The seal's light faded slowly, like the embers of a dying star.
Silence reclaimed the warped pocket dimension.
Amy lay unconscious in the center of the glowing sigil, her form now stripped of shadow, celestial armor flickering weakly across her limbs. Golden threads of Nut's divine energy wrapped around her, gently pulsing—beginning, impossibly, to knit her wounds closed.
Rachel remained crumpled against the wall, her body a ruin of bruises and strain, but her chest still rose and fell.
Ethan exhaled, shaky and short.
Felicia collapsed beside a warped bench, her breathing ragged. Paige leaned against a melted locker, armor shedding sparks as she shifted back to her base form.
Peter lowered the phone, the spell long since complete. His mask twitched as he stared at the sigil, then looked up.
Nothing.
No thunderclap of reality reasserting itself. No swirling vortex sucking them home.
Just the same warped high school hallway. Still pulsing. Still alive.
Still very much… here.
Felicia blinked. "Uh… why are we still in hell's basement?"
Peter looked at her, scratched the back of his neck, and gave a sheepish laugh. "Would you believe me if I said I… uh, didn't ask Strange for a way out?"
Felicia's jaw dropped. "You didn't—what?"
"I thought—look, he said—when you seal the thing making the dimension, it's supposed to collapse! I assumed!" he sputtered.
"Oh my god," Felicia groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead. "Who jumps through a portal without a way out. I mean, I did jump in without a way out, but I called you, so I figured you'd have one."
"I'm more of a tech guy than a magic guy!"
Ethan stepped toward them, still panting. "I think it's pretty simple," he said. "This subspace… it's not just conjured by the demon. It's anchored."
Peter turned to him, puzzled. "Anchored?"
Ethan nodded. "That demon might've created it or at least sustained it with his magic, but that magic won't disappear instantly. It's like fuel in a fire. Even if the match goes out, the coals still burn."
Felicia crossed her arms. "So it will disappear?"
"In theory, yes," Ethan said. "Once the remaining magic dissipates, the subspace should unravel naturally. It could be minutes. It could be hours. Maybe even days. I don't know much about magic, so there's no way to know when."
Felicia looked around the pulsing walls, her lips tightening. "So… we wait in a demon's trash dimension and hope the lease expires?"
"That about sums it up," Peter said.
Paige winced, half-laughing despite the blood on her shirt. "Well, I've had worse Fridays."
They fell into a tense silence. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic hum of the collapsing dimension and the soft, crackling shimmer of Amy's starlight as it began to mend her broken body.
Ethan knelt beside her, checking her pulse. It was faint but steady—stronger than before. The golden lines of Nut's armor continued to weave over her skin, especially around the worst burns and cuts. Wherever the threads passed, flesh began to regrow slowly.
"She's healing herself," Ethan murmured.
Peter crouched beside him. "Magic armor?"
"Divine conduit," Ethan replied. "She's apparently bound to a goddess named Nut. Her power is… within the armor that's bound to her, and it seems to be restoring Amy. That's probably why she's still alive."
Paige limped over and looked down, blinking at the sight. "So that's where Amy got superpowers from. Why has she been hiding it all this time?"
Ethan nodded slowly. "Well, she wasn't hiding it as she obtained it here after she was taken by the demon."
Felicia watched them from a distance. She wasn't smiling.
Her instincts were screaming.
She walked a few paces down the hall, turned a slow circle, and looked back at the group.
"You know," she said casually, "for a demon dimension, this place is weirdly stable."
Ethan glanced up.
Felicia kept going, her voice too light. "That seal was clean. That spell was tight. But we're still here. No tremors, no time dilation snapping back, no memory wipes starting up. Just… waiting."
Peter frowned. "You're saying something's off?"
"I'm saying something else might be keeping this place together. Maybe not the demon."
Everyone went quiet again.
Ethan spoke carefully. "As I said, it could just be residual energy. Or Nut is reinforcing the space around Amy to keep her safe until she heals."
"Sure," Felicia said, still watching him. "Could be. You know, for a student who just so happened to be taken randomly, you seem to know much about this situation."
Her tone said she didn't believe it for a second.
Peter looked between them. "Well, we've got two half-dead girls, three exhausted fighters, and no exit. Let's keep the paranoia for the car ride home."
"If we get one," Felicia muttered.
Ethan turned back to Amy, adjusting her position gently. "Amy's stable, and we're all okay. That's what matters."
But even as he said it, his mind was already cataloging possibilities.
Felicia was too sharp.
Peter, too experienced.
One wrong slip, and they'd start asking the questions that couldn't be answered.
And the lies he'd rehearsed weren't strong enough to stand up to Felicia's stare for long.
He had to be ready.
Sooner or later, one of them's going to look at me and see more than a smart kid.
They're going to see the lies and the plan.
Ethan took a breath and straightened up.
The first phase of survival was deception.
Rachel stirred with a weak cough. Paige limped over, supporting her carefully.
Peter helped brace Rachel, glancing toward Ethan. "She needs real medical attention."
"We all do at this point," Felicia added. Her voice was quiet now, thoughtful.
Peter's eyes flicked to Amy. "Is she safe to move?"
Ethan nodded. "She'll stabilize faster than any of you. Her armor's almost done repairing her body. I don't know about internal injuries, but the outside seems fine."
The waiting began.
They formed a loose circle around Amy and Rachel, seated on the shattered remnants of lockers and classroom desks. No one spoke for a while.
Peter and Paige were the first to fully recover due to Spider-Man's accelerated healing and Paige's ability to shed away damage along with her skin as she transforms. Felicia was as wounded, so she could move around without too much hindrance. Amy was the healthiest of the bunch but Rachel who had also been possessed by the demon was bruised and some of her limbs seemed to be bent at a weird angle.
Felicia sat on the edge of a warped bench, head tilted slightly, watching Ethan from beneath her mask.
Ethan kept busy.
He repacked the chalk pouch, scanned the sigil for residual energy, checked Amy's pulse again, and then folded his hands neatly. He didn't speak unless spoken to.
Felicia leaned toward Peter and whispered, "You're telling me this kid just made a perfect demon trap in a high-stress situation where a demon was attacking us all?"
Peter shrugged. "Strange has to outsource, too. I've seen normal guys sketch sigils under his supervision."
"Yeah," Felicia said. "But those guys aren't a fourteen-year-old kid. How many adults would be able to do what he did?"
Peter hesitated. "Okay, so he's not normal."
"No. He's not." Felicia's tone was quiet. Not accusing. Not yet.
But Ethan, who had mastered lip reading before, heard every word.
And he logged it.
They were going to come after the truth eventually.
He needed a cover story so water-tight even Nick Fury would blink twice.
After another half hour, the walls began to quiver.
A ripple moved through the hallway, like a sheet of plastic warping in slow motion. A soft wind rose, pulling dust upward. A sound, deep and slow, like glass cracking under ice, echoed from somewhere above.
The subspace was finally beginning to unravel.
Peter stood, hoisting Rachel onto his back in a sling of webbing. "Looks like our exit's coming."
Felicia lifted Amy, her body still limp but healing, slowly but surely. "Let's get the hell out of here."
The light changed. Blue and white fractured into gold and red. The world twisted, spiraled—and blinked out.
They emerged in an alley behind Midtown High.
It was just past midnight.
Streetlights flickered against wet pavement. Sirens echoed in the distance. The real world was back—harsh, familiar, alive.
Peter lowered Rachel gently into Felicia's arms. "I'll get help."
Felicia nodded, her attention still half on Ethan.
A few minutes later, an unmarked SHIELD transport arrived—one of the silent ones, no logos. No sirens. No questions asked.
Peter had called in a favor.
Rachel was taken first, rushed into the med bay onboard. Amy was next, still unconscious but stable. Felicia lingered a moment, placing a hand on Amy's forehead before stepping away.
Peter turned to Ethan. "What happened in there? The real version."
Ethan kept his expression calm.
"We were both taken by the demon," he said. "Amy and Rachel. I found them in that pocket world. Rachel was possessed and began to chase us. Amy was trapped, and then she awakened her powers when the demon left Amy and possessed her. That was around the time you three showed up. I'm honestly glad because I was all out of ideas to escape."
"And how exactly did she awaken these powers?"
"I remembered something from an old book I read," Ethan said, shrugging. "I thought if demons are real, maybe gods are too. So, I took a gamble, and did the ritual with Amy, and it worked."
Peter stared at him.
"You guessed?"
"I'll educate myself a little after this last incident. Magic's real. The world's a crazy place, and I like to prep."
Felicia narrowed her eyes. "That's a hell of a lot of prep."
"A lot of people die not knowing what they're dealing with," Ethan said flatly. "I don't want to be one of them. My OCD wouldn't allow me to do that, regardless."
Amy stirred then, moaning faintly in her stretcher.
Peter turned, distracted by her movement. Felicia stayed watching Ethan for a second longer.
Then Paige spoke.
"He's not a bad person. I was the one who dragged him into this whole mess. Besides, he found them both. He was holding Rachel when I got there."
Peter nodded slowly. "Then that's the story."
He turned to Felicia. "We done here?"
Felicia didn't answer. Not right away.
Finally, she said, "Yeah. For now."
Peter clapped Ethan on the shoulder. "You did good, kid. Go home. I'm sure your parents are worried. Get some rest."
Ethan watched them load Amy and Rachel into the transport.
Then he turned and walked down the street.