The apartment looked smaller than I remembered.

  Or maybe we’d just gotten bigger — louder, messier, heavier with everything we’d dragged back from that pocket dimension.

  The place still smelled faintly like burned sage, Lily’s perfume, and the takeout we’d never cleaned up from before the battle. The rain outside painted the windows in city light reflections, yellow and gold. We stood there dripping on the too-small entry rug, half-dead, half-alive, all wrong in new and exciting ways.

  Eury and several of Sélis’ forms shared one body. Still.

  They shimmered in and out of sync — voice overlapping with itself, body flickering slightly, like bad reception on a divine frequency.

  “Stop… moving,” Eury hissed.

  “I’m not moving,” Sélis answered, through Eury’s mouth. “You’re thinking too loud.”

  “Don’t blame me for your lack of containment!”

  I rubbed my temples. “Okay, great. Love the new stereo feature, but we’re gonna need to fix this before one of you sneezes and the other bursts into existential flames.”

  Lily dropped onto the couch with a grunt. “You sure you don’t want to keep them like that? It’s kinda fun.”

  Eury/Sélis glared, which looked extra weird since one eye twitched differently than the other. “Do you ever stop?”

  “Nope.” Lily kicked her boots off, crossing her legs. “Also, we need towels.”

  “What is this, a birthing?” Eury demanded.

  Lily eyed the lot of us, “And possibly holy water.”

  Elly, perched on the kitchen counter, smiled faintly. She’d been quiet since the fight — still pale, eyes a little distant, like part of her hadn’t completely escaped the filing cabinet. Her hair was damp, falling in waves over the borrowed sweatshirt she’d pulled from my drawer. Seeing her here again felt like finding gravity after floating too long.

  I wanted to say something — anything — but Eury groaned and clutched her stomach.

  “Okay,” I said quickly. “Un-merging time before someone barfs snakes and mirrors.”

  We cleared the center of the room. The others backed up, arms crossed, waiting for me to somehow know what I was doing. Spoiler: I didn’t.

  “Explain to me again why I’m the one doing this?” I asked.

  “Because you’re the Null,” Lily said. “You’re basically a human reset button.”

  Eury/Sélis nodded, both voices layered. “You’re the only stable constant in an unstable magical equation.”

  “Flattering,” I muttered, setting The Debt Collector aside reluctantly. It was a bit of a security blanket after all we’d been through together. “Do I need gloves or—?”

  “No,” they said together. Then argued with themselves immediately.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Right. Business as usual.” I sighed. “Why don’t you two sit or lie down or something.”

  I knelt in front of them. Their shared body shimmered again, light bending wrong around their edges. Eury’s hand twitched one way, Sélis’ the other. Their pulse was doubled — I could see it in their throat, two rhythms competing for dominance.

  “Alright,” I said softly. “You’re both real. You’re both here. Let’s start by anchoring.”

  They both stared at me. “How?”

  “Just… hold still.”

  I placed a hand on their shoulder. Warm, trembling, flickering like static. The moment I made contact, my skin tingled — not in a pleasant way. It was like holding onto a live wire made of memory and personality. Eury’s fearful rage and Sélis’ eerie calm clashed and rolled under my palm, waves of conflicting energy.

  My null field kicked in instinctively, trying to defend me from this invasive supernatural force. The air shimmered, then went still.

  Their breathing synced. For the first time since the merge, the dual-voice wavered into one.

  “Okay,” I murmured. “Now let’s get you two separated.”

  I leaned over and planted one on them. This wasn’t how I imagined it. I mean, who wouldn’t at least think about it? I didn’t have a thing for Eury, but she had a nice set of lips and dangerous eyes, and she was a friend…

  That’s when the world buckled.

  Light burst between us — gold and violet, split by static. Every sound stretched thin and sharp. My stomach turned inside out. Something tore. Not flesh. Not magic. Something in-between.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Then came the impact. Like a thunderclap.

  When I opened my eyes, I was on my back. Steam (or was that smoke?) was rising from my body and/or the floor. My hands tingled, and the apartment smelled like burned electricity and perfume.

  Lily crouched over me, waving her hand in front of my face. “You alive, Sparky?”

  “I think I just rebooted reality,” I croaked, propping myself up on one wobbly elbow.

  Across the room, two bodies lay side by side. Eury, breathing slow and steady. Sélis, translucent for a second, then solidifying like glass cooling into shape. They looked awful — sweaty, pale, and a little confused — but separate.

  “I did it,” I whispered, half in disbelief.

  Lily grinned. “Look at you, Mister Multiplicity Whisperer.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting up. “What’s the catch?”

  Lights flickered. The faint hum of the apartment’s magical wards died.

  “Oh,” Lily said. “That.”

  Elly looked up. The defensive wards around the room, ones she’s set up to protect me were dead.

  Eury’s hair hung limp and the glow of otherworldly, statuesque beauty had dulled. Now she was just model-hot, not mythologically-hot.

  Sélis tried to split again. Nothing happened.

  Even Lily’s glamour and pheromone cloud failed to flicker. Just her. All human.

  “Daniel,” she said carefully, “what exactly did you do?”

  “I… might’ve null-fielded too hard and took out the whole apartment? EMP’d you all.”

  “Define too hard.”

  “Everything’s off.” Elly grumbled.

  Eury groaned, pushing herself upright. “So, you’ve de-magicked the apartment.”

  “And all of us,” Lily added. “Great.”

  “Bad things happen when we’re de-magicked.” Elly remarked critically, arms folded over her chest.

  I rubbed my face. “Okay, look, this isn’t bad. This is… downtime.”

  “Downtime?” Elly repeated. “You just turned off every safety net we have.”

  “Yeah,” I said, standing, trying not to wobble. “Timeout for everyone. Magic’s on vacation.”

  Elly glanced out the window. “Maybe for the whole block. Holy shit, that was a big one!”

  There’s something I’d not heard said about me before, unless they were discussing my waistline. “I’m calling it… forced rest.”

  Lily raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so that’s what you call kissing a Gorgon and shorting out the universe?”

  “It was a medical procedure!” I protested.

  “Uh-huh.” Lily didn’t look like she believed me. “That’s the second girl you’ve put your lips on in the last couple hours, and none of those lips belonged to me.”

  “Technically the seventh. I have five personas.” Selis corrected.

  “Not helping things, Dopple-lips.” Lily growled, eyeing the Dopplegeist’s most feminine form.

  Eury crossed her arms. “If it’s fairness you want, perhaps the rest of us should receive the same… recalibration.”

  I blinked. “Wait, what?”

  She gestured at me, entirely serious. “To maintain metaphysical balance.”

  Lily grinned wide. “Oh, I love this logic.”

  “Guys, I don’t think—”

  Elly hopped down from the counter. “I think they’re right,” she said, voice deceptively calm. “You caused the imbalance. You fix it.”

  “I already fixed it!” My frantic gesticulations indicated the separation of Gorgon and Dopplegeist.

  Lily leaned forward. “C’mon, Danny. Just a kiss. For balance.”

  Eury nodded sagely. “For science.”

  Sélis tilted their head, a smirk crossing their lips. “I don’t object.”

  I looked from one to the other. Four pairs of eyes. All waiting. All slightly smug.

  “You’re all enjoying this,” I muttered.

  Lily smirked. “As long as there’s equal treatment, immensely.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Let’s get this over with before someone writes fan-fiction about it.”

  “Ooooh. Interspecies harem. There’s a whole category for that on Spellr.”

  Round One: Eury.

  Her lips were cool, deliberate, like she was testing a hypothesis. Her hair stirred faintly but stayed inert. When we broke apart, the air buzzed — faint static, no magic. Just warmth.

  Round Two: Sélis.

  Her kiss was different. Softer. Curious. Like she was cataloguing the sensation for later. In the past, we’d never kissed when she wasn’t part of a multiple being. The room dimmed for a second, then returned.

  Round Three: Lily.

  She grabbed me by the collar, muttering “equity clause” before kissing me hard enough to make my knees forget their job. When she pulled back, she exhaled, dazed. “Okay, yeah. Definitely a Null. Wow.”

  Final Round: Elly.

  She didn’t move at first. Just looked at me. The apartment was quiet except for the rain.

  “You sure?” I asked softly.

  Her smile was small, tired, real. “You went to hell for me, Daniel. You can handle a little mouth-to-mouth.”

  When our lips met, everything stopped humming. The world steadied. No sparks. No storm. Just silence.

  When we broke apart, she laughed quietly. “You really do short-circuit everything, don’t you?”

  “Occupational hazard.”

  Behind us, Lily groaned. “So that’s it? You just nullified the whole harem?”

  “Yep,” I said. “No powers. No drama. We’re grounded.”

  “Grounded,” Eury echoed. “Like… humans.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Welcome to the suburbs, little monsters.”

  Curiosity and ethical debts satisfied, we ended up sprawled across the living room in mismatched pajamas, surrounded by takeout containers.

  Lily found an old kung-fu movie on the TV. Sélis nursed a cup of tea like it was an artifact. Eury sat on the arm of the couch, snakes half-dozing. Elly tucked her legs under her and leaned against me, her warmth grounding me more than any magic ever had.

  Someone had opened the window; the sound of the city filtered in — cars, thunder, rain, life. Ordinary. Beautiful.

  Lily poked me with a chopstick. “You know what’s weird?”

  “Everything?”

  “Besides that. It’s quiet. I didn’t realize how much noise magic makes.”

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “All of this Alterkind stuff, the whole lifestyle, it’s like… static in your bones. You don’t notice until it’s gone.”

  “So, you think you’re grounded too? Not even a Null right now?” Eury asked.

  “I feel… different… like an empty bucket. I’ve used all I have to give, and now I need to recuperate.” I almost added, “I hope,” but bit my tongue.

  Elly smiled faintly. “You think it’ll come back?”

  “It always does,” I said. “We just need to remember who we are without it first.”

  Eury glanced at me. “That’s surprisingly profound for someone who licks things to solve problems.”

  “Personal growth,” I said. “It’s a journey of many steps.”

  Lily laughed. “You’re still an idiot.”

  “True,” I said. “But I’m your idiot.”

  She smiled broadly. “I know.”

  The room settled into comfortable silence after that. The movie flickered, the city hummed, and for the first time in what felt like years, I wasn’t waiting for the next crisis.

  Just when I thought I might actually drift off, a sound came from the pantry. Not loud. Just… wrong. Like the world whispering to itself.

  There was a faint skitter, followed by a voice — tiny, distorted — from somewhere near the nest in the corner. It hissed in a tone I couldn’t quite name. Almost human. Almost curious.

  “…OLD…FOES… RETURN…”

  We all froze.

  Lily put aside her noodles. “Please tell me that was just the plumbing.”

  “Nope,” I said, sinking deeper into the couch. “Definitely the pantry spider.”

  Eury sighed. “Do we investigate?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “Tonight, we’re human.”

  Elly rested her head on my shoulder again. “And tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said, closing my eyes, “we’ll start writing the next chapter.”

  Outside, the thunder rolled — soft, approving — and for one perfect moment, the monsters rested.