The sanctum sanctorum had become a bunker for the shell-shocked. The air, thick with incense and dread, couldn't mask the ozone-tang of failure. Marc Spector lay on a low cot in an antechamber, a damp cloth over his eyes, muttering a low, continuous dialogue with the empty air. Wong hovered nearby, occasionally passing a smoking chalice under Marc's nose—a pungent mystic balm meant to soothe fractured perceptions.
In the main chamber, the mood was grim. Stephen stood motionless before the tapestry, now depicting a galaxy studded with infected, pulsing wounds. Carol paced like a caged star, her light casting long, agitated shadows. Sam had removed his helmet, running a hand over his face. Bucky leaned against the wall, staring at his vibranium hand as if it held the memory of the sterile, wrong chamber.
Wanda was the quietest, seated in a corner, her fingers tracing patterns in the air that left faint, dying embers of scarlet. The confrontation with the Weaver hadn't just been a defeat; it had been a demonstration of a scale of power that made their own seem quaint. They hadn't fought an army. They'd argued with a force of nature who considered them bacteria on a slide.
"Twelve hours," Stephen said, breaking the heavy silence. His voice was hoarse. "Her 'first stitch.' The unraveling of the Snap event cluster. What does that even look like?"
"It won't look like anything," Marc's voice floated from the other room, weak but clear. "From the inside. One moment, you'll remember a world where half of everyone vanished for five years. The next… you won't. Because it will never have happened. The memory, the trauma, the consequences—gone. Snipped out of the timeline like a corrupted file."
"And the people who were Blipped?" Sam asked. "The ones who came back?"
"A paradox the universe will resolve in the messiest way possible," Stephen said, turning from the map. "Most likely, by deleting them. Or folding them into a version of themselves that never left. Either way, it's genocide by chronology."
"We can't fight her in her seat of power," Carol stated, the obvious truth a bitter pill. "That chamber… it's a reality tumor. Our laws of physics are suggestions in there."
"So we fight her somewhere else," Bucky said, pushing off the wall. "We draw her out."
"And go where?" Sam countered. "She's literally weaving from the heart of reality. She has home-field advantage everywhere."
The despair was a tangible thing, coiling around them. They were heroes who solved problems by being stronger, smarter, more united. They faced tyrants and monsters. How did you face a grieving genius who saw salvation in annihilation?
A soft, frantic buzzing broke the stalemate. It came from a pile of discarded civilian clothes—Peter Parker's. A phone, lit up with dozens of notifications.
Stephen's brow furrowed. "Where is Parker?"
"Monitoring police and emergency bands from the upstairs library," Wong said. "A less… intense environment."
The phone buzzed again, this time with an incoming call. The ID read: May - DO NOT IGNORE.
Something in Stephen's gut tightened. He snatched up the phone and answered. "May Parker?"
A panicked, older woman's voice came through, tinny with distance and fear. "Peter? Oh, thank god—no, who is this?"
"This is Doctor Stephen Strange, a… colleague of Peter's. He's not available. What's wrong?"
"It's—there's another one of those sky ghost things, but it's here, in Queens, on Delmar's street, and it's—it's Ben." Her voice cracked. "Peter's not answering his—"
Stephen was already moving. "We're on our way. Stay inside. Do not approach it." He hung up and turned to the others, his face pale. "There's an Echo in Queens. A personal one. Ben Parker."
The name landed on Bucky and Sam with the weight of history. They knew the story. The foundational tragedy of Spider-Man.
"Why would that manifest?" Carol asked. "It's not a universal trauma."
"It's a foundational one," Wanda said, standing, her eyes wide with a sudden, terrible understanding. "For him. The Weaver's work… you said it was tied to personal grief. It's not just mining big events. It's digging down to the roots. To the pains that make the heroes who stand in her way."
"She's targeting our pasts," Bucky realized, the horror cold in his veins. "Personally."
"Or," Marc appeared in the doorway, leaning heavily on the frame, the cloth discarded. His eyes were bloodshot but focused. "The excavation is getting deeper. The big fractures are unstable. She's hitting bedrock. And sometimes, when you dig… you find something alive in the dirt."
No one liked the sound of that.
"Let's go," Stephen said, his sling ring already sparking. "Wong, stay with the Sanctum. The rest of you, with me."
The portal opened onto a scene of intimate horror.
It was a Queens backstreet, lined with modest brick apartments and shuttered bodegas. The night air was cold. In the center of the street, under the sickly yellow glow of a flickering streetlight, the Echo played.
It was smaller than the others, more contained. A man—Ben Parker, with kind eyes and greying hair—was talking to a younger man, his back turned. The younger man—Peter—wore a cheap, homemade Spider-Man suit. The argument was silent, but the body language screamed: disappointment, anger, hurt. Ben turned to walk away. A gunshot, loud and shocking in the silent loop, rang out from the mouth of a nearby alley. Ben staggered, fell. Peter turned, the mask's lenses wide with dawning, universe-shattering horror. The Echo reset. Argument. Turn. Gunshot. Fall. Horror. Loop.
A small crowd had gathered at a police cordon a block away, held back by grim-faced officers. The air crackled with the same wrongness, but it felt sharper here, more personal. And there, on the roof of Delmar's bodega, was Spider-Man. He wasn't moving. He was crouched, frozen, staring at the looping death of his uncle.
"Peter!" Sam yelled up.
Peter didn't respond. He was a statue of grief.
Stephen's eyes scanned the Echo. Marc was right—it was different. The edges weren't bleeding orange energy. They were… shimmering, like a heat haze. And the loop wasn't perfectly consistent. Sometimes, Ben's fall was slightly slower. Sometimes, Peter's turn was a fraction of a degree different. It was unstable in a new way.
"Spector," Stephen said. "What do you see?"
Marc was breathing heavily, his gaze locked on the scene. "It's… raw. Not a healed scar being picked. It's an open nerve. And it's… connected. A thread goes from it, not just back in time, but out. Somewhere else."
Before he could elaborate, the Echo glitched violently.
The argument froze. Ben Parker, halfway through turning, looked down at his chest. Then he looked not at the Echo-Peter, but directly at the real Peter on the roof. His lips moved, soundless.
Then the gunman in the alley—a blurred figure of shadow and remembered malice—stepped forward. But he didn't fire. He looked around, confused, his form solidifying from a smear of darkness into a terrified, real teenager. He was maybe sixteen, wearing a ratty hoodie, his face pale and streaked with tears. He dropped the shimmering, half-real pistol. It hit the asphalt with a sound that was both a echo-thud and a real clatter.
"Wh-where am I?" the kid stammered, his voice real and shaking. "I didn't… I didn't mean to…"
The Echo of Ben Parker flickered, his form softening. He gave one last, sorrowful look at the roof, then at the terrified kid, and dissolved into motes of golden light that swirled not into nothingness, but coalesced around the teenager.
The kid gasped, doubling over as the light sank into him. When he straightened, his eyes were wide, glowing with a faint, warm gold. He looked at his hands, where sparks of the same energy crackled between his fingers.
The Echo was gone. In its place stood a very real, very confused, and newly-powered teenager.
Peter finally moved. He swung down from the roof, landing in a crouch between the kid and the rest of the heroes. He ripped off his mask, his face young and ravaged. "What… what was that?"
"An Echo birthed a living paradox," Stephen said, his mind racing. "The traumatic memory… it didn't just replay. It resolved. And the energy of that foundational moment… it imprinted on a consciousness within the memory."
The kid stared at Peter, and his confusion mortered into a stunned, heartbreaking recognition. "You… you're him. The spider-guy from the fight. From the… the donut ship?" His voice was full of awe. Then his face crumpled. "He said… that man said… 'with great power…'" He couldn't finish.
Peter recoiled as if struck. Those words were a sacred, painful burden. To hear them from this stranger, this phantom born of his worst memory…
"What's your name?" Sam asked, stepping forward, using his best calm-captain voice.
The kid hugged himself. "Miguel. Miguel O'Hara. I was… I was on my way home from the library. There was a mugging… it all got mixed up. The light… the shouting…" He looked desperately at Peter. "He told me to tell you he's sorry. That he's always been proud. Who was he?"
Peter couldn't speak. The world was tilting.
A low hum filled the air. Not from the street, but from the sky. The shimmering heat-haze around where the Echo had been intensified. Then, with a sound like ripping silk, a tear opened in the air. It was a vertical slit of blinding white light, and through it, they could see not another place, but a tangled, impossible knot of threads—silver, gold, and black—writhing in a non-space.
"A fracture conduit," Stephen breathed. "It's not just emitting Echoes. It's become a doorway. Back to the source."
And from the conduit, figures began to step.
They were echoes, but solid. A Chitauri footsoldier, clicking and hissing, its weapons glowing with real energy. A member of the Black Order—Proxima Midnight—her spear crackling. They were confused, disoriented, but their threat was tangible. They were memories given flesh and intent, bleeding into the present through Peter Parker's personal wound.
"She's losing control of the deep cuts," Wanda said, scarlet energy wreathing her hands. "The trauma is fighting back. Making its own reality."
The Chitauri shrieked and opened fire. Energy bolts, real and sizzling, tore up the asphalt.
Chaos erupted.
Carol was a blur of light, plowing into Proxima Midnight, carrying the warrior through the wall of a laundromat. Sam's shield deflected Chitauri blasts. Bucky was a whirlwind of metal and motion, disassembling aliens with brutal efficiency.
But Peter was paralyzed, staring at Miguel, who was cowering behind a parked car, golden light sputtering from his hands in fear.
A Chitauri warrior broke past the frontline, aiming its weapon at the stunned teen.
"NO!" Peter's instinct finally overrode his shock. He webbed the Chitauri's weapon, yanked it away, and delivered a furious kick that shattered its carapace. He landed in front of Miguel. "Stay behind me!"
"I can… I think I can help," Miguel stammered, looking at his sparking hands.
"Just stay down!"
Stephen and Wanda worked in tandem. Stephen erected shimmering crimson shields, containing the fight, preventing collateral damage. Wanda's chaos magic lashed out, not destroying the echo-warriors, but unmaking them at a conceptual level, turning them back into dissipating light with pulses of scarlet energy.
It was over in minutes. The last Chitauri dissolved into orange mist. Proxima Midnight, pinned under Carol's glowing fist, snarled once before her form unraveled like bad stitching.
Silence returned, broken by car alarms and distant sirens.
In the center of the street, the white tear, the conduit, still pulsed. It was smaller now, but stable.
Miguel O'Hara stepped out from behind Peter. He looked at the tear, then at his hands. He concentrated. The golden energy focused, and from his fingertips, two long, sharp strands of coherent amber light extended and anchored themselves to the brickwork on either side of the street. They vibrated, humming with a resonant frequency.
The white tear shuddered. With a final, soft pop, it sealed shut.
Miguel collapsed to his knees, panting. The amber lines retracted.
Everyone stared at him.
"How did you do that?" Stephen asked, approaching cautiously.
"I… I don't know," Miguel whispered. "I just… saw the loose threads. And I tied them off."
Marc Spector limped over, his gaze fixed on Miguel. "He's not a paradox. He's an adaptation. The universe, trying to heal the wound she's making. It created a… a living bandage. A weaver of its own."
Peter finally found his voice. He walked up to Miguel, his face a mask of conflict. "You saw him? My uncle?"
Miguel nodded, tears in his eyes. "He was sad. But not angry. He said… the responsibility was never meant to be a chain. It was supposed to be a compass." He looked up at Peter, so young and so old. "He loved you so much."
Peter's composure broke. A single sob escaped him before he clamped down, Spider-Man's discipline reasserting itself. But the damage was done. The Echo hadn't just attacked the city; it had attacked the foundation of who he was.
And it had left something new in the rubble.
Sam put a hand on Peter's shoulder. "We need to get him off the street. And we need to understand what he is."
As they gathered, preparing to portal back to the Sanctum, Carol looked at the now-normal street. "This changes things. The Weaver's process isn't clean. It's creating… immune responses. New powers. New variables."
"It also gives us a weapon," Wanda said, her eyes on Miguel, who looked overwhelmed and terrified. "If the universe itself is fighting her through these manifested beings… we can find them. Protect them. Use them."
Stephen looked from Miguel's golden-glowing hands to the ever-present, pulsing map of fractures in his mind. The Weaver was planning her first stitch in mere hours. They couldn't storm her fortress. But maybe, just maybe, they could find the antibodies her infection was creating and rally them. They couldn't fight the surgeon.
But they could help the body fight back.