Jane was sitting quietly in her room when the vision hit her.
A tide of blood-red energy swept across the sky of Asgard without warning — no sound, no buildup, just a wall of crimson light that swallowed everything she could see until the whole realm burned that same deep red. It filled her consciousness the way a fever does, total and disorienting, and for a moment she couldn't tell whether she was dreaming or awake.
She didn't get the chance to figure it out.
The door came open and four Asgardian soldiers stepped through, their armor catching the dim gold of the corridor behind them.
"Jane Foster." The lead soldier didn't raise his voice. "You're coming with us."
She went.
In the throne room, Odin stood before what remained of his court, listening without expression. The original throne was rubble — a crater of scorched stone where Malekith's black hole device had detonated. The room felt smaller for it, stripped of the weight that furniture carries when it's older than most civilizations.
Fandral stood at the head of the report, his usual easy manner absent, his hands clasped at his back.
"The palace barriers are still down, Your Majesty. Our cannon arrays cannot acquire their ships. Heimdall cannot locate them." A brief pause. "We have no functional defensive posture."
Odin absorbed this. He was about to speak when boots rang against the floor at his back.
Thor crossed the room in long strides, not slowing down.
"You imprisoned her?"
He'd gone to Loki's cell first — a mistake that had cost him time and temper both. He'd wanted to see Jane, to check on her after everything, and instead he'd found soldiers already moving her down the corridor.
Odin studied his son for a moment, then turned to the room.
"Everyone. Out."
Fandral and Volstagg exchanged a glance, then bowed and filed out with the rest of the guard. The great doors closed behind them with a sound like distant thunder.
The throne room went quiet. Just the two of them, and the smell of scorched stone where the throne used to be.
"I don't want to argue with you," Odin said.
Thor let out a slow breath. "Neither do I." He held the older man's gaze. "But I want to pursue Malekith. His face is still healing. He took a direct lightning strike — now is the time to press that."
"The Aether particles are in our hands," Odin said. "Malekith will come to us."
"Yes. And when he does, he'll destroy us." Thor's jaw tightened. "He already got inside the palace once. He killed —" He stopped. Recalibrated. "If Smith hadn't been here, we'd have lost Mother. That wasn't a close call. That was a catastrophe we got lucky enough to survive."
Odin said nothing.
"I want to take Jane to the Dark World. Pull Malekith away from Asgard, let him chase the Aether on ground of our choosing. When he tries to extract it, he's exposed. That's when Smith and I take him apart."
Odin's expression didn't shift. "And then what? You destroy the Aether?"
"That's the idea."
Odin turned away, hand tightening around Gungnir's shaft. For a moment he was quiet in the way that precedes something that changes the shape of a conversation.
"You don't know what the Aether is." It wasn't an accusation. It was just a fact, delivered flatly. "My father couldn't destroy it. He spent considerable effort trying and settled for sealing it in a place no one would think to look. Whatever you're imagining when you say 'destroy' — that's not a possibility available to you."
Thor frowned. "Why not? What exactly is it that I supposedly can't destroy?"
Odin struck Gungnir against the floor. The sound rolled through the empty room.
"It is the Reality Stone," he said. "One of the six Infinity Stones."
The silence that followed was a different kind than before.
Thor's mind ran back through every encounter with the Aether — the way it moved like liquid, the way it responded to touch, the way it had gone into Jane rather than simply attaching to her. He'd always understood it as a weapon the Dark Elves had built or discovered. Something ancient and dangerous, yes, but something.
Not this.
"The Aether was never the weapon itself," he said slowly. "It was just the form the Stone took."
"A delivery mechanism," Odin confirmed. "The Stone's true nature runs deeper than the liquid state you've observed. You cannot unmake an Infinity Stone with lightning, Thor. You would hand Malekith exactly what he needs."
Thor stood there for a moment. Then: "So we just wait? Heimdall can't find their ships. Our defenses are down. His fleet could be positioned directly above us right now and we'd have no way of knowing." He spread his hands. "Standing still only makes us easier to find."
Odin studied him. Something shifted in his expression — not approval exactly, but something adjacent to it.
"What does Smith Doyle want?"
Thor blinked. He hadn't expected that.
"He just helped save your mother," Odin continued. "What would bring him into this willingly, without owing him a favor he could call in later?"
Thor thought about the moment in the treasury — the way Smith had held the Tesseract, the calm precision with which he'd crushed the casing, the Space Stone sitting in his palm like it had always belonged there. The Infinity Gauntlet on his hand.
"The Infinity Stones," Thor said.
"He's interested in collecting them," Odin said. It wasn't a question. "Tell him what the Aether actually is. He'll help."
Thor nodded slowly, then paused. "Collecting them will draw attention. The entire universe will notice eventually. Earth will be a target."
Odin's look was dry. "Do you believe the Dragon Balls are going unnoticed?"
Thor had no answer for that.
"That battle is already coming," Odin said. "The only relevant question is who's holding the stones when it arrives. With his power, Smith Doyle is qualified." A beat. "He already has one."
Thor thought of Shenron — the sheer scale of what the Dragon Balls could theoretically wish into existence. The Infinity Stones were arguably the most powerful artifacts in the known universe, and in some ways the Dragon Balls eclipsed even them. Smith carried both now. His father was right: the attention was already there. The only variable was preparedness.
"I'll go find him now."
Smith was outside when Thor caught up with him, standing in the open air beyond the palace's eastern colonnade. The sky above Asgard was clear and gold, the kind of afternoon that looked like it had been commissioned.
"Smith." Thor fell into step beside him. "I just found something out from my father. The Aether — it's not just a weapon. It's the Reality Stone. One of the six."
Smith's expression didn't change. "I know what the Infinity Stones are."
"Then you know what having it would mean."
"I'm interested," Smith said, without any of the diplomatic hedging the situation might have invited. "Extremely. That thing is too dangerous loose. Malekith having it is a problem. Leaving it in Jane indefinitely is a problem. The cleanest solution is to take it off the board entirely and keep it somewhere secure."
He didn't spell out what somewhere secure meant. He didn't need to.
Thor nodded. "Then here's what I'm thinking. We take Jane directly to the Dark World — deliver her to their position ourselves. Malekith's people built the Aether originally. They'll have a method for extracting it from a human host. Once it's out, it's vulnerable."
"And then we kill him while he's holding it," Smith said.
"That's the short version." Thor's voice hardened. "I want his head. He hurt my mother. That's personal. But the Stone is yours — I have no use for it, and my father seems to think you're the right person to hold it."
Smith was quiet for a moment, running the angles. The plan had exposure in the middle — the extraction phase, when Malekith would have the Stone but Smith and Thor would be close range. That was manageable.
He looked at Thor.
"You get your revenge and you get Jane back safe. I keep the Stone." He let a beat pass. "I can work with that."
Thor extended his hand, and Smith shook it.