Witchbound Villain: Infinite Loop

“Ah, I missed it, Morgan,” Burn muttered, glowing brighter than anyone with common sense had any right to. He was in the middle of absorbing a little over forty percent of the White Dwarf’s total output, an act that would’ve vaporized any other living thing, assuming they were even reckless enough to try. He could feel it; that was the ceiling.

Beyond this, his body wouldn't be storing energy, it would be forfeiting existence.

The heat scalded nothing around him, but the space behind began to fracture under its own weight. He moved, barely acknowledging the blast chasing him down. A step to the side, a tilt of the shoulder, and he let the stellar discharge pass. Timing, pressure, instinct.

Then he slammed straight into Thaddeus Voss’ ship.

No hesitation. No announcement. No warning shot.

Just a clean entrance through reinforced alloy, then a clean exit, followed by a sudden, enthusiastic detonation. Panels ripped apart. Pressure collapsed. Engines coughed their last, and the ship responded accordingly: by ceasing to be a ship.

He didn't look back.

He didn’t have to.

He let the ship explode without ceremony, without even blinking. For a fraction of a second, Burn entertained the notion that Thaddeus Voss, the stubborn bastard he’d spent those three-year time loops trying to kill, had finally died. About damn time.

Still, if anyone had earned that kind of exit, it was Voss. The man had bought the rest of them time—kept Burn from following the others into Nethermere. He’d made sure Burn was stuck out here, marooned in the icy end of nothing. A valiant sacrifice, really. He deserved that frozen silence. Forever, preferably.

And now? Burn was floating approximately a million light-years away. At best. Even moving at light-speed, he’d still show up a million years too late—after the war, the aftermath, and probably after civilization remembered who he was.

He gave the void a dry look. “Couldn’t catch one to hitchhike,” he muttered, still glowing faintly like a radioactive regret. “Plan B, baby.”

A million light-years away, Morgan watched the fleet spill through the crack in the sky with one eye open, her expression set to ‘mildly disappointed’. “Still a lot of them. Couldn’t you destroy more out there?”

“Hey, I already took down over half.”

“You do remember I can see everything you see, right?”

“…”

“…”

“Just bring me home, Madam…”

“Pffft.”

She closed both eyes. Reopened them. And—

Pink heart eyes.

“Good thing I poured all that mana into your ass, huh?”

“Madam!” Burn yelped into the ether, flustered beyond salvation—his own eyes betraying him with matching pink hearts the size of guilt and poor impulse control. “Shut up. That felt good, okay? You promised you’d do that again.”

Morgan quietly blushed.

The love potion they had downed with Aroche and Bella that night had proven harder to exploit than anticipated.

Its purpose, mana resonance amplification, was fundamentally sabotaged by the fact that Morgan and Burn had entirely opposite mana affinities. The potion couldn’t find purchase. Their energy signatures refused to mix, refused to overlap, refused to even flirt with similarity.

Which should’ve rendered it useless.

The potion had nothing to cling to—no shared structure to twist. But when they physically injected mana into each other, with intention and bodily proximity, something finally snapped into place.

Hence… the activities behind the hedges.

Entirely necessary.

Strategic.

Scientific.

Mostly.

Burn still hadn’t recovered.

“You’re really done out there?” Morgan muttered, brushing the back of her hand across her cheeks. Blushing. Unfortunately.

“Yep. A bit radioactive, though,” Burn replied, deadpan, glowing a bit blue.

“Got it.” Morgan exhaled. The air bent. Her fingers snapped open, arms raised forward. A crown of light, massive, blinding, and very annoyed, formed around the entire front of the incoming fleet.

“In three…” she said, eyes narrowing. “Two…” Her breath stilled. “One.”

The thing about love potions… real love potions, not the flirty, sparkly kind but the ancient, soul-resonating, utterly irresponsible kind, is that they don’t stop at hearts.

They drag mana into alignment. They override physics.

And when you dump enough soul-charged, affinity-clashing energy into someone’s spinal cord (ass), then pour that energy back through a mutual channel powered by obscene emotional codependency?

Well.

The universe folds.

Between the two strongest individuals on the planet.

Boom.

The sound arrived late. The light didn’t bother with courtesy. Burn reappeared mid-collapse, crackling with residual mana, radiating enough interstellar grime to violate six health codes and at least one law of conservation.

“Ohhhh fuck—” Burn slapped a hand over his mouth, stumbling among fallen space ships courtesy to his forceful return. “I’m not doing that again on the next loop—”

Morgan floated to his side, calm, mostly, but her eyes flicked over him once, twice. She blinked. “Dizzy?”

“Dizzy?” Burn hissed through clenched teeth. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever—number two worst thing, right after getting my soul torn out to bankroll the time loop…”

He dry-heaved mana. Her gaze sharpened just a fraction. Well, he had just folded himself over space and time. It was a full-body reinterpretation of the rift’s metaphysics, weaponized through horniness as their first love potion induced large scale mana resonance, after all...

“Should I fight Mahkato for you?” she asked, tone still breezy, but her fingers twitched. Ready, if needed.

“What?” Burn gave her a look. “After all I went through, you want to take that away from me?”

She shrugged, grinning. “I thought you’re not feeling well…”

A pause. Then Burn smiled through the nausea. “Madam. I could find my kidney half eaten by a certain witch and having a quarter of my dignity left, and I would still do that shit.”

Morgan smiled, dusting off his shoulder. “Well, go on,” she said. “She seems angry.”

On cue, from the heart of the Alliance fleet hanging within the trembling atmosphere, Mahkato emerged. Still, unshaken, suspended mid-air in sovereign silence.

She faced Nethermere with the weight of judgment in her eyes.

The Ninth Overlord had come.

And wrath trailed behind her like a storm held on a leash.

Burn cleared his throat with a deliberate cough, which earned Morgan a poorly stifled giggle. Then, just like that, he snapped right back into deranged war god mode.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

He started laughing.

With pink heart-eyes.

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Trying my best... catching up 20 chapters begin... now!