Thor did not hesitate.
Thanos' gaze was fixed, entranced by the impossible mass of ki swelling behind William's back, his instincts screaming warnings while his mind remained paralyzed in awe. For the briefest heartbeat, the battlefield faded from his awareness, his enemies forgotten, his purpose eclipsed, until only the immense, annihilating sphere of power filled his world.
That was all the God of Thunder required.
With a roar that seemed to fracture the vacuum itself, Thor hurled Mjolnir and surged after it, pulled forward by the enchanted hammer with meteoric force. Lightning coiled in his wake, writhing like a celestial serpent through the void as he closed the gap in a heartbeat.
Only when it was far too late did the Mad Titan realize his mistake.
WHRA-KOOOM!!!
Mjolnir slammed into his faceplate with the force of a collapsing star, thunder detonating outward in a shockwave so vast it rippled through the solar system. For an instant, even the distant planets trembled. Thanos spun away, his massive form flung end over end through the black like a doll cast aside by a god.
He crashed far off, his momentum carving a glowing path through the darkness before slowing to a halt. Smoke coiled from his battered armor. Sparks spat from fractured servos.
And then the scent reached him, sharp, metallic, electric.
Ozone.
Thanos' eyes narrowed to razor slits, his shield blazing to life just as the universe erupted in a blinding flash of white.
Thor descended upon him like a living tempest, a storm of unbridled wrath, hurling a torrent of lightning fierce enough to obliterate a mountain range. Bolts writhed and roared, weaving into a cage of divine fury around the Titan, each strike slamming into his shield with relentless force. The sheer impact drove Thanos deeper into the drifting cosmic dust, entombing him within a maelstrom of light and deafening thunder.
Yet even the full, furious might of a god paled before what unfolded just behind them.
William… had reached the brink.
Ki surged around him in violent swells, a tidal wave folding endlessly inward. The orb anchored to his back had become so impossibly dense that the very fabric of reality began to splinter, fractures spiderwebbing outward like cracks in a fragile shell. Space around him shuddered, warped, and flickered, every distortion a silent scream from the universe itself. The roar of his energy was not sound, but a vibration that resonated in the bones of all who felt it, a primal warning.
He was no longer in control.
It pressed into him, bore down upon him, using him as the singular anchor that allowed it to exist. His eyes clamped shut, teeth locked tight, as his aura twisted into something no longer flame-like, but collapsing inward like a dying star.
Every soul on the battlefield, ally and foe, deity and beast, understood the truth in that moment:
This was no mere attack.
It teetered on the edge of becoming an unstoppable force.
And now, the question was not if it would be unleashed… but whether anything of Thanos or even Mercury itself would remain when it was.
As the crackling orb of ki swelled to its ultimate, terrifying density, William felt the divine heat of his Super Saiyan God form being consumed, not fading, but ravenously devoured. The sphere pulled at his aura like a starving singularity, siphoning the crimson radiance from his skin, fingertips, and even the roots of his hair.
First came the flicker.
Then the dim.
Then the collapse.
The godly fire vanished, drawn wholly into the swirling mass behind him until not a single ember remained.
His flame was gone.
He crashed back into his base state like a meteor succumbing to gravity, heavy, mortal, trembling. Every muscle fiber shrieked under the strain. His arms quaked violently as he braced the immense, roaring sphere pressing into his spine.
It was no longer just energy.
It had weight.
It had presence.
It had gravity.
It dragged at his bones, ground his joints, crushed his lungs, and warped the space around his silhouette. The air rippled with blistering heat and distortion, spiderweb cracks splintering reality itself, the atmosphere groaning under the unbearable pressure.
Sweat streamed down his face in scalding rivulets. His hair plastered to his forehead. His breath came in ragged bursts, eyes burning so fiercely he had to blink through the sting just to keep the world from blurring away.
And when he forced his searing gaze upward, he saw Thor.
The God of Thunder was a tempest incarnate.
Mjolnir whirled in a blinding blur, every rotation detonating sonic booms and carving divergent cyclones across the battlefield. Lightning erupted from his body in braided torrents, lashing Thanos from every direction with celestial ferocity. Each bolt was vast enough to cleave mountains, each detonation brilliant enough to blind the eyes of gods.
Thanos reeled beneath the relentless onslaught, his armor blazing with molten fissures. Every blow dented, ripped, chipped, and shattered the Mad Titan's defenses further.
Thor surged forward with a roar of godly fury, his presence swelling into a sphere of throbbing storm-light.
Yet even as Mjolnir hammered against his guard, the Titan refused to yield.
He pressed on through the tempest, teeth clenched, eyes alight with cold, calculating rage.
The power of the Infinity Stones encased him like a gleaming cosmic plate, reality warping at his command, raw energy coursing through him like molten star-fire.
Thor's face contorted with strain as he struck with greater speed, force, and thunder, until the change began. The lightning's bite dulled.
The roar of the storm thinned.
The tempest lost its hunger. William felt the shift like a knife between his ribs.
Thor's vast divinity began to falter. Thanos drove forward, his fist ablaze with a volatile fusion of Ki and Stone, the air around it bending as he tore through the lightning, forcing the god of thunder back step by step.
Planting his feet, Thor snarled and summoned one last, colossal bolt of lightning that split the heavens, yet still, Thanos withstood it.
William's jaw locked so tightly the metallic tang of blood filled his mouth. Behind him, the aura flared and pulsed, a blazing star on the verge of collapse into a supernova. His muscles quaked, vision swam, and his very bones thrummed beneath the crushing, infinite weight of the ki sphere's power.
Every moment of his journey flashed through his mind, every choice, every battle, every sacrifice, every unbearable loss. He would not, could not, allow Thor to face the darkness alone.
With a breath that shredded his throat into raw fire, William forced his legs to anchor against the trembling ground. He bent, twisted, and roared, a primal, unrestrained cry of defiance that sent shockwaves through the battlefield.
The sphere answered.
It swelled with furious brilliance, shrieking like a dying sun while howling with the voice of a living storm. Violent winds spiraled out in blazing halos, tearing the ground to shreds and flinging jagged shards of earth into the sky.
For a single impossible heartbeat, everything froze.
Then William unleashed it.
Not a release, but a catastrophic hurl, his entire being poured into the motion, muscles tearing, tendons snapping, vessels bursting under the strain. The hyperdense sphere ripped forward, carving a blazing tunnel through the fabric of space as it screamed toward Thanos.
In that instant, the Mad Titan's fist slammed into Thor's jaw, a strike so devastating it fractured reality itself, sending the God of Thunder hurtling through a wall of shattered lightning until he vanished in a streak of broken light.
Thanos turned, but he was far too late.
The orb was already upon him.
Thanos intercepted the incoming star of condensed ki with barely a heartbeat to spare.
His eyes flared wide, instinct, pride, and desperation fusing in a single, violent surge. With a roar that rattled the very bones of the battlefield, he slammed both boots into the ground, bracing himself. His arm thrust forward, palm open, as the air around him detonated in a shockwave, layer upon layer of shimmering, hexagonal plating bursting into existence, locking together like the armor of a celestial warlord.
"GRAAAAAAAAH!"
The Power Stone answered his fury, unleashing a savage torrent of cosmic force. Veins of searing purple-white energy raced along his arm, gouging molten scars into the earth beneath him as he channeled its boundless might into the shield. His frame swelled, muscles straining, armor groaning under the pressure of unleashed power.
The barrier multiplied.
It thickened.
It expanded into a vast dome, each panel reinforced by the Stone's pure, unbridled wrath.
Then...
The orb struck.
Reality screamed and tore apart.
The sound was not an explosion but the void that follows one so immense it erases noise itself. Dust and light vanished in an instant. The ground beneath Thanos collapsed into a massive crater, glowing fissures snaking outward for miles.
The Mad Titan's heels tore across the earth, carving colossal trenches in his wake. The ki sphere pressed into the shield, flattening with impossible force, its density so overwhelming that even the fabric of light bent and warped around it.
Thanos braced himself, a snarl ripping from his throat as his entire body trembled beneath the crushing weight. The shield groaned, the planet groaned, even the very air seemed to cry out in strain.
For three impossible seconds, a miracle, he held firm. His roar deepened into something guttural, primal, torn from the edge of death and the last vestiges of pride.
He shoved forward, jaw locked, the Power Stone in his gauntlet pulsing like a second, furious heart.
Then he heard it.
A crack.
Sharp, merciless, it sliced through the chaos like the breaking of a world. It came again. And again. Like glaciers rending apart, like continents wrenching free, like the first fractures in the bones of the universe itself.
His eyes darted upward. Across the surface of his shield, tiny spiderweb fractures began to glisten, hairline fissures at first, refracting the light, then spreading, thickening, crawling outward in jagged, merciless patterns.
Horror crept into his gaze. Another crack rang out, then another, until a chorus of breaking sang through the battlefield like the death knell of a star on its last breath.
The shield, fortified by the Power Stone, a bulwark capable of defying planetary weapons, was failing. And for the first time in the fight, Thanos felt something he loathed above all else.
Fear.
Thanos refused to yield. Even as fractures spiderwebbed through his shield and the crushing mass of William's blazing ki orb drove him deeper into the molten earth, the Mad Titan roared in defiant fury and redoubled his efforts.
"I… AM… INEVITABLE!"
The Infinity Stones answered his call with a furious blaze.
The Power Stone throbbed violently, spewing torrents of destructive energy into the faltering barrier.
The Space Stone twisted the very air around him, straining to bend and warp the relentless pressure away.
The Reality Stone shimmered like a dying star, desperately weaving fragile layers to patch the breaking defenses.
The shield flared, once, twice, struggling to heal faster than it splintered.
Thanos poured every shred of will, every ounce of pride, every drop of godlike obstinance into defying the unstoppable descent of the ki star. Yet his technology was never built to withstand the birth of another sun.
From his belt, the shield generator's anchor began to tremble, softly at first. A few sparks hissed from its overstrained circuits, then more, then more still, until the air was alive with staccato bursts of flame licking at the edges of his scorched armor.
Grinding his teeth, Thanos clawed deeper into the Stones' vast reservoirs, but the burden was too great.
The shield core rattled violently, glowing a furious red as the fires spread...
BOOM!
A sudden explosion tore through the machinery at his waist, hurling shards of scorched metal in every direction.
The shield groaned under the unbearable strain, fractures racing across its surface like a spiderweb woven from pure destruction, until, with one final, deafening crack, it shattered.
A dazzling eruption of crystalline energy panels burst outward in a searing flash, blinding all who dared to witness it.
With the shield obliterated, the colossal wall of Infinity-Stone-forged energy collapsed in an instant, imploding upon itself like a dying star's final breath.
Unopposed, the orb descended, its deadly mass of magenta fury engulfing Thanos completely.
His once-mighty, unshakable roar was drowned beneath the cataclysmic detonation of the collapsing ki star as light consumed the horizon. Heat surged across the planet, and Mercury shuddered violently, as if its very core were tearing apart.
The shockwave ripped through the devastated battlefield, annihilating stone, sand, and molten metal in its relentless path. And through the raging chaos, at the heart of the storm's ascension, Thor arrived.
Caked in ash and battered beyond recognition, his armor scorched and cape half-consumed by fire, he still strode with the unwavering might of a god.
In a burst of lightning, he appeared before William just as the young warrior's legs gave way, the last vestiges of his strength flickering into nothingness.
Pale, unfocused, every muscle quivering with exhaustion, William could no longer stand.
Thor caught him effortlessly before he collapsed, his voice a low rumble:
"Aye… easy, lad. I've got you." William tried to speak to respond, but only a strained croak escaped.
His hair lost its luster, his ki extinguished completely, and he went limp in the thunder god's arms.
Beneath them, Mercury's surface began to swell and crack, the aftershock of the cataclysmic strike still tearing through the planet's core.
There was no time to hesitate.
Thor's eyes hardened; he pulled William close, summoned the final fury of his storm, and shot skyward like a blazing comet of lightning.
They breached the void just as...
FWOOOOOOOM!
Mercury erupted in a colossal detonation of light, fire, and shattered crust.
Thor shielded William with his own body, the deafening roar of destruction lost in the silent chaos of space.
Whether Thanos had survived… whether Mercury could endure… whether the universe had just witnessed the fall of the Mad Titan… all truths lay hidden in the seething inferno where a world had once turned.
The planet lies in ruin, the heavens still quaking from the cataclysmic blast unleashed by William's final attack.
Thor hurtles through the void, clutching the unconscious warrior tightly, as the fading light of the explosion sweeps across the solar system like the last flare of a dying star.
Yet even as the shockwaves subside, an ominous stirring emerges in the darkness.
Was Thanos truly annihilated by the overwhelming force of William's collapsing Ki sphere, or has the Mad Titan survived the impossible, sustained by the terrible might of the Infinity Stones? And if he has endured, what unimaginable vengeance will he now bring upon the universe?
One god stands wounded, one hero lies drained, and the fate of one Titan remains unknown.
The battle may be concluded, but the war for reality itself may only now be beginning.
"AN - HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!"