The White Queen, her body gleaming like flawless natural diamond, stepped aside—
and from behind her, Jean Grey emerged hesitantly.
When she saw Professor Xavier, her eyes widened with a mixture of shock and relief.
Placing a trembling hand over her chest, Jean whispered:
"Professor… I'm so glad you're alive. I truly believed you were gone forever. Why… why didn't you come back to us sooner? If you had, Cyclops wouldn't have been forced to make such painful choices."
Professor Xavier regarded the student he was most proud of—
and understood immediately why she had entered this psychic realm.
Gently, he explained:
"I'm sorry, Jean. When I awakened, the school had already been attacked by the helicarrier. When I learned you all had allied with Erik… I knew that if he realized I was still alive, he would do everything within his power to destroy me. Without your help, I am far too vulnerable to stand before him."
Magneto snorted, though his tone carried a reluctant acknowledgement:
"Smart. I wouldn't have let such a perfect opportunity slip."
Xavier continued:
"So I turned to Captain America and asked him to protect my secret— for if any of my old enemies learned I lived, the consequences would be dire. I believed that staying close to Steve would eventually give me a chance to reach you. And today, that chance finally came… even if our reunion happens under the worst possible circumstances."
Xavier's heart ached.
Under Marcus's manipulation, the X-Men and Avengers had descended into conflict,
and none suffered more than Xavier himself—the founder of the X-Men,
forced to watch his children fight the allies he once trusted.
Waking too late, and with the students' minds subtly steered by Marcus,
Xavier found his influence shattered.
The young mutants no longer revered him as their pillar;
trying to halt this war through moral authority was now impossible.
Thus he too had been forced to choose a side.
And he chose the one that, in his view, could preserve mutantkind's future:
He sided with Captain America.
Xavier believed that if mutants lost here, he could still negotiate their survival.
But if they won, then they would be locked forever into bloody conflict with humanity—
a future utterly incompatible with his dream of coexistence.
His students, however—shaped by Marcus's ideology—had embraced rebellion with fervor.
For them, dying on their feet was preferable to living under oppression.
Xavier looked at Jean with gentle sorrow.
Jean clutched her hands tightly.
Her voice trembled.
"Professor… can't you come back to us?"
He smiled, warm as ever.
"Jean… you've always understood me best. You know I'm doing this for your sake."
Jean inhaled sharply—then exhaled, defeated.
Her fist loosened.
Finally, she raised her hand.
"I'm sorry… I've made my choice."
White Queen and Jean extended their arms together.
The psychic assault hit like a hurricane—
an invisible force powerful enough to tear the mental world apart.
Xavier's suit shredded into tatters.
His body lifted from the wheelchair, suspended as if tied to an invisible post.
Under the combined assault of Jean, Emma Frost, and Magneto's mental domain,
even Xavier's near-Omega telepathy could no longer resist.
Piece by piece, his form disintegrated—
a cloud of psychic dust blown away into nothingness.
Just before he was expelled from Magneto's mind entirely,
he left Jean one final, bittersweet message:
"Jean… you've grown up."
With Xavier's presence erased, Magneto's consciousness snapped back into his own body.
And then—
time resumed.
Above the Xavier Institute, the steel maelstrom he commanded had already formed.
A black vortex churned in the sky—
so dense with metal shards that it blotted out the sun.
Clouds were dragged helplessly into its rotation,
and sunlight turned sickly, drowned in swirling dust and steel.
Avengers and soldiers alike felt terror coil in their lungs.
This was Magneto at full power—
even worn by age, the might of the Master of Magnetism remained apocalyptic.
With a cold sweep of his arm,
the metal storm descended as a rain of blades.
Anything human was shredded in less than a second—
bodies carved into unrecognizable pieces,
dust and blood rising together into the storm.
Even the two gamma giants—Hulk and Red Hulk—found themselves overwhelmed.
Their legendary durability buckled under thousands of cuts per second.
What no weapon could pierce, sheer volume could.
Green and crimson blood sprayed upward,
mixing into the storm of metal and earth.
Magneto's single strike cleared the battlefield.
Nearly the entire U.S. force was torn apart.
The black storm slowly turned red.
A literal storm of blood and iron.
Only those who had fled into the mansion earlier—
the mutant students—were spared.
Inside, the White Queen and Jean collapsed against a wall, drenched in sweat.
Driving Xavier from Magneto's mind had drained them nearly to the point of collapse.
On the rooftop, unnoticed by all,
Marcus lounged comfortably, admiring the chaos he had orchestrated.
A figure approached him quietly—
a man in a dark suit.
It was Tony Stark—
freshly "missing," as Ross had just informed Captain America.
And now silently standing beside Marcus.