The pizza slice hung in midair, grease defying gravity for one perfect second before—"IRON MAN DESTROYS BATMAN!" Ryan's declaration sent grease splattering across Mom's pristine tablecloth. "Flying armor! Billionaire genius! Game fucking over!"

  Jess snatched a rogue pepperoni with ninja precision. "Batman is a billionaire genius, you walnut. Plus, he doesn't need a tin can to fight psychopaths."

  I opened my mouth to jump in when Dad materialized from the kitchen like he'd been summoned by the ancient ritual of nerd warfare. Beer in hand, with that dangerous grin spreading across his face—the one that meant he was about to drop knowledge like Thor's hammer.

  Condensation dripped onto Mom's new hardwood floors.

  He was so dead.

  "They both fight crime with their wallets," Dad said, taking a deliberate sip while we all leaned in like disciples. When Sean Crawford had superhero opinions, you shut up and worshipped. "But you're missing the real difference."

  The room went church-quiet except for Ryan nervously cracking his knuckles.

  "Iron Man?" Dad's voice built like a movie trailer. "Stood next to gods. Fought alongside them because that's what heroes do—all flash, all bravado. He bent the laws of physics just to keep up with Thor’s breakfast routine." Another sip. Another death-drop. "That's bravery. Courage, with its chest puffed out, demanding the spotlight."

  Something stirred in my chest, like a word I'd been trying to remember my whole life.

  "But Batman?" Dad's eyes gleamed with the fervor of a true believer. "Just a rich guy with daddy issues. No powers. No cosmic armor. He fought psychopaths in Gotham's bowels while Superman was off punching planets into submission. Half the time, nobody even knew he existed."

  The pause stretched until Jess whispered, "Holy shit."

  "See, Iron Man needs you to know he's the hero. Makes damn sure of it. Holds press conferences about it. But Batman?" Dad shook his head like he was sharing sacred wisdom. "Batman doesn't give a single fuck if you know. He does it anyway. In the shadows. Alone. Bleeding in alleyways where nobody will ever see."

  The distinction hit me like lightning. "Two sides of the same coin."

  "Exactly." Dad pointed his beer at me like a professor making his point. "You want to see a real hero? Find the one fighting when nobody's watching—"

  THWACK.

  Dad's eyes went wide as dinner plates. Mom had materialized behind him with the silence of a hunting predator, jabbing him in the ribs with a mop handle like she'd just performed an execution.

  "Sean Crawford." Her voice could've frozen the sun. "My. New. Floors."

  She thrust the mop into his hands with the force of divine judgment before spinning on her heel, muttering what sounded like ancient curses in Cantonese that roughly translated to creative ways to hide his body.

  Dad stared at the puddle of condensation like it had personally betrayed him. "I don't think either hero would last five seconds against your mother."

  I laughed until my sides hurt, but something about that moment—about courage versus bravery—burned itself into my brain like a brand.

  Fight when nobody's watching—or, more importantly, fight harder when everyone

  The memory shattered as reality folded around me like origami made of starlight.

  .

  The rune materialized in my mind, steady as a heartbeat. Then Light blazed beside it—no, not Light. Something hungrier. Something that demanded the universe turn and look.

  They collided like binary stars going supernova, and the fusion sent understanding screaming through every atom of my being:

  SHOW THIS UNIVERSE YOUR FACE. SCREAM THAT YOU WILL NOT BREAK.

  .

  Not courage hiding in shadows. Courage set on fire and thrown at reality like a molotov cocktail.

  Dad had been right. Two ways to be a hero.

  And as I hurtled through an alien portal toward a world of magic and monsters, I knew exactly which one was choosing me.

  Space didn't just explode around me—it devoured me.

  I wasn't flying. I was the journey, scattered across light-years of impossible colors that had no names in any human language. Stars streaked past like bullets fired by angry gods. Nebulas swirled in violent spirals that could swallow solar systems for breakfast. Cosmic storms raged with the fury of reality itself having a nervous breakdown, their electric fingers clawing at the fabric of existence.

  It should have been peaceful, floating through the infinite.

  It fucking wasn't.

  Something was pulling me in two directions at once—forward barely winning the tug-of-war for my soul. My neck cracked as I looked down. Winchester blazed in my death grip, multicolored sparks cascading off it like I was dragging pure metal across the fabric of spacetime itself.

  Time slipped like water through broken fingers. Hours passed. Or days. Or centuries. The concept of duration became meaningless, like trying to count infinity. The Bravery rune burned in my vision like a lighthouse in a hurricane, the only anchor keeping my mind from dissolving into cosmic soup.

  Because I could feel it happening—my consciousness spreading outward like spilled wine on white carpet, thinning, dispersing into the void—

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  An asteroid the size of Manhattan screamed past close enough to touch, and I felt it punch through something around me. Some field. Some barrier that was somehow... me?

  My perception had ballooned outward into a kilometer-wide bubble of awareness that was rapidly becoming everything and nothing simultaneously. The space between stars was me. I was the silence between heartbeats. I was…

  Winchester's orb went supernova in my hands, sending out a shockwave of golden light that violated several laws of physics.

  The sound—impossible in the vacuum—cracked through infinity like reality's spine breaking. My consciousness snapped back like a rubber band made of pure will, and I mentally grabbed the scattered edges of myself, hauling them inward with desperate fury.

  As I pulled myself together, literally and figuratively, reality blurred into a prism of pure speed that made light look lazy.

  The universe held its breath.

  Then physics remembered its job and body-slammed me back into existence.

  I tumbled backward as gravity reasserted itself with the enthusiasm of a vindictive ex, blinking as the cosmic void shattered around me like breaking glass. Reality snapped into focus all at once, slamming into me like a bus driven by an angry physics teacher.

  My body, weightless moments ago, suddenly felt like it was made of lead. I landed hard on something cold and unforgiving—definitely a floor, definitely not soft—and groaned as every wound from the tavern fight threw a reunion party in my nervous system.

  "Ben, you made it!"

  A familiar voice cut through my internal damage assessment. I turned to see Cassie jogging toward me, and the backdrop behind her made my already spinning head do another barrel roll.

  Alabaster stone walls gleamed under lighting that definitely wasn't electric. Brass pipes covered in multicolored runes snaked everywhere like a steampunk fever dream designed by a creative engineer on hallucinogens. Everything connected to massive copper stills that fed into a large ring sunken into a dais made from the same pipes and thick black cables.

  I glimpsed the silver portal evaporating with a soft pop, like a soap bubble deciding to quit its job.

  Cassie shoved something small and white into my hand. "Healing pill. Don't think, just swallow."

  I'd already gulped it down before my brain caught up and reminded me I'd just taken mysterious medication from someone I'd known for all of two hours. Smart, Ben. Real smart. Next, I'd probably accept candy from strangers in unmarked vans.

  My stupidity was immediately vindicated when warmth flooded my body like liquid sunshine, followed by the weirdest itchy sensation I'd ever experienced. I watched, fascinated and slightly horrified, as a piece of glass worked its way out of my arm like my skin was rejecting foreign objects with extreme prejudice.

  "Takes a few minutes," Cassie said, settling back on her heels. "Usually, it’s better not to move around too much."

  Before I could get my bearings, a voice piped up from behind her—much higher-pitched and delivered with the precision that suggested its owner probably color-coded their sock drawer.

  "Fascinating! You're the Unbidden, yes? Absolutely remarkable! Time dilation, energy distortion, mana deficient, and yet here you are! A full-fledged anomaly walking around!"

  I turned toward the voice and nearly choked on my own spit.

  With white fur practically vibrating from scientific excitement, a meter-tall mouse person bounced on the platform like she’d had a shot of espresso. A mouse wearing tiny overalls packed with miniature tools that would make a Swiss Army knife jealous was looking at me like I was a research grant and the Nobel Prize rolled into one adorable package. She was furiously scribbling in a notepad.

  "I'm Lana Glass," she chirped, whiskers twitching like tiny radar dishes. "Lead Sprocket for the Monster Hunters. Tell me—did reality break over the last hour? How much did it break? Scale of one to existential crisis?"

  "Uh..." I blinked at Cassie, who nodded like 'talking mouse engineer' was normal.

  "Time definitely broke," I managed, my voice still hoarse from cosmic travel. "I was out there for days. Maybe a week? Watching myself from outside myself, which is exactly as fun as it sounds—spoiler alert, it's not fun at all."

  Lana's pencil moved so fast it practically blurred. "Remarkable! The calculations suggest... carry the seven... divide by the mana constant..." Her whiskers went rigid with shock. "One hundred fifty-six hours. You survived a week in transpiritual space without dying, going insane, or dissolving into component particles. I must dissect—I mean study you immediately!"

  A week. In space. While only an hour passed here.

  My brain filed that under 'Process Never' and moved on to more pressing concerns. Like food. And not dying.

  "Felix went to get help," Cassie said, her voice cutting through my temporal existential crisis like a lifeline. "Chas went back into the portal to get you, but it's not looking good for retrieval."

  I sat up slowly, the healing pill making me feel strangely exhausted. Or maybe surviving a week in the cosmic void could do that to a person. Go figure.

  "He went in after me?" I asked, surprised by how much that meant coming from someone I'd just met. "I didn't see him out there."

  "Divergent paths!" Lana squeaked like she'd just solved quantum mechanics. "Mathematical uncertainty given shared portal origin! I had to adjust the Tower's signal twice just to compensate for dimensional interference!"

  I blinked. "Signal? Like a radio wave?"

  A sharp SNAP made me jump—Lana's pencil had broken clean in half on her notepad. She casually tossed the corpse aside, pulled another from her ridiculously cute overalls, then tore out the page she'd been writing on. After crumpling it up and throwing it away with the force of scientific frustration, she began scribbling furiously while staring at me with eyes that had gone suddenly predatory.

  "Tell me, Ben, was it? How much do you know about energy waves and dimensional physics?"

  "More than I'd like," I replied with a chuckle, remembering my intimate introduction to the Light rune's cosmic knowledge download.

  She looked like a kid in a candy store, except the candy was... me. And somehow that was both adorable and mildly terrifying.

  "Master Glass," Felix's voice cut through Lana's scientific intensity as he appeared in a double-wide doorway. He'd changed into clean clothes and looked considerably less like he'd been chewed up and spat out by reality. "I spoke with my mother. She said to help get the Unbidden through if you can, but that Chas can go fuck himself." He paused, noticing me sitting upright. "Oh, hey Ben! You actually made it. It’s... honestly surprising you didn’t end up somewhere else."

  "Chas always finds a way back," Cassie sighed with the weary tone of someone who'd seen this exact scenario play out before. "It's literally his most annoying skill."

  I thought back to Chas literally tearing a hole in reality with his bare hands like it owed him money, and suddenly I wasn't all that worried about his survival prospects.

  "Yeah, fair enough," I chuckled, pushing myself to my feet with the careful movements of someone who'd recently had their atoms scattered across the galaxy.

  I looked around for Winchester, scanning the floor where I thought I'd landed. But I was pretty sure I'd never actually let go of it during the entire cosmic journey—my hand had been cramped around it like a death grip for what felt like eternity.

  My stomach dropped.

  "Where's Winchester?" I asked, though part of me already knew the answer.

  Felix shot me a genuinely sympathetic look. "It was too far gone, Ben. There was no way something like that would make it through a transpiritual portal intact. It would have been destroyed in minutes, let alone an hour."

  "One hundred fifty-six hours," Lana corrected with scientific precision that felt like salt in a wound. "Significant time dilation anomaly."

  Felix's expression shifted from sympathy to pure shock as the math hit him. "Graceful Gods. You were lost for a WEEK? How are you even alive? How are you sane?"

  The loss hit like a physical blow. After everything—fighting through space itself, refusing to let go even when reality tried to pry Winchester from my fingers with cosmic crowbars—

  It was gone. I didn’t even know why I was so attached to it, but now it was space debris somewhere between dimensions.

  "You must be starving," Felix said quietly, probably reading the devastation on my face.

  My stomach chose that exact moment to roar like a beast from the deep, reminding me that a week without food was very real—even if it had only been an hour in this reality.

  The hunger hit me like a collapsing building. When was the last time I'd eaten? The tavern felt like a lifetime ago, and apparently it literally had been.