Before everything began, there was Nothing. An endless darkness that held no light, no life, no time.
Then, a massive and immeasurable explosion rippled through the darkness. This explosion sent white-hot matter hurdling across the endless darkness and, with that, six stones of immense power. Scientists would later call this event the Big Bang.
From this point on, the universe would slowly begin to form. Proto-planets that were being born through gravity, newborn stars forming from dense matter clouds, and asteroids that incubated elements to seed life across the universe. It would also give rise to beings who would be, in terms of power, close to the universe itself.
For untold billions of years after the birth of the universe, things proceeded as they did. Life spread throughout the universe and evolved based on their own environments. The Infinity Stones would be still scattered across the vast universe, waiting to be found. Yet, as events from the original timeline slowly came into being on a little planet seeded by the Celestials, another type of awakening would be happening in the center of the universe.
A slow awakening.
On Earth in 1942, towards the end of the Second World War, the first Avenger was born. While Steve Rogers was once a scrawny and sickly child, it wasn't until he was rejected by the United States military five times before Doctor Erskine approached him and remade him into the first Avenger and only human super-soldier. This was the true birth of Captain America and the race for superpowered individuals.
Unfortunately, just as it happened in the original timeline, the humbled Doctor Erskine was shot by an undercover Hydra agent and both the recipe and finished product were lost forever. The former hadn't ever been written down and the latter destroyed when said Hydra agent was being chased down by Steve Rogers. Naturally, this event upset a lot of the generals and upper brass of the military who wanted an entire legion of super-soldiers for their armies, but none were more upset about this than Steve Rogers himself who would become a showboy for army recruit instead of a hero.
The only time he could be a hero was when he defeated Red Skull and, to save the world, chose to sacrifice his life by plunging the super-bomber plane into the Arctic Ocean. Just like in the movie, he radioed his lover Peggy Carter that he wouldn't make the date and went into the ice for several decades. He wouldn't be found until 2011 when technology had advanced enough to find him, but the Tesseract would be found before he did by Howard Stark.
However, with the awakening of Earth's first Avenger and the race to create or find superpowered individuals on the rise, something else was happening in the center of the universe. The slow awakening was not yet finished, but deep within the void where the light of galaxies was faint and hard to see, the very core of the Universe itself would inevitably wake.
Back to Earth, many years passed since the end of the Second World War. Hydra, with the capture and imprisonment of Doctor Whitehall, fell and some integrated with SHIELD when it was founded to replace the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Those members of Hydra would, under the new banner of SHIELD, inevitably rebuild Hydra from the inner framework and lay dormant like cancer cells until they were found out by Phil Coulson's team.
The most sad thing was that Bucky, the only friend of Steve Rogers, would become brainwashed by Hydra and be turned into their exclusive executioner for many years. Until the events of Civil War where he'd be granted peace, he would unknowingly kill many people who were innocent of crime like Howard Stark and his wife. The guilt of killing innocent people under orders from Hydra would become a crimson-stained blackened chain upon his very soul.
Many other events would happen since the founding of SHIELD and the events of the first Iron Man movie, but those wouldn't be too important. Those events led up to other people's stories and lives leading into the main events of the Marvel timeline, yet there was one key event of note.
The bombing in Sokovia.
Before Tony Stark would inevitably shut down his weapons division against his uncle's advice, his uncle made his fortune on selling these bombs to interested third parties outside of the United States government. This action, made through Obadiah Stane's greed, inevitably turned two innocent children into orphans and with an anger for vengeance against Tony Stark.
Both of them survived against what should've killed them due to Wanda's unconscious use of Chaos Magic, but even then, it was this very bombing that made both Pietro and Wanda Maximoff into anti-heroes. While Pietro would die in Sokovia to protect it from Ultron and Wanda herself would survive longer until she ultimately perished on Mount Wundagore, this origin was what made them who they were. The only thing that Kael, in his past life, hated about the twins was that the organization called SWORD prevented a grieving wife from reclaiming her dead lover's body.
He knew, at least from the movies, that Wanda deserved to still be with Vision and what happened to him was unjust. Her grief over his death and the rage of seeing Vision torn apart and dismantled was exactly what set the events of WandaVision into motion.
To most others in the universe, she was a monster. To the fans who learned her origins and motivations to becoming the Scarlet Witch felt outraged on her behalf. Kael knew that, in this new life of his, he wanted to at least give Wanda and Pietro an adoptive father figure regardless of the so-called "bad luck" that followed Wanda around like a shadow.
What others didn't know, including Wanda herself, was that her screams that day in her tiny crumbling Sokovian apartment would echo across the universe itself. Unseen and unheard by powerful forces, including the Celestials, a child's cry for help would echo until something heard it.
In its slow awakening from a slumber that existed since before Time began, he heard her. Her cries for help, worried and frantic, reached his ears across time and space without her magic propelling it forward.
Only a select few felt the change in their universe. The Ancient One, sitting far above Kamar-Taj and drinking her tea, felt a subtle spike in the firmament of the universe. Odin felt the Odinforce began to stir. Even the strongest Celestial known as Arishem felt things change.
The time for His existence being kept secret to the inhabitants was up. The System began to activate in preparation for His awakening.
Kael Warren, upon hearing her cries, woke up.
==={Marvel: Universe Core}===
Continued in: A Visitor From Earth.