoulders before those tears could dry.

  They died screaming her name, praising her and thanking her for the privilege of dying in her service. This kind of devotion transcended sanity and made death preferable to disobedience.