On the core of the wind elemental's body, the brand of Dormammu pulsed like a malignant heart, emitting a sickening crimson light. With each beat, the creature's pure white form grew darker, the void's corruption seeping through its essence like ink tainting water. Dormammu had bestowed upon it a terrible gift: a surge of power drawn from the Dark Dimension itself, the accumulated malice of countless consumed worlds.
The elemental let out a guttural roar that was no longer the sound of nature, but of something foul and ancient. Crackling tendrils of black lightning erupted from its form, turning the sky around it into a churning vortex of storm clouds. The very air grew heavy, thrumming with a dissonant energy that felt like a cosmic scream.
"My God! What is that?" Rhodes stared in horrified amazement, his War Machine armor registering energy signatures that defied all known physics. He immediately opened a channel to his commander. "Fury! Are you seeing this? The elemental is… changing!"
"I see it, Colonel," Fury's grim face appeared on the comms feed. Trapped on the other side of the time reversal, he had no context for the Dark Dimension's invasion. The data flooding his screen was gibberish—a contamination from a source he couldn't identify. "I'm getting readings that don't make any sense." He had no choice but to bring in his top consultant. "I'm calling Stark."
Tony was surprised by the call, having just confirmed the water elemental's core was neutralized. Hearing Fury's urgent report, he, Mysterio, and the others immediately rerouted toward the new crisis, their minds racing to understand what could have caused such an unnatural mutation.
They were not the first to arrive. Carol Danvers, whose binary star energy had created a temporal anchor that allowed her to ride out the time reversal instead of being reset by it, blasted onto the scene. She found Rhodes hovering a safe distance from a living tempest of cosmic horror.
"Carol!" Thor spotted her instantly, swooping to her side with Mjolnir crackling in his hand.
"What's the situation?" she asked, her eyes fixed on the corrupted beast.
"I don't know," Thor admitted, his battle-honed senses on high alert. "But it became this in an instant. And I don't think my lightning will work on it anymore." Though he hadn't seen it happen, his combat instincts warned him that the rules of this fight had fundamentally changed.
"Then we hit it with something else," Carol declared, her body flaring with the light of a living constellation as she shot toward the elemental.
A bolt of lightning engulfed Thor, his eyes flashing with power, and he followed right behind her, his cape billowing in his wake.
Carol punched forward, unleashing a powerful lance of pure photons that tore through the air. But the dark elemental, now fortified by the power of a dimensional god, was beyond such attacks. The energy beam struck its body and was simply swallowed by the roiling darkness, dissipating with a faint sizzle but leaving not even a scorch mark.
Enraged by the assault, the creature roared again. Its entire body exploded outward in a wave of black lightning.
A deafening boom shook the city as the shockwave of necrotic energy slammed into Captain Marvel first. Thor, right behind her, crossed his arms and braced for impact. He felt the familiar sting of electricity, but it was laced with something else—an ancient, malevolent power that felt cold and utterly alien. This was not the lightning of a storm; it was the raw, hateful energy of the void.
Carol was sent tumbling back, her hair exploding into a static-filled mess. She quickly reasserted control, her own binary energy purging the dark static from her body. Exhaling a puff of black smoke, she glared at the elemental, her cheek twitching. The creature hadn't just changed its appearance; it had multiplied its power exponentially.
After its initial burst, the wind elemental took a deep breath. A violent suction pulled at the air, and both Thor and Carol found themselves struggling to maintain their position as debris from the streets below was ripped into the sky.
"Damn it! It's so much stronger!" Rhodes complained from a distance, firing his repulsors in reverse to fight the pull. He wasn't about to test if the Iron Patriot armor could withstand a direct hit from that thing.
Max, having transformed into lightning, was unaffected by the wind, but he felt a wave of dejection. His powers, his greatest weapon, were seemingly useless here. But seeing his allies in trouble, he shook off his doubt. Now was not the time for self-pity. Gritting his teeth, he zipped behind the elemental and unleashed a concentrated blast of golden electricity, hoping to at least draw its attention.
It worked. The creature's head swiveled a full 180 degrees with a sickening, boneless rotation, its suction now aimed directly at him. Max immediately dispersed into a bolt of lightning to escape.
Thor and Carol seized the opening. Exchanging a determined glance, they surged forward as one. Carol's fist ignited, wrapping itself in photon energy that burned with the intensity of a miniature sun. Lightning coursed down Thor's arm, thunder booming from his very being as he channeled the full might of Asgard. He was still skeptical, but he had to try—to pit his divine storm against this corrupted mockery.
They struck its back in perfect sync. The impact felt strangely soft, like punching a mountain of cotton. The creature's form seemed to absorb all kinetic force. But that was never their goal.
In an instant, the lightning on Thor's fist erupted, flowing across the elemental's entire body. Simultaneously, the energy from Carol's punch exploded, blasting clean through the creature's ten-meter-wide torso.
The two heroes shot backward, putting distance between themselves and their target to observe the effect.
The result was worse than disappointing. The wind elemental was completely unharmed. Their attack had only made it angrier. It abandoned its pursuit of Max and began to draw on the power it had just absorbed. The air it had inhaled churned within its core, creating a swirling vortex of dark energy.
Then, it exhaled.
An apocalyptic gale of absolute zero, laced with the void's chill, spewed from its mouth. The air it touched instantly flash-froze into razor-sharp ice crystals that rained down like shrapnel. Woven within the frigid wind was a serpentine torrent of black lightning, a dark dragon of pure energy that twisted and roared with supernatural intelligence.
The attack carried an unstoppable momentum, sweeping toward Thor and Carol with the fury of a cosmic hurricane.
Thor's pupils shrank. His divine senses screamed a single, undeniable warning: this could not be blocked. With less than a second to spare, he and Carol shot away in opposite directions, barely escaping the wave of cosmic annihilation that carved a trench of frozen destruction where they had just been.