Winter's Approach
The sanctuary beneath Apocalypse's domain was unlike any chamber Bucky Barnes had ever been dragged into during the violent history of his life—not that he was conscious enough to notice.
Abyssal halls wound downward for miles, carved through ancient stone and reinforced by Celestial metals that pulsed with pale, shifting blue light. Hours had passed since Apocalypse retrieved the broken man from the battlefield. Long enough for the preparations to complete. Long enough for the machines to wake.
And long enough for Apocalypse to decide what the Winter Soldier would become.
Now the transformation chamber thrummed with slow, thunderous resonance. Mist curled across the engraved floor, thick and cold enough to bite at the metal plating of the machines. In the center of the room, Bucky's body hung suspended in Celestial restraints—arms spread, spine lifted, legs limp. His breaths were shallow. His missing arm was nothing but a torn socket beneath ripped muscle and dried blood.
He wasn't dead.
But he was close.
Apocalypse entered without sound.
His towering form cast shifting shadows across the chamber walls, each movement igniting runes in his armor that answered to him alone. He stood before the broken soldier, studying him with the quiet patience of a sculptor evaluating uncut stone.
"You survived long enough to reach my hands," Apocalypse said. His tone held neither pity nor admiration—only certainty. "And that alone warrants what comes next."
A sphere of icy blue light rose from Apocalypse's palm, swirling like a living crystal. Within it, shards of fractal patterns shifted endlessly—the distilled X-Gene of Iceman, one of the most powerful Omegas to ever exist.
Cold seeped outward in waves.
Celestial machines stirred at the signal, unfolding like metallic petals around the altar. Spires of living metal lowered from the ceiling. Runes crawled across the floor in growing circles. The air grew dense with ancient power.
Apocalypse lifted the sphere above Bucky's chest.
"Your makers shaped you with pain," he said. "Let me reshape you with purpose."
The sphere sank through flesh.
Bucky's back arched violently.
Ice exploded outward in spiked crystals, coating the restraints, the altar, the floor beneath them. Frost crawled along his skin like living veins of winter. His breath fogged into shimmering shards that hung in the air, suspended unnaturally.
Apocalypse did not move.
He watched the frost consume the man's ruined body with the calm of someone who had witnessed thousands of rebirths—and orchestrated each one.
"The cold judges the unworthy," he rumbled. "Let us see if it judges you."
Celestial arms descended, their tips glowing gold and blue. They reached for the torn remains of Bucky's shoulder—then drove inward with a crack that echoed like a felled glacier. Bone shattered cleanly. Ice replaced it.
The machinery built the limb in slow, brutal increments.
First the shoulder socket, carved from translucent crystal.
Then the humerus, forming in twisting fractal spirals.
Then the forearm, etched with lines of glowing blue circuitry.
Last came the hand—five perfect sculpted claws of winter-forged ice.
The transformation was not gentle.
Bucky convulsed. His jaw clenched in unconscious agony. Frost blossomed from his spine, spreading down his legs, making the air ring with cold.
Apocalypse stepped closer, voice low.
"There is no evolution without suffering. And no rebirth without destruction."
The machines responded to him.
A holographic double helix unfurled above the altar—mutant genes, mutate stabilizers, and Celestial catalysts all aligning in a pattern no mortal science could decipher. Each sequence locked into place with a pulse of freezing light that shuddered through the chamber.
The Winter Soldier's heartbeat steadied.
Apocalypse observed with clinical pride.
"Synch's adaptive code. Hope's amplification. Sage's precision. Elixir's healing synthesis," he murmured. "All woven through the ice. The fault lines in your broken flesh will become your strength."
He reached out and placed two fingers on Bucky's forehead.
The arm of ice flared brilliant blue.
"Become more," Apocalypse whispered. "Become what the dying world requires."
A gale erupted from Bucky's body, cold enough to frost the ceiling. The restraints cracked under the pressure. The air shimmered. Runes glowed white-hot, then frostbitten blue.
Then—
Bucky inhaled sharply.
His eyes snapped open, glowing pale and luminous like the heart of a glacier.
He stared at his new arm.
It moved like flesh but gleamed like carved ice. Mist curled from the joints. The fingers left trails of hoarfrost across the metal restraints as they flexed.
Apocalypse lowered his hand.
"Your pain has been rewritten," he said. "Your purpose reforged."
Bucky struggled to speak. Only a whisper of cold escaped.
"You need not answer," Apocalypse said. "Your survival speaks for you."
The Celestial restraints lifted. Bucky collapsed to one knee on the frost-covered stone, his breath curling upward in thin spirals.
He did not kneel in obedience.
Only because his body was learning what it had become.
Apocalypse stood above him like an ancient judge.
"The Reapers cannot take you now," he declared. "They cannot absorb ice older than their design. They cannot overwrite a genome reforged by the first mutant."
Bucky looked up—confused, shaking, powerful.
"You will be my Horseman," Apocalypse said.
"War… forged from winter."
He extended his hand, not to help, but to command.
"Rise, Winter's War."
Bucky rose.
The air around him dropped below freezing. Every breath he took crystallized into drifting snow. His ice-forged arm glowed with shifting blue light, alive with mutant power.
He said nothing.
But Apocalypse nodded, satisfied.
"Yes," he murmured. "You will do."
The machines powered down. The chamber dimmed. Frost crackled across the floor with each of Bucky's steps.
He was no longer the Winter Soldier.
He was something older.
Something colder.
Something built for the end of the world.
Apocalypse turned away, his footsteps echoing like a war drum.
"The world will learn fear again."
Behind him, Winter's War followed.
A silent storm of vengeance.
_ _ _ _
THE JUDGMENT OF WAR
The chamber sealed behind Apocalypse with a metallic thrum.
He stood alone among the Celestial machines, lit by cold blue light.
The data of the transformation scrolled before him — Winter Soldier's new biology stabilizing, power settling into its proper shape.
Apocalypse watched the readings without expression.
"Good."
A second pulse of ice spread across the display.
"Strong."
He turned his gaze deeper into the chamber, as if he could see through every wall and into the transformation pod itself.
"He was forged many times," Apocalypse said. His voice did not rise or fall. It simply was.
"By nations. By tyrants. By fear."
He stepped toward the central Celestial pillar, placing his hand upon the ancient metal.
"All of them failed."
The pillar responded with a deep, resonant hum.
"But I do not fail."
A row of symbols lit up — the new Cryo-Gene integration, perfect and stable.
"He is no longer a man haunted by past masters," Apocalypse said.
"No longer a soldier searching for orders."
More lights ignited. Cold. Steady. Certain.
"He has purpose."
Another pulse.
"He has strength."
He closed his hand slightly, the metal beneath his palm vibrating like something alive.
"He is War."
Apocalypse turned away from the console and began walking down the corridor — every step deliberate, thunder quieted into footfalls.
"Let the world learn his name."
He paused at the chamber's exit, saying one final line into the silent, frost-filled air:
"Winter rises."
The sanctum dimmed behind him as he left, machinery whispering in icy breath.
War had been born.