It hadn't been more than a few minutes since the chaos subsided before William's eyes shot open, his body instinctively jerking upright. His breaths came sharp and rapid as he reoriented himself to the unfamiliar surroundings.
Then he saw it.
A few feet away, bathed in a warm and strangely surreal pinkish glow, sat the Hulk, more relaxed than William had ever seen him, cradling his newborn son with Caiera by his side. The child, pudgy and pink-faced, wobbled unsteadily in Hulk's giant arms, slapping at his father's green cheek with the tiny, uncoordinated swings only a newborn could manage.
"PAT!"
The baby's hand made contact, and a ripple passed through Hulk's massive face. A beat later, a toothless grin broke across the infant's face.
"Hehehehe!"
Giggling echoed through the makeshift camp like bells of joy in a war-torn cathedral. Hulk chuckled softly, clearly enamored by the little life now in his grasp. The sight was almost alien to William, this titanic warrior reduced to a cooing, doting father.
Hulk's eyes darted to the edge of the encampment, where he spotted William moving.
"Whoa, hey! Easy there," Hulk called out, raising a hand. "You screamed yourself unconscious. Oxygen was the first thing to go, so don't be surprised if your head's trying to explode right now."
Before William could speak, a blur of red and blue streaked across his vision, and then—
"OOMPH—!"
Kara.
She collided with him mid-air, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and nearly knocking the wind out of him. Without hesitation, she began peppering his face with worried, frantic kisses.
"Smooch! Smooch! Smooch!"
"Okay, okay!" William laughed, the pain in his skull forgotten. "I'm alive, you maniac."
Her sapphire eyes were glassy, but shimmering with affection. She didn't let go. William smiled and returned her kiss with one of his own, tender and lasting. Kara finally exhaled and leaned her forehead against his, eyes closed, content.
Meanwhile, Hulk grinned as he looked on, only to gently raise his massive green hand and cover Sakorian's eyes, then Caiera's, earning a playful glare from his wife.
"William smash," Hulk muttered under his breath with a smirk.
"Caiera elbow," Caiera responded, driving her elbow into his ribs, soft enough not to bruise the baby, but hard enough to make him grunt. The quiet family moment faded into soft laughter.
After Kara finally relaxed and nestled against William's shoulder, he turned his gaze back to Hulk, brows furrowed.
"Okay… so what the hell happened back there?" he asked, voice low and tinged with awe. "Everything's fuzzy after the screaming."
Hulk's smile faded slightly. He shifted Sakorian to one arm and gestured with the other as he recalled the moment.
"You started glowing. First your eyes. Then your whole body. And then, horns. Like, actual horns. Glowing ones."
William blinked. "...Horns?"
"Yeah. And energy, red, green, yellow, it exploded outta you like a star going nova. Next thing I know, it formed this massive construct. Looked like a prism one second, then a spear, then like some kinda... celestial battery?"
William's heart dropped into his stomach.
"No way... I turned the planet's core into a power battery?" he murmured, stunned.
"Not just any battery," Hulk added. "It was alive. When those energy spikes shot out and pierced the inner crust, the entire planet lit up like it was... reborn."
William's mind raced. A mixed-emotion storm brewed inside him, part horror, part pride, part dread.
"A Green-Yellow-Red hybrid... That's Willpower, Fear, and Rage. No wonder the core didn't collapse, it's feeding off emotion now."
Before he could spiral further into thought, a silken hum cut through the moment. From the horizon, Peter descended gently, cradling a cocoon woven of glowing, translucent spirit-silk. Inside were several civilians, eyes shut but safe.
Peter landed with an exhausted huff.
"William! You're alive!" he exclaimed, relief flooding his voice.
He lowered the cocoon carefully, and the survivors stumbled out, dazed but grateful. The group immediately began erecting a massive, shimmering tent out of Peter's spirit-webbing, giving them shelter from the winds still lashing through the dying ecosystem below.
William, however, wasn't finished.
Hovering midair, he turned back toward Hulk, voice gentle but firm.
"Hey... you coming with us? Or staying?"
The question hung in the air like a dropped stone in water. Kara looked up, surprised. Caiera turned, watching her husband. The newborn giggled, blissfully unaware of the weight of the moment.
Hulk hesitated.
His eyes scanned the planet, his planet. His home. He had bled for it, loved on it, watched it almost die... and watched it be reborn.
Then his gaze fell on his wife. On Sakorian. On the faint construct footprints William left in the air.
A slow, resolute smile stretched across Hulk's face.
"Family goes where family is safe, not safe here, feel like something bad will happen!" he said at last.
With a deep breath, he bent his knees and leapt skyward. Caiera gasped, clutching Sakorian close as they soared through the air like a missile.
Before gravity could reclaim them, a shimmering green construct, woven of pure willpower, formed beneath Hulk's feet. It spread like armor, then like a sled, gently supporting the family as they glided to William's side.
William smiled and extended a hand. Hulk took it with a brotherly nod.
Together, the group ascended into the stars toward the waiting spacecraft parked just outside of orbit.
Meanwhile...
Far from the vibrant hope of a reborn planet, another force had arrived.
Thanos stood aboard his warship, his obsidian armor glinting beneath the crimson light of a sun that wasn't supposed to exist.
The system, once a harmonious array of planets, was now twisted, dominated by a roiling, massive sphere of purple energy, pulsing like the heartbeat of a dying god.
Power surged from it in waves. Every pulse rippled across the fleet.
Thanos narrowed his eyes.
"Interesting..." he rumbled.
He lifted a trembling alien commander by the throat, an insectoid creature with half its carapace scorched from proximity to the anomaly.
"You're certain?" he asked, his voice like cracking stone.
The alien wheezed.
"Y-yes, master... the readings are unmistakable! The... the Power Stone is in there, buried within that star!"
Thanos studied the trembling thing in his grasp, then smiled cruelly.
A shimmer of blue light danced along his gauntlet. The Space Stone activated.
SNAP—
SPLAT.
The alien exploded like a sack of blood and bone confetti, the result of a pinprick portal opening briefly into a collapsing supernova, just enough to unleash a sliver of destructive plasma through its chest.
Petty. Efficient. Final.
Wiping the viscera from his gauntlet with calm disdain, Thanos turned his gaze toward the purple sun.
The Mad Titan's warship Oblivion's Maw trembled as a surge of cosmic wrath lashed outward from the anomalous sun below. No ordinary star, it pulsed with volatile, malevolent life, tendrils of purple and gold fire flailed into the void like the talons of a wounded god.
One such tendril arced through space and obliterated a third assault drone. The drone didn't explode, it was unmade, disintegrated at the quantum level, its memory erased from the data stream before it could even register the hit.
"Direct impact. Drone three vaporized."
Corvus Glaive's voice was devoid of emotion, his eyes fixed on the fractured telemetry readout. "Shields collapsed on approach. Phase shielding is insufficient."
Thanos stood unmoving on the command dais, his massive frame silhouetted against the observation viewport. Arms crossed, jaw clenched.The swirling anomaly, that star-that-was-not-a-star, seethed with growing intelligence. Not just a celestial object… a will.
"It's watching us," whispered Ebony Maw from the shadows behind him, awed. "Or perhaps… dreaming us."
Thanos's gaze did not shift. "Begin Phase Pike bombardment. Again."
Corvus hesitated. "Sire, previous barrages have—"
Thanos turned his head slightly. "Again."
Oblivion's Maw vibrated with power as fresh silos opened across the forward fleet. From dozens of ships, black lances launched, jagged Phase Pikes of compressed void-energy, each engineered to pierce stars, gods, or worse. They streaked through space like silvered comets, twisting reality in their wake.
As they neared the anomaly, the chaos... paused.
A breathless moment of stillness.
Then, it screamed.
A soundless, psychic roar tore through the fleet, accompanied by a blinding eruption of force:
KRRAAKOOOM!!!
Reality buckled. A third of Thanos's forward vessels were instantly vaporized. Ships crumpled like paper, their matter inverted and folded back into entropy. The command deck shook violently; consoles exploded in sparks. Metal screamed.
Then, silence.
The energy storm dissipated in a whisper, as if it had never been.
Thanos remained still, though his knuckles were white.
Proxima Midnight stepped from the shadows, brushing ash from her armor. "That was the sixth failed breach." She glanced at the distant anomaly. "Whatever lies within that thing… doesn't want us touching it."
Thanos said nothing. The gauntlet on his hand shimmered faintly. He closed his eyes, focusing.
With a surge of raw will, he extended his arm. Space trembled.
A thin slit began to tear open in the anomaly's surface, a rift in time and substance. The very idea of resistance screamed against him.
Then—
BLAAAM!!
A beam of inverted entropy shot outward, hurling Thanos like a meteor. He crashed through a reinforced support pillar and embedded into the tactical console, crushing a subordinate beneath him.
The Titan rose slowly. His armor cracked, face bruised. His rage ignited like a sun.
"YOU DARE DEFY THANOS?!" he bellowed, voice shattering the nearby glasslike displays. His eyes glowed with godly flames.
But before his wrath could erupt further, a hand, slender, pale, regal, touched his massive bicep.
Time seemed to hold its breath.
Thanos froze.
He turned.
Standing before him was a figure that unraveled every atom of his fury.
Lady Death.
She wore a black gown of shadowed silk, swirling as if caught in a breeze no one else could feel. Her raven-black hair framed a face of ageless beauty, and unbearable detachment. Her eyes were galaxies, yet colder than the void.
The Mad Titan knelt. "My lady." His voice softened with reverence. "What brings you to me?"
Death's expression, once gentle, twisted into a subtle frown.
"Do not kneel," she said, voice like distant chimes over a grave. "I do not seek a worshipper… I seek a consort." She looked down at him with disappointment.
Thanos straightened slowly, shame clinging to him like dust.
Death sighed.
"Something has… shifted. A billion souls meant for my garden have vanished. A world fated for annihilation, Sakaar, yet it lives. I have been robbed."
Her tone grew sharp.
"You will go. Find out what spared that world. What defied fate. And why."
Her hand hovered just above his chest, then settled atop it. There was a flicker of disgust in her perfect eyes, gone in an instant.
"Do this for me…" she whispered. "And I shall end your curse. The veil between us… will fall."
The promise hovered between them, thicker than gravity. For once, Thanos, conqueror of systems, defier of gods, looked small in her presence.
"I will bring you your truth," he said. "Even if I must rip it from the bones of the cosmos."
Death said nothing. Her figure dissolved into ash and shadow.
Only silence remained.
The observation deck remained eerily silent after Lady Death's departure, as if the universe itself was reluctant to resume its endless hum.
Thanos remained still, staring at the fading traces of her presence, the way the shadows lingered a heartbeat too long, the way the air still crackled with her silent judgment. His massive shoulders shifted as he drew in a deep breath, heavy with fury he could not unleash.
"This task will delay me," he muttered to himself, voice low and gravel-edged. His eyes drifted back to the anomaly, the star pulsing mockingly in the distance, its ethereal tendrils curling and writhing in slow, alien patterns.
He clenched his fists.
"But it's not like I have anything better to do…" His lips twisted into a quiet snarl. The core will wait. But Death will not.
He turned on his heel, black and gold armor echoing as he descended from the dais with deliberate, thunderous steps.
"Corvus. Proxima. Maw." His voice cut across the room like a blade. "Split the fleet."
They snapped to attention.
"One half remains in low orbit. Monitor the anomaly. Keep your distance. No further attacks. No further provocations. It learns."
"Yes, my lord," Corvus replied without hesitation, already relaying the command through encrypted channels.
"The other half—" Thanos continued, stepping before the holomap. "—comes with me. We set course for Sakaar. Immediate transit. No delay."
Proxima Midnight raised an eyebrow. "You mean to answer Death's summons personally?"
Thanos's gaze bore into hers like a collapsing star.
"I do not answer summons. I choose when to act." He paused, then added, more quietly, "But I will not risk her favor again."
With a wave of his gauntleted hand, a shimmering gate opened on the deck, a portal laced with threads of dark energy. His flagship, Sanctum Vult, began charging its hyperdrive coils, the rumble echoing like the beat of a war drum.
As he stepped toward the exit, Thanos looked once more over his shoulder, back toward the impossible star that had denied him.
It pulsed once, as if in response.
He narrowed his eyes.
"Your secrets will keep," he growled under his breath. "But your time… is borrowed."
Then he vanished through the portal, half his fleet folding into the fabric of space behind him, their destination: the broken, unpredictable world of Sakaar.