SNAP.
The sound was small, almost gentle, a mere tap of fingers that should have been nothing in the jaws of cosmic war.
But the universe felt it.
A pulse of absolute power tore through creation, rippling from Thanos's gauntlet like a silent shockwave, one no ear could hear, yet every soul instinctively recognized. Reality shuddered. Time faltered. Space folded inward, recoiling from the force that had been unleashed.
William did not move.
He could not.
His body lay half-buried in the red dust of Mars, limp and battered, breath shallow. His aura was gone. His soul was fractured. His power had been reduced to a mere whisper.
Yet he felt it.
Deep within the hollow left after the Stones were ripped from him, something twisted, pulled, unraveled.
A cool wind swept across the barren Martian plain, impossible in a world with almost no air. Dust lifted into the sky, drifting upward like embers rising from a dying pyre.
Then William heard a sound he had never thought possible from her.
A whimper.
So, faint.
So, afraid.
"W... William…?"
His eyes snapped open.
Phage, once a majestic, ever-shifting crown of living armor, a fierce serpentine storm of black-and-red tendrils, now lay slumped weakly against his chest. Her form flickered wildly, like a lone candle battling the fury of a hurricane.
The sharp edges of her silhouette crumbled into drifting motes of gray, her once-commanding presence softening, destabilizing.
"No," William breathed, his voice ragged with desperation. "No, no, Phage, stay with me. Stay with me!"
Her voice emerged fractured, layered with a warped, glitching resonance unlike anything he had ever heard, not fear, not pain, but something infinitely worse.
"I… I don't… want to go…"
A fragment of her shoulder disintegrated into dust, spiraling upward into the cold wind.
William's heart seized.
"PHAGE!"
The world smeared and tilted; Mars itself seemed to lurch beneath him. Terror, deeper and sharper than any wound Thanos had ever dealt, consumed him.
His hands trembled violently as he tried to hold her together, but his fingers slipped through her dissolving shape as though grasping smoke.
She lifted her gaze, hollow eyes trembling with unspoken agony.
"It hurts…"
And then, with a sudden, merciless acceleration, she began to unravel completely.
"No... NO! I'm here! I'm right here!"
He tried to pull her back together with Ki, with sheer willpower, with anything he could muster, but nothing answered.
This wasn't a wound. Not an attack. Not even damage.
This was erasure.
It was Thanos's will, tearing half the universe away in one silent, merciless instant.
And Phage… Phage was one of them.
Her body unraveled upward, piece by piece, particles drifting into the air like fading fireflies on a dying summer night.
"W-Will…iam…"
Her voice faltered, dimming into nothing.
The last tendril slipped from his grasp.
Phage, the symbiote who had fought at his side, saved him, bonded with him, shielded him from the Power Stone's fury, disintegrated into dust against his chest.
Floating away.
Lost.
Gone.
William could not hold back the torrent of tears streaming down his face, his gaze fixed desperately upward in search of any sign that a fragment of Phage might have endured.
Yet the motes of dust vanished into nothingness, leaving him clutching only the hollow weight of his grief before he suddenly threw back his head and unleashed a roar.
The sound that erupted from William's throat was neither human nor Saiyan, nor anything born from sanity itself.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
His cry, raw with rage and agony, pulsed through the air as his aura blazed in rapid, blinding shifts of green, gold, and red, the alternating brilliance so fierce it forced even Thanos to shield his eyes and grit his teeth against the onslaught.
Far within William's system space, deep inside the temple where devout priests of Kandor knelt in solemn prayer around a radiant altar, the glow mirrored the furious dance of colors that wreathed William's being.
The altar room within William's system space quaked with reverent intensity.
The priests of Kandor, draped in flowing robes of crimson and gold, their faces bathed in the warm radiance of sacred crystal braziers, rose as one from their kneeling positions.
Silence swept through the temple, the air growing heavy with the palpable weight of unseen, divine power.
At the far end, dominating the chamber, loomed the newest addition to their planetary pantheon: a figure sculpted from flawless, luminescent stone.
A warrior.
A protector.
A god.
William.
His likeness stood tall, chin lifted in defiance, eyes fixed forward, fists clenched with unyielding resolve.
A cape, though absent in reality, billowed eternally in carved motion, a symbolic flourish of honor granted by the devoted Kandorians.
Beneath his feet, flames had been etched in exquisite detail, capturing the eternal fires of ascension. And now, as William cried out upon the blood-red sands of Mars, the statue stirred to life, its surface blooming with light.
At first, it was a faint pulse, a heartbeat.
Then another. Gasps erupted among the priests as the glow swelled, flooding the chamber in brilliance.
With ritual grace, the High Priest advanced, raising his ornate staff high before proclaiming the ancient command that summoned the chant.
His voice rang out like thunder shattering the silence within a grand cathedral:
"Zor'El'tra ven Kahl-Shora… Sa'tem kara'ul… Vel'kirah tah William…"
One by one, then all at once, the others joined in, dozens of voices weaving into a vast, resonant tapestry of sound:
"Vas'TEM.
Vas'TAH.
Vas'TOR'AH WIL-LI-AM."
The air pulsed with rhythmic force.
Their chant swelled:
"Guardian made flesh,
Flame of resolve,
He who endures the night,
He who bleeds and does not fall…"
The statue's flame-like aura flared, flickering with volatile intensity.
"Shora'tem Val'Rai!
Shora'tem Val'Rai!"
"We call the Sacred Flame!"
Power thickened in the air like rising smoke.
Braziers hissed and spat embers.
The ground trembled beneath their feet.
The statue's glow fractured into a riot of color, gold, green, crimson, white-hot, each hue reflecting the storm raging within William's shattered spirit.
The priests lifted their arms in unison toward the effigy:
"Let the god who suffers rise anew.
Let the Flame of the Fallen burn once more.
Let the Will of William ignite our world!"
A violent burst of light erupted as the aura exploded outward in a kaleidoscope of color.
The chanting faltered under the raw surge of divine force that ripped through the chamber. Sparks tore across the air like miniature suns flaring into existence.
The statue blazed so fiercely that the priests shielded their eyes, tears searing down their cheeks from the blistering heat radiating from the stone.
Then, with slow, deliberate certainty…
The chaos subsided.
The light steadied.
It became a deep, fiery red infused with magenta, flames curling skyward like the breath of a god. Tiny sparks spiraled outward in graceful arcs, living motes of crimson fire dancing around the statue in a radiant, eternal orbit.
It was the same aura a God of Ki might bear, the same burning calm that once radiated from the first Super Saiyan God, yet it ran deeper, heavier, older.
It was not born of divine serenity, but of pain so profound it had reshaped the essence of divinity itself.
The High Priest collapsed to his knees, overcome by awe, his voice trembling as he whispered, "He answers… the God of Resolve answers."
Around him, the others fell prostrate, heads bowed low, as flames poured from the statue, flooding the temple like a sunrise wrought from fire.
"Val'kirah William… Val'kirah William… Val'kirah William…" they chanted in reverence.
Praise to William, the Resolute Flame.
Their voices rang through the system space, echoing endlessly as the aura blazed, bright, untamed, and alive.
And on Mars, though broken and steeped in grief, something deep within William's shattered soul began to stir at the sound of those prayers spoken in his name, like a heartbeat rediscovering its rhythm, like scattered embers gathering for the birth of a new inferno.
The aura within the Kandorian temple surged to its zenith, a blazing, sentient inferno of crimson and magenta divinity swirling and leaping in wild, hypnotic patterns across the statue of William.
The air trembled with sacred power, every flicker of light a heartbeat of the gods themselves, the atmosphere electric with anticipation.
And then, as if the heavens themselves had drawn a breath, William's true body stirred, alive, resonant, and answering the call.
At first, it was nothing more than a flicker.
A dim ember-glow smoldered beneath the fractured surface of his skin, a delicate shimmer threading its way along the splintered lines of his soul, like light bleeding through shards of shattered glass.
William barely registered it through the relentless tide of agony tearing him apart from the inside.
His trembling hands hovered over the hollow space where Phage had stood only moments ago. Each breath came in jagged, uneven bursts between clenched teeth, his shoulders quaking as every thread of his being strained toward the grief threatening to engulf him whole.
Then...
FWUM.
A warm, resonant ignition flared to life beneath his sternum, steady and sure.
William went still.
Something ancient awoke.
The next heartbeat hit harder.
FWUM.
The glow spread across his chest, down his arms, up his neck, blooming like wildfire through dry brush.
Thanos's eyes narrowed.
"…What are you doing, boy?" Thanos formed a barrier made of ki and spatial energy in case William was attempting to flip the table and self-destruct
In the Kandorian temple
The statue's aura suddenly intensified, its fiery red and magenta glow surging toward the heavens with a sound like a divine bell ringing across the cosmos.
The priests stumbled back as the flames around the statue turned violent, no longer calm, no longer restrained.
The High Priest gasped.
"He rises! The Flame of Resolve rises!"
On Mars
William's eyes snapped open, blank, empty, glowing two shades of molten magenta and red.
His limbs lifted from the sand as if pulled upward by invisible threads. His hair, still matted with dust and blood, began to drift and whip upward in a heatless wind.
Thanos took a cautious step back, gauntlet crackling with defensive energy.
"Impossible."
Because the air around William began to liquefy with heat.
Not Ki.
Not magic.
Divinity
A god's spark being forged through grief.
The aura surging beneath his skin suddenly ripped free...
FWOOM!!!
Waves of crimson-and-magenta Ki erupted in a colossal sphere, engulfing the entire Martian valley in blinding radiance.
The raging dust storm cast across the planet by the Snap vanished in an instant, vaporized into nothingness.
The titanic shockwave flung Thanos through the air like a helpless ragdoll, his armored boots gouging deep trenches in the red soil as he fought desperately to regain his footing.
William didn't spare him a glance.
Suspended above the ground, chest heaving, tears streaking unbidden down his face... his aura…
His aura now blazed with the same divine inferno that had once scorched the sacred statue in Kandor's temple.
Flame.
Resolve.
Divinity, forged in the crucible of suffering.
Across the Solar System, satellites orbiting Mars were suddenly overwhelmed, their sensors flooding with urgent alerts.
NASA, S.W.O.R.D., the Guardians, Kryptonian scanners, Saiyan senses, and even the perceptions of cosmic entities all reached the same startling conclusion: an immense, unprecedented surge of power was erupting from the Red Planet. Mars had ignited.
From Earth, stargazers watched in awe as the planet blazed with astonishing brilliance.
Through telescopes or even to the naked eye, it appeared for a fleeting moment as though a new star had been born, a tiny crimson sun blooming beside Mars.
It radiated with fierce, divine energy, vibrant and unyielding, as if something long dormant had awakened deep within, proclaiming to the universe that its tale was far from finished.
The ground surrounding William liquefied into shimmering streaks of molten glass.
The flames enveloping his body surged brighter, hotter, and more precise, transformed from an untamed eruption into a concentrated core of incandescent will.
Thanos raised the Infinity Gauntlet to shield his face, teeth clenched as he growled, "You should not be able to stand. You should not even be alive."
William offered no reply; his aura spoke in his stead. Behind him, roaring red-magenta fire coiled and spread like wings forged from molten determination, each flare climbing higher, burning brighter, hungrier.
From within the blaze came a sound, not a scream nor a roar, but a deep, resonant hum.
A heartbeat.
BOOM.
The flames blazed with greater intensity.
BOOM.
The radiance widened.
BOOM.
Thanos took a step back, for the first time uncertain, genuinely unsure of what stood before him.
William glanced down at his hand, now engulfed in a vivid, red flame-like aura that brought to mind the fierce energy of Kaio-Ken, though without the punishing strain that technique once inflicted.
Each second stretched into an eternity as he marveled at the power coursing through him.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze, his large crimson eyes locking onto the bewildered Eternal, who was only beginning to recover from the devastating blast that had hurled him through the air.
William's crimson eyes shifted from locking onto Thanos's gaze to fixating on the gleaming gauntlet encasing the Mad Titan's hand, lingering there with deliberate intensity.
Slowly, his attention returned to meet Thanos's steely stare, a curl of his lips forming something that was almost, but not quite, a smirk, an expression caught between menace and mockery.
Then, in a voice both gravelly and ethereal, a sound that seemed to emanate from every corner of existence and reverberate in Thanos's mind, William's words rang out with chilling resolve:
"I will make you eat those fingers before I kill you!"