The light surged, consuming everything. Zayn felt an incomprehensible pressure, a sense of being simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, his very atoms stretched across the fabric of spacetime. The Guardians’ chorus, "Your defiance is illogical," screamed in his mind, echoing the system’s fading warning: "Causality cannot be rewritten indefinitely. Stability… will be restored." He held onto Scarlett, her hand a desperate, familiar anchor in the maelstrom, his vision blurred, his defiance a fragile shield against the cosmic onslaught. He gasped, forcing out the words, "My future. My choice."
Then, a sudden, blinding flash. Not the cold, consuming light of the Guardians, but a different kind of brilliance, purer, sharper, emanating from the very core of his system. It wasn't an attack, but a
