Thor wasted not a single heartbeat.
With William limp in his grasp and only the faintest flicker of Ki left within him, the God of Thunder streaked through Mercury's upper atmosphere like a blazing golden-blue comet, lightning roaring and snapping in his wake.
The planet convulsed beneath his passage, its crust rending, glowing, and shrieking as the magenta afterburn of William's collapsing strike burrowed deep into its molten heart.
Then the world ignited. From the horizon, a searing pulse of violet brilliance erupted, as though the doors of some celestial forge had been flung open.
Magenta flames, unnatural, star-hot, infused with Ki and the backlash of an Infinity Stone, spilled from every fissure, painting the void in furious color.
The entire planet seemed to draw in a great breath… then exhale a tidal wave of heat that rolled over Thor's back like the breath of a newborn sun.
"By the All-Father…" he murmured, tightening his hold on William as the young warrior gave a faint, pained twitch.
Behind them, Mercury's surface dissolved into incandescent magma, growing ever brighter until the sphere blazed like a second star, magenta, wrathful, alive with destruction.
Shards of molten rock tore free, hurling into space as violet-tailed meteors.
Thor drove himself faster.
He broke free from the dying world's gravitational grip just as a cataclysmic shockwave erupted, tearing through the cosmos and making the very fabric of space shudder.
The blast slammed into him, thunder dancing along his skin as he wrapped himself around William, shielding the young warrior from annihilation.
When the blinding radiance finally ebbed, Mercury was gone, erased from existence.
In its place burned a newborn, volatile star, its surface writhing with ribbons of violet fire and pulsing with an alien energy that had no place in this solar system. A star conjured by a single, devastating strike.
Thor's gaze fell upon William, whose skin glimmered faintly with the afterglow of Ki burns, his breath drawn only through sheer regenerative defiance.
"You've rewritten the heavens," Thor murmured, "but what was the price?" With a final glance at the blazing anomaly, he turned away, storm auras igniting around him as he set out across the system, toward sanctuary, toward comrades, and perhaps toward the truth.
But in the swirling heart of magenta flame behind them, something stirred. Something endured. And its shadow crawled across the face of the newborn star like a bleeding wound.
William's consciousness wavered unsteadily, dimming and flaring in irregular bursts, much like the final, fragile moments of a flame struggling to hold against the encroaching darkness.
He drifted in weightlessness, the chill seeping deep into his bones. Blurred streaks of blue and violet washed across his vision as Thor carried him through the vastness of space, yet the surrounding universe felt distant, muted, as though he were submerged beneath fathoms of water, perceiving reality through layers of muffled static.
Then...
PING.
PING.
PING.
A familiar green holographic interface shimmered into view at the edge of his fading sight.
[SYSTEM ALERT: CRITICAL HEALTH LEVEL.]
[SYSTEM ALERT: USER KI RESERVES: 0.02%.]
[SYSTEM ALERT: MULTIPLE FRACTURES DETECTED.]
[SYSTEM ALERT: NERVOUS SYSTEM DAMAGE.]
[SYSTEM ALERT: HEART STRAIN: SEVERE.]
[SYSTEM ALERT: MUSCULATURE FAILURE IMMINENT.]
William attempted to move, to blink, to think, yet no response came. His mind was collapsing into darkness, his body reduced to a shell functioning solely on instinctive reflex.
Recognizing the lack of user input, the system ceased its relentless cascade of warnings. A moment of stillness followed, heavy and foreboding.
A soft chime resonated in the air.
[AUTO-PRESERVATION PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
[SELECTING RECOVERY ITEM: SENZU BEAN.]
[WARNING: CHEWING REQUIRED FOR FULL EFFECTIVENESS.]
[USER UNABLE TO PERFORM ACTION.]
[OVERRIDE: FORCED INGESTION.]
Within William's abdomen, space warped as the system ripped open a microscopic pocket-dimension. In an instant, one of the few remaining ripe senzu beans vanished from storage and reappeared directly inside his stomach.
A single heartbeat later:
[INGESTION CONFIRMED.]
[DELAYED RECOVERY DUE TO INCOMPLETE MASTICATION.]
[HEALING PROCESS: 8%... 11%... 15%...]
A sluggish warmth began to seep into his limbs, spreading with agonizing slowness.
Yet before the healing could truly take hold, the magenta star looming behind them pulsed ominously. A hair-thin shadow traced across its blazing surface, then began to swell, darkening and expanding like ink dispersing through water, dense, alive, and seething with malice.
Thor remained oblivious.
Deep within the heart of the newborn star, something vast and terrible was awakening.
Thanos floated amidst the screaming magenta ki.
There was no ground, no sky, no sense of direction, only an all-encompassing, monolithic pressure crushing him from every angle as the hyperdense orb consumed him entirely.
Suspended in a storm of pure annihilation, he was trapped within a sphere of force so compact that even photons screamed in futile escape. The energy did not press him downward; it drove inward, collapsing his form as though he were a diamond caught between colliding universes.
His bones ground together under impossible weight, muscles tearing as his armor disintegrated into molten flecks of light, only for the light itself to be ripped apart.
The Power Stone howled within his gauntlet, channeling desperate surges to reinforce the shimmering shield that stood as his final defense against utter destruction.
Yet even that barrier warped and buckled, denting and spiderwebbing like glass struck by a god's fist.
Every nerve in his body ignited in searing agony, then froze in unimaginable cold, only to burn again. He could no longer shape words, only emit ragged groans, scarcely audible over the deafening roar of the energy consuming him.
This was neither fire nor light, but a force beyond mortal or divine comprehension, a newborn singularity of pure Ki folding reality as if it were thin paper.
The pressure tore into him with relentless precision: his left cheek split, skin peeling away like bark from a dying tree; his right eye boiled; his jawbone cracked.
His chest cavity collapsed inward, ribs contorted into grotesque shapes, and every fiber of his being teetered on the verge of being crushed into nothing but purple dust. Yet he refused to yield.
"I am Thanos. I do not bow. I do not beg. I..." A tremor rippled through the fabric of the universe.
Then, everything ceased, not merely slowed or faltered, but stopped entirely.
The roaring Ki around him froze solid: flames suspended mid-roar, particles halted in their flight, currents of exploding color locked in place like a cosmic photograph.
The orb compressing him became a silent, solid sphere of greyscale death.
Space drained of color, his pain dulled, his voice stilled.
Even the Power Stone's radiance went dark.
For the first time in his existence, Thanos could no longer sense the universe surrounding him.
There was only an absence, pure, unyielding nothingness.
Then came a sound.
knock.
A soft, deliberate tapping that drew his remaining eye toward its source. Suspended in the grey void was a brass doorknob, unremarkable yet impossibly out of place, slowly turning on an unseen axis.
Unmoved by the apocalyptic stillness around it, it continued its calm rotation. His breath caught as the sound repeated.
knock, knock.
Lines of brilliant white light began to fracture the space around the knob, forming the outline of a door where no door had been.
Space itself twisted and folded like fabric to frame it, accommodating this impossible construct.
With a faint click, the door opened, and from within emerged a darkness so profound that it rendered the swirling greyscale Ki-storm almost radiant in comparison.
This was not mere emptiness, nor shadow; it was a tangible, undeniable presence.
From the void emerged a woman.
Tall. Elegant. Terrifying.
Her robes cascaded like liquid midnight, shifting with each step as if woven from living shadow. Strands of her hair drifted with eerie independence, each moving as though guided by its own mind and its own insatiable hunger.
Even within the stillness of the frozen storm, she glided effortlessly, untouched by the laws of time or matter.
Her gaze locked with his.
One eye shone silver, glowing softly, an orb of judgment, of endings, of cold celestial equilibrium.
The other… was black.
A black so profound it devoured the greyscale world around it. A black that hissed, that breathed, that screamed.
And from that abyssal eye, Thanos heard a sound.
Screaming.
A chorus of countless voices, billions, trillions, writhing together in an endless wail. Villains, tyrants, monsters, forsaken evils, every soul that had ever plunged into absolute darkness.
He felt them rake at the edges of his mind.
And for the first time since childhood…
Thanos knew fear.
True, unyielding, marrow-deep fear.
The woman's smile curved, soft, chilling, inevitable.
"Thanos," she whispered, her voice like velvet drawn over a blade. "Even now… you clutch at life so desperately."
She drifted closer, weightless within the frozen sphere of Ki that stilled even the atoms in place.
"You have walked beside me all your years," she murmured. "Cherished my shadow. Worshipped my silence."
Her black eye widened, consuming the last remnants of light.
"And now… at long last… you hear me knocking."
Her hand, pale, graceful, inescapable, rose toward his face.
"Come," she breathed. "Your true mistress has been waiting."
Thanos drifted in the void, weightless, suspended at the heart of a raging cosmic maelstrom.
There was no ground beneath him, no sky above, no horizon to anchor his gaze, only an all-encompassing, crushing pressure.
Ki, raw, primal, god-rending ki, assaulted him from every direction, squeezing his bones until they groaned like dying stars, seeping into his pores, vibrating through each atom of his being.
The storm of energy was eternal and merciless, like an endless ocean determined to grind a lone stone into dust.
Yet even such an infinite force could not extinguish the emotion swelling in his chest, love. Lady Death hovered before him, serene as a winter moon, her veil flowing in the void as though stirred by some unseen celestial wind.
Her hollow eyes, each a swirling galaxy of silver and shadow respectively, fixed upon him, and for one fragile, fleeting instant, Thanos felt truly seen.
He reached for her, yearning spilling from him like a molten river of gold.
But then… memories rose, first one, then another, then a torrent.
A thousand years of humiliation.
Ages of being scolded, diminished, mocked, and ignored.
Every deed he had ever committed, every unspeakable atrocity, every hard-won triumph, every desperate gambit to bend the universe to his will, had been in service of her notice.
Her approval.
Her gaze.
And yet, she had offered him nothing but crumbs.
A fleeting smile here.
A murmured word there.
A tantalizing promise of affection, dangled like bait before a ravenous beast. Her love had been a fabrication.
Her attention, a chain. Slowly, Thanos' devotion began to decay. It smoldered. It warped into something honed and merciless.
His jaw locked, his brow knit, and deep within his eyes an ancient, monstrous presence stirred. "No more," he breathed.
Lady Death inclined her head, perhaps puzzled, perhaps intrigued, drifting toward him with the serene arrogance of one who believed herself beyond reach, eternal, inevitable, inescapable. And then, the Infinity Gauntlet ignited.
From his hand burst a corona of impossible brilliance, six hues, each embodying a force no mortal or titan should ever command: Power. Space. Reality. Soul. Time. Mind. United, they became something beyond comprehension, a spectrum that defied existence itself.
Lady Death's hollow eyes flared wide.
"You wouldn't," she breathed.
Thanos' grin was a blade.
"Oh… but I will."
The Infinity Gauntlet blazed, blinding, primordial, more brilliant than the first flare of creation itself. Cascades of chromatic lightning ripped across the abyss, shredding reality's seams. The ki storm coiling around him twisted and howled, spiraling into chaos as the Stones pulsed in flawless, dreadful harmony.
His hand extended.
She faltered.
That single, alien flicker of hesitation, so unlike her, sealed her fate.
Thanos' colossal fingers locked around her skull.
Her veil whipped backward, a shroud torn away by the fury of a cosmic gale.
The void convulsed.
Prismatic radiance ERUPTED, explosions of impossible color detonating through the fabric of existence as the Stones drank deep from death itself.
Lady Death shrieked.
It was a sound no mortal soul could survive.
A sound that rattled the skeletal spines of ancient nebulae.
A sound that made slumbering black holes twitch in fear.
A sound steeped in pain… and drenched in terror.
Her form, once an immutable silhouette of shadow, began to unravel, dissolving into the ether. Tendrils of black smoke tore free from her body, spiraling in helpless arcs toward the baleful glow of the Gauntlet.
Thanos drew her closer, ever closer, his grip inexorable, his pull as relentless and crushing as the birth of a billion supernovae. Every writhing plume of her essence was seized by the Infinity Stones, devoured, compressed, and absorbed into the vast, consuming will of the Mad Titan.
Her voice cracked, trembling on the edge of despair.
"Thanos… stop…"
But he did not.
The remnants of her being convulsed, buckled under the force, and collapsed inward, streaming into the Gauntlet in one final, shrieking cyclone of obliterated shadow.
And then...
Silence.
The void hung still, breathless.
Thanos lingered alone, suspended in the dark, his breathing deep and measured, his outstretched hand wreathed in the smoldering hues of eternity.
Within him…
Something awoke.
Something glacial.
Something ancient.
Something divine and monstrous, bound now to his indomitable will.
Lady Death's voice, once untouchable, now whispered faintly in the recesses of his mind, trapped, trembling, terrified, a dark finch in a cage of iridescent colors.
Thanos's mouth curled into a slow, merciless smile.
"At last," he breathed into the endless night.
"You are mine."