[Four hours later]
Suddenly, the temperature dropped hard.
Thor felt it first.
He stiffened, eyes snapping open as shadows stretched where no shadows should exist. They peeled off rocks, slid out from beneath trees, bled from the air itself. The forest nearby went silent. Birds froze mid-flight, then dropped out of the sky like someone hit pause.
Tony sat up slowly. "Okay," he muttered. "Here he comes."
The shadows folded inward.
Gorr stepped out of them.
He was tall, slender, with white skin, no hair, and yellow eyes. It looked as if suffering had sandblasted him down to pure hate. The Necrosword rested in his hand, alive and restless, its surface rippling like oil over bone. His veins were dark, thanks to the sword's power.
His eyes locked onto Thor instantly.
"Found you, little god," Gorr said, pointing the blade at him.
Thor rose to his feet, shoulders squared even without Mjolnir. "Just how many more did you kill?" He asked, sensing a massive increase in Gorr's energy level.
"Enough," Gorr replied.
Tony stepped in front of Thor. 'Alright, time to test my new armor.'
Nanites poured out of his bracelet, flowing fast and aggressively, snapping into place around his body. This armor was different. Glossy white with yellow energy veins pulsing under the surface like a contained star.
The air around Tony warped slightly.
He rolled his shoulders once.
Then he looked at Gorr.
"Yo, Ashy Larry," Tony said. "You look sick, man. You need to see a doctor."
Gorr actually chuckled... A dry, hollow sound.
"I have nothing to do with you, mortal," Gorr said. "Step aside and let me fulfill my destiny."
Tony raised his repulsor, the glow white-hot.
"No can do."
Gorr's grin widened, shadows stretching behind him like wings.
"Then you will die with him."
Tony snorted. "Yeah. Give it your best shot, Ashy."
Gorr moved...
...He blinked before Tony at hyperspeed.
The Necrosword sliced forward, reality screaming as the blade carved through space itself. Tony barely got his forearm up in time. The impact hit like a collapsing moon.
BOOM!
Tony was launched backward, tearing a trench through red soil and rock before slamming into a cliff hard enough to turn it into gravel.
Thor shouted, "Tony!"
Dust exploded outward.
"Susshhh!" Gorr looked at Thor with his finger over his lips as shadow crept out around Thor, binding him on the spot.
Tony flew back out of the crater, laughing.
"Ohhh okay," he said. "That's new. I felt that."
He teleported right before Gorr, fists glowing as cosmic energy surged through the armor. He punched Gorr dead in the chest.
The hit detonated.
A shockwave ripped across the plains, flattening stone structures and blowing the forest back. Gorr skidded across the ground, but the shadows twisted around him. He disappeared for a moment before reappearing again.
The chest wound closed as shadows stitched him back together.
Gorr tilted his head. "What kind of power is that?"
Tony hovered before him. "Take a guess."
Gorr lunged. "ARGGG!!!"
Shadows exploded outward as the Necrosword split into tendrils, each one snapping toward Tony like a living guillotine. Tony spun, repulsors flaring as he weaved through them, armor reacting faster than before as Tony synced it to the Mind Gem in his head. 'Dang! There are so many sticky goo,' He thought while dodging.
One tendril clipped his shoulder.
The armor screamed warnings. Black energy crawled across the white plating, trying to eat through it.
Tony made a disgusted face. "Oh hell no."
The armor pulsed.
Cosmic energy surged outward, purging the corruption in a violent flash that sent Gorr flying again. Tony didn't let up. "Space energy repulsor Charge: 40%." He raised both hands and fired twin repulsor beams.
Twin beams slammed into Gorr like freight trains made of light.
The ground detonated under his bare feet, red stone flashing to molten glass as he was driven backward. Gorr dug his toes into the ground, skin cracking, shadows wrapping his legs like anchors. The Necrosword screamed and flared, carving black arcs through the beams, but Tony kept pushing, repulsors whining as output climbed.
"C'mon," Tony said through the helmet. "Amp it up by 10%, Hermes."
The beams got stronger.
Gorr roared and ripped the beams apart with a violent cross-slash. Darkness burst outward, rolling like a tidal wave. From it, shapes clawed their way free.
Shadow creatures poured out. They looked like the gods Gorr has slaughtered so far, mutated into shadow under All-Black's influence. They sprinted, crawled, and flew. The ground vanished under them.
Thor strained against his bindings. "Tony, do not let them surround you!"
Tony glanced around. "Yeah, I noticed the murder parade."
His armor shifted.
Panels slid, ports opened and energy rails spun into place along his arms and back.
"Alright," Tony said. "Party favors."
He fired.
Micro-singularity rounds punched into the shadow army, each impact collapsing inward with a violent pop. Creatures vanished mid-charge, crushed into nothing. Energy cannons on his shoulders roared, sweeping beams that erased entire rows at once.
Gorr ran straight through it.
He left and brought the Necrosword down in a two-handed strike that split the battlefield in half. The blade tore through Tony's shield and slammed into his chest.
The armor enhanced by his cosmic energy held, as the Space energy nullified the sword's energy damage. But the impact was hard, despite the nullification.
The hit launched Tony backward.
He flipped once, stabilized, then laughed as he rocketed back down, slamming into Gorr's shoulder-first. They hit hard enough to carve a crater the size of a city block. Rock and fire exploded outward.
Tony grabbed Gorr by the throat and lifted him.
"Gotta say," Tony said, as shadows wrapped his arm, only to be isolated by the Space energy, "you are hands down the angriest barefoot guy I've ever met."
"How are you resisting the darkness of All-Black?" Gorr asked.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Tony smirked.
Gorr snarled and drove his knee into Tony's side. The armor buckled, alarms screaming. Tony released him and boosted back as black tendrils snapped at his face.
[Armor integrity: 70%]
Gorr planted himself, sword raised.
The shadows behind him thickened as more creatures emerged...
...Thousands.
An army poured out of the darkness, flooding the plains, climbing over each other, screaming without mouths.
Tony hovered, took it in, then sighed.
"Okay. That's excessive."
He reached behind his shoulder.
A sphere unfolded from his back, compact, dense, humming with energy. Space-bent plating rotated around it.
Tony flicked it forward.
"Finally, I get to use the Singularity bomb," he said.
The sphere dropped.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then the space folded.
A black hole bloomed where it landed. Gravity went feral. The shadow army screamed as one, bodies stretching, tearing, unraveling as they were dragged inward. Trees, rocks, debris, and darkness itself got pulled screaming into the void.
Five seconds.
That was all it took.
The army vanished.
The black hole collapsed in on itself with a thunderous snap, leaving scorched ground and silence behind.
Tony hovered there, smoke curling off his armor.
He looked at Gorr.
Gorr stood alone now, feet planted in cracked glass, shadows licking his ankles. The Necrosword pulsed harder, knitting damage, feeding him power. His chest rose slowly as he stared at the empty battlefield.
Tony retracted his face plate.
"…that all you got?"
Gorr grinned.
A hollow laugh crawled out of his throat, dry and broken, echoing across the ruined plains. The sound died quickly, and his expression snapped shut, all humor burned away. He lifted the Necrosword with both hands and drove it point-first into the ground.
Reality bled.
Color drained from the world as if someone had pulled a hidden plug. The red of Mars dulled into gray. The sky flattened and lost its depth. A distant forest vanished mid-breath, frozen and erased. Space folded inward around them.
Tony felt it instantly. 'Shadow Domain!'
The ground beneath them softened into liquid shadow and swallowed the light. Gravity loosened, then snapped back with unfamiliar rules. The air thickened, heavy with an unnatural, smothering silence.
They were somewhere else.
The Shadow Realm.
A flat, endless plane of black stone stretched in every direction, cracked like dried blood. Above it hung something that only barely passed for a sky—layer after layer of drifting darkness, deeper and heavier than the last. There were no stars and no horizon, only distance stripped of meaning. Everything existed in gray, silver, and black, as if the universe had been reduced to a sketch.
Thor was gone.
Tony felt the absence immediately. 'Fucker must have shifted Thor somewhere else.'
"Cute trick," Tony muttered. "Real emo aesthetic. Needs more lighting."
Gorr straightened slowly, shadows rolling off his body like heat haze. Dark veins pulsed beneath his skin, glowing in rhythm with the realm itself.
"This is all I got," Gorr said.
His eyes burned yellow.
He vanished.
Tony's danger sense screamed a fraction of a second before Gorr tore back into existence directly in front of him. The punch landed square in Tony's chest.
The hit was catastrophic.
Space buckled inward around the impact point. Tony's armor shrieked as the force ripped through it. He was hurled backward like a meteor, skipping across black stone and carving trenches.
He stabilized in midair as the HUD flared red.
[ARMOR INTEGRITY: 49%]
Tony whistled softly.
"Would you look at that?"
He rolled his neck once, then blinked far enough back that even this broken space struggled to keep up.
"Alright," he said calmly. "Let's stop playing nice."
Overdrive engaged.
The armor reacted instantly. White and gold plates transformed and reconfigured. The suit turned pitch black with red energy veins glowing across the armor like exposed circuitry. The arc reactor deepened from white to crimson.
Tony exhaled.
Gorr was blinking and coming closer.
The Uni-Beam charged.
It was condensed cosmic output mixed with the Space and Power energy.
He fired.
A beam of dark red energy tore across the Shadow Realm, bending the monochrome world around it. The beam did more than burn. It erased. Wherever it touched, the ground folded inward, reality compressing under the load.
Gorr roared and answered.
Darkness erupted from the Necrosword, a counter-beam of void energy that devoured light on contact. Where the two forces met, space simply stopped existing.
There was no explosion and no shockwave—only a widening hole in the world.
The clash carved a twisting scar through the realm, a dead zone where even shadow refused to survive. The ground fractured outward in slow motion, cracks spreading like a shattered mirror.
Tony pushed harder.
Gorr dug in with both hands on the sword. His feet sank into the black stone as living shadows wrapped around his arms and spine, feeding him, anchoring him to the realm itself.
Their beams locked.
The Shadow Realm trembled.
The sky rippled above them, its layers folding over one another like something trying to look away.
Tony grinned inside the helmet.
"Oh," he said, his voice steady despite the strain. "You're royally fucked."
"ARGGG!!!" Gorr screamed as void energy exploded, erasing the beam. He blinked in, sword raised, ready to end the fight. He slashed down where Tony was hovering, only for Tony to teleport away.
"How long do you think your technology will last?" Gorr asked as he stopped attacking.
"Well," Tony retracted the nanites back into his bracelet and flew down. He had collected enough data.
He could feel the cold and darkness pressing on him.
"Test time is over..." He summoned cosmic energy. His body began to glow with a bright yellow hue in that monochrome world.
He cracked his fingers.
"...It's time to amp up the heat."
----
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