Domino held Jay's face between her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. Her thumbs brushed away blood from where his nose had bled during the power theft. "I'm fine. For the fifth bloody time, I'm FINE. Stop looking at me like I'm about to shatter."

  Jay's hands covered hers. His grip trembled slightly. "I saw you being unmade hundreds of times, and then I heard you scream."

  "And my healing factor put me back together. That's what it does." She kissed him quickly. "I'm here, so stop panicking."

  "I'm not panicking."

  "Babe, you're absolutely panicking."

  Jay took a deep breath, forcing his racing heart to slow. The parking lot around them was a mess of bodies and blood, but Domino was alive and that was what mattered. He pulled her into another hug, needing the contact to confirm reality.

  Over her shoulder, he noticed something odd. The parking lot looked different somehow. The light had a strange quality to it, slightly muted, and when he focused, he could see the faintest shimmer in the air like heat haze.

  "When did she..." Jay pulled back from Domino, looking around properly.

  The Ancient One stood nearby, her hands still glowing with residual magic. The Mirror Dimension surrounded them completely, seamlessly integrated. She'd pulled them all into it so smoothly that Jay hadn't even noticed the transition.

  Brian and Jamie lay unconscious but breathing, the pentagrams on their foreheads now completely gone. No trace of corruption remained. The Ancient One had cleansed them while Jay had been focused on Domino, her expertise with dealing with dark magic making the process look effortless.

  She approached them now, her movements carrying exhaustion. Her hand reached out, patting Jay's head with maternal affection she rarely showed. "You should calm down, Jay. Such worry doesn't fit someone with the title of my student."

  Jay nodded, leaning into the touch as the gesture helped ground him. Then he noticed her hand shaking. Not much, just a slight tremor.

  His eyes tracked up. Dried blood marked her face in thin lines from her nose and ears. Her complexion was paler than normal.

  "Master?"

  Green light flooded from his hands. Tommy's healing aura washed over her, and Jay used the connection to scan deeper and what he found made his stomach drop.

  Her body was failing, shutting down from the inside out. Cells dying faster than they should, organs struggling, and the damage was systemic and catastrophic.

  He pushed deeper and found residual energy signatures. Three distinct patterns: the Mind Stone's yellow glow, the Time Stone's sickly green, the Space Stone's deep blue. All three had left marks, burning through her system.

  Jay's eyes met hers as she gave him a knowing look.

  "It's alright, Jay. I knew the consequences when I used the Stones." Her voice was calm and accepting. "Plus, it's fitting. After being freed of Dormammu's influence, I was destined to die either way. This just accelerates the timeline. The Dark Dimension's corruption had sustained me for years. Without it, my body simply can't maintain itself. The Stones just hastened what was already inevitable."

  Jay's face went blank as his enhanced mind worked through possibilities at superhuman speed.

  Then he spoke, his voice flat. "Nah. No Satan-cosplaying demon gets to take anyone I care about from me."

  Red strings materialized from his palms. Jamie's quantum string manipulation, stolen and integrated, responded to his will. The strings reached out, wrapping around the Ancient One, connecting to her at the fundamental level where reality met biology.

  And he began rewriting.

  The process was delicate. Unlike Franklin's cosmic reality warping that could reshape existence with a thought, Jamie's quantum manipulation worked through the fundamental strings that composed reality. More limited in scope but no less useful when worked precisely. Jay pulled at the strings carefully, finding the ones that represented the damage from the Stones and simply... unknotting them. Making them remember what they'd been before the corruption set in.

  But it wasn't enough. The damage was too extensive and the decay too advanced. Jamie's power alone couldn't reverse this much cellular breakdown laced with energy from multiple Infinity Stones. He needed more energy, more power to make the changes stick. Unless….

  Jay's head snapped toward Mad Jim Jasper's corpse.

  The bisected body lay where Selene's portal had cut through it, upper and lower halves separated by feet of blood-soaked pavement. Even hours dead, the latent potential in that flesh called to him. The unactivated X-gene that could rewrite universal constants. The reality warping that would have made Jasper one of the most dangerous beings on Earth.

  Domino caught the shift in his attention and saw where he was looking. Her hand shot out, gripping his arm. "Jay, no! You remember what Lady Death warned you about, yeah?"

  Jay met her eyes, but his expression was set. "My loved ones come first."

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  "Not arguing with that. Just saying Death literally threatened you. Specifically about this kind of thing." Domino's voice carried fear but also understanding. She knew what he was going to do and knew she couldn't stop him. "Just... be careful, babe."

  Jay moved toward Jasper's corpse.

  He knelt beside the upper half, red strings extending from his hands. This was going to take everything. Jamie's quantum manipulation alone wasn't strong enough to resurrect someone, let alone someone with the potential to rewrite the universe who had been dead hours ago. But Jay had stolen something else from Selene. Something perfect for this situation.

  Her life force vampirism. And more importantly, the vast reserves of stolen vitality he'd drained from her ancient body. Seventeen thousand years of accumulated life force, taken from countless victims and now residing in Jay's system like a battery waiting to be tapped.

  He channelled nearly all into the resurrection.

  The red strings connected to Jasper's corpse at every quantum level. Jay poured Selene's stolen life force through them, using it as fuel. But resurrection wasn't just about repairing flesh. He needed to pull Jasper's soul back from wherever it had gone.

  Jay reached further, pushing past the physical world into something else. A cold plane of dark. He felt resistance, like trying to pull something from thick mud. Death's realm didn't give up its dead easily.

  For a moment, Jay felt her attention. A presence vast and ancient, turning to look at him. Disapproval radiated like cold fire.

  Even then, he yanked.

  Jasper's soul came free with a sensation like tearing fabric. The resistance snapped, and Jay pulled it back into the body, binding it with quantum strings and stolen life force. The soul slammed back into flesh with violent force.

  The process was brutally inefficient, but it worked. Flesh knitted back together, blood refilled veins, organs regenerated, and just like that, the bisected torso became whole.

  Jasper's eyes snapped open. Bloodshot, wild, filled with the trauma of dying and the confusion of being ripped back from death. His mouth opened in a silent scream. The experience had been too much and his mind couldn't process it.

  But the trauma did something else as it activated his latent X-gene.

  That spark of reality-warping potential, dormant Jasper's entire life, finally ignited under the extreme stress of resurrection. For just a moment, Mad Jim Jasper's power manifested. The air around him shimmered as local reality began to destabilize. His bloodshot eyes focused, as raw power gathered with his rage and resentment for superhumans crystallized into coherent thought.

  A mote of light began to form. The manifestation of his reality warping taking shape.

  But before more could happen, Jay's hand shot out.

  His power theft activated with desperate urgency. The connection formed, latched onto that spark of universal potential, and ripped it free. Jasper's newly activated X-gene tore away from his body, the power transferring to Jay in a violent rush.

  Jim Jasper's eyes went wide as awareness flickered for just a moment. Understanding that something fundamental had been stolen. His mouth worked, trying to form words, but only blood came out. Then the light faded from his eyes, and he collapsed, dead again. His body couldn't sustain itself without the power that had just sparked to life. The shock of having his X-gene torn away mid-activation killed him instantly.

  The resurrection had been successful for all of thirty seconds.

  But a tiny mote of light escaped.

  Too small for Jay to notice in the moment. It drifted upward through the Mirror Dimension, a fragment of Jasper's will and potential that had slipped through. The mote phased through dimensional barriers like they didn't exist, seeking, searching for something.

  Jay didn't see it as he was too busy adapting.

  The new power integrated with his existing abilities. Darwin's Adaptive Evolution and his 'Adaptive Power' perk made the process seamless, but Jay could feel the fundamental difference between this and what he'd experienced before.

  Franklin's cosmic reality warping had been absolute. The ability to reshape existence with a thought, with no limits or constraints. Just pure creative force bound only by imagination.

  Jamie's quantum string manipulation worked through the fabric of reality itself. Pulling at the fundamental threads, reweaving them into new patterns. More limited in range and conceptually bound, but still incredibly potent.

  But this? Mad Jim Jasper was called Mad for a reason.

  It was as if the cosmos itself were clay. Malleable and responsive. Jay felt like he could reach out and mould and reshape it on a universal scale. The power was insane in the truest sense. Logic didn't apply as Reality became whatever Jaspers wanted it to be, and now that power belonged to Jay.

  Still inferior to Franklin's in raw scope. But if used creatively, with Jay's Meta knowledge, the difference wasn't so great. Especially since this version didn't have the mental instability that had plagued Jasper.

  Jay then turned back to the Ancient One.

  She stood exactly where he'd left her, her expression unreadable. Watching him integrate stolen power with the kind of patience only centuries of life could grant.

  He reached out with his new ability. Not just manipulating quantum strings now, but literally moulding reality itself. The Ancient One's body became clay in his mind as he reshaped it, pushing her cellular structure back to its peak before the Stones had damaged her, before Dormammu's corruption and before centuries of temporal manipulation.

  But that wasn't enough. Her body was at peak condition now, but without an external source of power to sustain it, she'd just decay again. The Dark Dimension's influence had been cut off, and she needed something to replace it.

  So, Jay gave her Selene's psychic vampirism.

  The power transferred smoothly, and with it came the vast reserves of life force he'd stolen. A few thousand years of remaining vitality flooded into the Ancient One's system.

  The effect was immediate and dramatic.

  The Mirror Dimension shook as its owner shook, renewed vigour flooding through her. The Ancient One gasped, her body straightening as power surged. The damage from the Infinity Stones vanished, her cells stopped dying and started thriving as the life force integrated with her newly reshaped body.

  She looked down at her hands and turned them over. The trembling was gone as she could feel her immortality returning, stronger than before.

  Her eyes found Jay's. Shock written across features that rarely showed emotion.

  Then, slowly, she stepped forward.

  Jay tensed, half-expecting the newspaper roll.

  Instead, her arms came up. Hesitant at first, as if she wasn't sure how. Then she committed, pulling him into an embrace.

  It was the first time she'd ever done such a thing.

  Jay stood awkwardly, unsure how to respond. His hands hovered for a moment before settling on her back.

  Her eyes found Jay's. Shock written across features that rarely showed emotion. "What did you..."

  "Master, if anyone is fit to use Selene's power for good, it's you." Jay's hands glowed black with stars speckled around them, using his reality warping to repair everyone's clothes and appearance. The blood vanished, torn fabric mended and bruises faded. "Especially with so many dark beings and sorcerers you battle with, you won't have lack of opportunity to use it. Better you than having it go to waste."

  The Ancient One, Sorcerer Supreme, who'd lived for centuries and maintained emotional distance from everyone, held her student close.

  "What did I do to deserve such a student?" The words were barely audible.

  Jay stood awkwardly, unsure how to respond. Affection from his teacher was one thing but this level of open emotion was completely outside his experience with her.