Another year passed… another anomaly appeared.
And not just any anomaly—SCP-001.
The moment the alert hit my desk, a cold shiver slid down my spine. It wasn't often I felt nervous anymore. Not after two thousand years of surviving gods, cosmic entities, eldritch horrors, and my daughter's temper tantrums that could rewrite the laws of physics.
But SCP-001 is different.Most 001 candidates are world-enders.
So I did the only reasonable thing:I called for an emergency O5 meeting.
Our council chamber materialized around my clones and me—an impenetrable room layered with vibranium, uru, fūinjutsu, reality-reinforcement matrices, and seals powered directly by the Time Stone. No outside force could spy on us here… not even cosmic entities.
I slammed the report onto the obsidian table.
"New anomaly. Very big. Very glowing. Very… biblical."
The others leaned forward, unease creeping across their faces.
Thanks to our watcher-class AI, Master the Watcher, and the hyper-advanced satellite network I'd built centuries ahead of schedule—vibranium-enhanced, reality-shielded, and capable of scanning the planet down to the quark level—we found the anomaly almost instantly.
And honestly… it wasn't exactly subtle.
A towering flaming figure standing before a colossal gate that didn't appear on any map, any scan, or any dimension we currently recognized.
The moment I saw it, I knew exactly what this was.
The Gate Guardian.
A six-winged, sword-bearing, incandescent sentinel radiating divine energy so intense it made even the Reality Stone hum uncomfortably against my chest.
"Of course it had to be this one…" I muttered.
Because the Gate Guardian wasn't just powerful—It was the kind of powerful that made celestials rethink their life choices.The kind of being that could erase an army of S-Class anomalies with a single thought.
And it had simply… appeared.
I magnified the image on the hologram—its blazing sword taller than mountains, its wings spreading holy fire that refracted through the atmosphere.
"It hasn't moved," I noted. "Not a threat yet."
O5-4 gulped."If it does move?"
I sighed."If it moves, civilization ends before anyone even has time to panic."
Silence fell. Heavy. Absolute.
Even my clones stopped talking.
I floated a hand over the hologram, analyzing the readings. The creature's energy signature was beyond anything measurable—divine, in the literal sense. Not magic, not radiation, not cosmic force. Something higher.
Something… different.
But then I noticed something else.
The Guardian wasn't looking at the world.
It was looking directly into the sky.
No—It was looking at us.
Even from thousands of kilometers away, even through dimensional shielding, even through our satellites…
Its blazing blue eyes were staring straight into my soul.
"...Oh," I whispered. "That's not good."
Because beings like that didn't look at mortals.Or gods.Or beings empowered by infinity stones.
Unless they had a reason.