The void hummed, no, thrummed, like a cosmic engine restarting.
William's breath stabilized just as the familiar crystalline tone pinged sharply inside his skull.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: Healing at 45%. Regeneration accelerating.]
[Warning: Residual godly Ki unstable. Integration recommended.]
"Forty-five, huh…?" William muttered through clenched teeth.
Across his torso, the jagged wounds that had nearly bisected him hissed with hot vapor as steaming blood sealed over.
Flesh knit with a sharp, snapping tension, tendons reattaching like drawn bowstrings.
Every pulse of his heart forced another knot of Ki to surge outward, fusing cracks in his bone with a painful pop-hiss.
He exhaled, and the breath came out glowing.
But the moment he tried to push deeper into that magenta spark, the universe pulled his attention violently upward, as Thor and Thanatos collided once more.
And this time, Death fought with new weapons.
Thanatos raised his double-bladed war sword, its edge shuddering, elongating, unraveling into a crescent of pure night.
In an instant the weapon warped into a double-bladed scythe, each curved blade dripping threads of void that devoured the light around them.
He spun it once.
The universe flinched.
When the Mad Titan brought the scythe down, the arc cut a flawless black scar across space-time itself.
Thor met it head-on.
CLANG!
SKREEE!
CRAAAAK!
Gungnir's celestial point intercepted the upper blade, and the sound that erupted was not metal, it was the ripping of a star being torn open.
The spear's golden light ground against the shadow-forged weapon, spraying sparks that looked suspiciously like dying souls.
Thor snarled, pushing forward.
Thanatos pushed back, his skeletal half-jaw forming an awful grin as he leaned into the clash.
Their auras began to implode the space around them.
William shielded his eyes as time around the clash twisted, some distant asteroids reversing motion while nearby debris accelerated to blurs.
Then Thor moved.
With a violent twist of his wrist, Gungnir shoved the scythe aside, and Mjolnir struck upward in the same breath.
KRA-THOOOOOOM!!
The hammer smashed into Thanatos' jaw.
The impact didn't simply ring, it reverberated through every planet in the solar system.
Thanatos' head snapped back, a crack of luminous fractures racing across the bone side of his face.
A flicker of silver fire bled from the empty socket, snuffed by the void in the next instant.
Thor didn't hesitate.
Lightning flooded his limbs, his veins, his voice.
He became the storm.
With a roar that split the vacuum, he hurled a blast of divine thunder that hit Thanatos like a celestial freight train.
A shockwave rippled outward, a spherical eruption of white-blue electricity that detonated silently but hit everything with crushing force.
Thanatos flew back, miles, then hundreds of thousands of miles, then millions.
Thor blurred after him.
And suddenly the void was filled with:
THOOM!!
THOOM!!
THOOM!!
THOOM!!
THOOM!!
THOOM!!
THOOM!!!
Each impact flashing like a newborn star.
Each collision ringing like a cosmic gong.
Each strike sending ripples that bent the paths of planets.
William watched, jaw tight.
Even with enhanced senses, he could barely track them.
A flash of gold. A curl of shadow.
A thunderclap.
A scythe carving halos of death through the dark.
It was a battle fought on a scale even he, after everything, could scarcely comprehend.
The final echo of their impact rolled over him like a distant drum.
William inhaled.
His healing hit 46%.
And the magenta Ki inside him stirred like a sleeping god trying to wake.
The tremors of Thor and Thanatos' universe-breaking clash rolled across the void like distant thunder.
William barely heard them now, not because they'd softened, but because something far louder had begun to roar inside him.
The magenta god-ki.
It stirred again.
Then it ignited.
At first it was only a shimmer beneath his skin, a flicker of pink-purple light tracing his veins like molten starlight.
Then the glow deepened, darkened, thickened, until magenta flame licked across his body in slow, deliberate waves.
Not explosive.
Not violent.
Controlled.
Contained.
Like a deity choosing not to reveal its true form.
The fire wrapped around him from the inside out, ribs to spine, lungs to heart, then seeped through his pores as an ethereal blaze that danced without heat.
William's eyes narrowed as the energy coiled around his limbs, threading itself like living silk.
He remained in base form.
No aura spike.
No hair shift.
No sudden transformation.
But the god-ki made the air itself bend around him, like space couldn't decide whether he was fully mortal anymore.
Then...
PING.
The system's voice chimed, clear and sharp in his mind.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: God-Ki detected assisting regenerative process.]
[Senzu-based cellular restoration efficiency increased by 200%.]
[Recovery time: cut by 50%.]
A second ping followed immediately.
[Healing at 70%. Rising rapidly.]
William exhaled, and the breath came out as a curl of magenta vapor, rolling into the void like a restless spirit.
The wounds across his torso twitched, then snapped shut faster, cleaner.
The lingering fractures in his bones stitched together with a sharp crack-crack-crack as tendons reattached and muscles regained cohesion.
He felt lighter.
Stronger.
Clearer.
As if someone had finally removed a weight pressing on his existence.
His heartbeat thudded once, and the magenta flames tightened around him, shaping into a faint, barely perceptible outline.
An outline of something divine.
Something old.
He clenched his fist experimentally.
Light rippled through space. Subtle. But undeniable.
"Alright," he muttered, flexing his fingers as the energy hummed in response. "If this keeps up… I might actually make it back in the ring."
Above him, miles away yet painfully close in presence, a flash of lightning tore across the dark as Thor and Thanatos collided again.
A bright spear of gold, a sweeping arc of shadow, and the resulting explosion sending shockwaves through entire sectors of empty space.
William rose from his cross-legged posture.
The magenta god-ki curled behind him like a silent flame cloak.
Seventy percent healed.
And climbing.
He turned his head toward the ongoing cosmic battle, eyes sharpening with new clarity.
"Don't die on me, Thor," he whispered.
"Because I'm almost done."
The void around William shimmered with rising, turbulent ripples as his healing crept toward completion.
95%… 96%… 97%…
Only the shattered remnants of what was once Mercury hung in the star-drenched dark, its broken moons drifting in quiet arcs, reflecting Sol's light like shards of a dead world.
They pulsed at irregular intervals, glittering as though reacting to something unseen.
But they weren't reacting, they were resonating.
And William felt it.
The light reached him in a slow cascade. First one fragment, then another, then a dozen, flaring like celestial beacons across the black.
As those reflected rays kissed his skin, the magenta godly Ki burning inside him responded like a beast recognizing its true master.
A low hum vibrated through him.
He inhaled sharply, and the universe exhaled.
A faint magenta vapor leaked from William's pores, drifting like embers rising from invisible fire.
At first it was subtle. Gentle. Almost serene.
Then the vapor thickened.
Twisted.
Ignited.
FWOOOM.
A column of magenta flame erupted around him, spiraling upward like a tornado made of god-fire.
Despite the explosive flare, William remained seated.
Calm.
Focused.
In control.
His base form didn't flicker.
His hair didn't spike.
His muscles didn't bulge.
Not yet.
But behind the calm surface, something ancient stirred.
His heartbeat thickened into thunder. His blood roared like magma under pressure.
His spine crackled as bones shifted, realigning with a smooth, deliberate series of crunch-snap-crack movements.
This wasn't the wild, uncontrollable surge of a Great Ape.
This was evolution sculpted with intention.
William's fingers flexed, nails lengthening to blackened, razor-sharp points before retracting again into a perfect state of balance, neither man nor beast.
A pressure built behind his eyes.
His pupils dilated.
Then...
FLASH!!
His eyes ignited in a deep smoldering blood-red, glowing with divine malice and calm superiority at once.
His tail burst forth from his lower back in a pulse of ki, spiraling behind him in a massive plume of magenta fire.
It thickened, muscles knitting tighter, fur darkening from black to crimson to that same radiant, flame-like magenta that surrounded him.
The god-ki was guiding the transformation. Not overwhelming him.
Not burning him out.
Strengthening him.
Stabilizing him.
Perfecting him.
William rose to his feet as the void trembled beneath the sheer force of his growing aura.
His muscles expanded, broadening with the primal mass of the Great Ape, but instead of ballooning out of proportion, they began to compact, compressing down with surgical precision.
Every strand of muscle fiber tightened.
Every ligament strengthened.
Every line of his physique sharpened into honed, perfect symmetry.
He ended up larger than his base form, yet somehow leaner, like every ounce of wasted volume had been forged out of him, leaving behind nothing but predatory efficiency and coiled godly strength.
Magenta sparks crawled across his skin like animated cracks of lightning.
Then his torso erupted in fur.
It wasn't the normal crimson of a Super Saiyan 4.
It was deeper.
Darker.
A blood-wine red glowing faintly with magenta god-fire under each strand.
The fur rippled with energy, as though each hair was its own conduit for divine ki.
His hair lengthened, surging down his back in a massive flowing mane. The ordinary black shimmered, then erupted into a deep, molten dark red, almost the color of dying stars.
As the magenta god-fire danced through the strands, streaks of darker violet-red coursed through, glowing like embers inside lava.
His aura flared again.
KRRRSHHHH-TWOOOOOM!
A full ring of magenta fire exploded outward like a supernova shockwave, rippling across the void.
The shockwave hit the drifting Mercurial moons, causing them to tilt in their orbits from the force alone.
This aura wasn't the chaotic hurricane of normal SSJ4.
It was heavier. Thicker.
Almost like the aura itself had weight, dense with divine power that folded spacetime around him.
His base form was gone.
What stood now was something greater.
Something refined.
Something god-forged.
William's transformation peaked with a final violent contraction of Ki.
The magenta flames collapsed inward around him, forming a sphere the size of a planet's core.
Then shattered...
BOOOOM!
The flames inverted, revealing William standing in the center, breathing slowly, magenta god-ki gently rolling off him like heat from a star.
His voice came out like layered thunder and fire: "…Super Saiyan… God-Beast."
William opened his new, glowing crimson eyes, and the solar system felt smaller.
Thor and Thanatos were locked in a collision of cosmic destruction.
Each clash of Gungnir against the double-bladed death scythe detonated like stars collapsing.
Shockwaves ripped through the void, bending starlight and shredding the remnants of nearby asteroids into dust.
Thor roared as lightning coursed through every vein, each strike of Mjolnir accompanied by the roar of storms both ancient and newborn.
Thanatos, in his death-forged transformation, answered with shadows sharpened into blades and the cold burn of void-entropy.
They were equals.
They were unstoppable, and then everything changed.
A pressure, colossal, crushing, washed over them like the gravity of a newborn black hole.
Thor's eyes widened.
Thanatos froze mid-swing.
Not fear.
Instinct.
The ancient primal knowledge shared by gods, titans, and beasts:
A predator stronger than you has entered the field.
The void trembled.
The light dimmed.
A single figure stood where nothing had been moments prior.
William.
Not in a standard Saiyan form.
Not even a divine one.
This shape… this silhouette…
Lean. Long-limbed.
Furred in blood-wine crimson.
Eyes burning like twin suns collapsing into singularities.
Teeth bared.
Tail coiling and uncoiling like a serpent carved from magenta flame.
A lanky, god-forged ape, but with terrifying precision in its posture, like something standing upright only because it chose to imitate bipeds for convenience.
His aura dripped bloodlust.
Heavy. Predatory.
Ancient.
Thor whispered, barely audible:
"…Allfather… what… is that?"
Thanatos didn't speak.
His jaw clenched.
This was no mortal.
This wasn't even a god.
This was hunger given form.
And then they blinked.
Just a blink.
A reflex.
When their eyes reopened, William was in front of them.
No trail.
No afterimage.
Just arrival, instantaneous and absolute.
His right fist was already moving.
WHOOM!
A punch thrown not at Thor
not at Thanatos
but at both of them simultaneously.
A blow so compressed with force that the space around it warped, folding like cloth around a hammer.
Thor and Thanatos braced instinctively, weapons raised.
GUNGNIR AND THE SCYTHE MET HIS FIST!
KRA-KA-BOOOOOOOM!
The impact shattered the stars behind them into white streaks.
Thor was ripped backward, lightning peeling off his body like burning ribbons.
Thanatos spun through space in a blur, the scythe shuddering.
Until a sharp, distinct sound cracked through the chaos:
CRRRRRSH!
SHATTER!!
The ? Infinity gauntlet on Thanatos' left hand
fractured, split, then disintegrated into glittering fragments.
And the Infinity Stones, six perfect points of impossible color, burst free into the void, floating weightlessly.
The Space Stone, glowing blue like a frozen heartbeat.
The Mind Stone, humming yellow with calculating intelligence.
The Reality Stone, swirling with red chaos.
The Power Stone, vibrating violently with purple pulses.
The Soul Stone, ember-orange and ominously still.
The Time Stone, green sparks ticking like a clock with a broken god inside.
They drifted apart like sacred stars freed from bondage.
Thor skidded to a halt thousands of miles away, breath caught in his throat.
Thanatos steadied himself, void tendrils trembling at the edges of his armor.
They looked back.
And William stood in the center of the battlefield,
the magenta aura crackling like wildfire,
his red eyes narrowing, locking onto them both as prey.
As the shattered Infinity Stones drift silently through the void, the balance of the cosmos trembles on the edge of oblivion.
Thor and Thanatos, once the greatest titans of their respective realms, now find themselves facing a power neither god nor death ever prepared for.
William, transformed into a crimson, god-forged predator, stands alone among the wreckage of stars, his magenta aura twisting with primal hunger and unfathomable might.
With a single strike he shattered Thanos' gauntlet… but has he shattered the order of the universe as well?
Will Thor withstand the oncoming storm long enough to restore balance?
Can Thanatos reclaim the Infinity Stones before this wild new power claims them for its own?
And what fate awaits the solar system… when a newly awakened warrior stands ready to challenge gods, devour death, and rewrite destiny itself?
Find out next time… Reborn as a Saiyan in Marvel.