The Stark beach house lay silent under the night sky, a forgotten island adrift from the world.
Paul dragged his exhausted body through the empty living room, his makeshift combat suit torn in multiple places. The scorch marks and acrid stench of burnt metal were silent witnesses to the brutal battle he had barely survived.
The taste of defeat was like cheap absinthe, searing his throat and flooding his brain.
He had lost.
To that hulking tin can of Uru metal that had fallen from the sky—a mindless juggernaut following a single command: the Destroyer.
"Sir, your heart rate is elevated, and adrenaline levels remain in the danger zone. Immediate full-body scanning is strongly advised."
Jarvis's calm, rational voice echoed through the villa, attempting to pull his master's attention from the bitter aftermath.
"I'm fine, Jarvis."
Paul's voice was hoarse as he collapsed onto the plush sofa, his vacant eyes fixed on the vibrant LED strips lining the ceiling.
The battle replayed relentlessly in his mind.
His pride—his anti-matter annihilation rounds—had been erased without a trace the moment they neared the Destroyer's open visor, just as its molten energy beam lanced out. It was as though an unseen force had scrubbed them from existence.
That power defied physics.
Magic.
A force he couldn't yet parse, much less counter.
Shame and helplessness coiled around his heart like icy hands.
What stung worse was the missed opportunity.
The Asgardian warriors—Sif, Fandral, Hogun—had slipped through his grasp. Living, breathing encyclopedias of Asgardian genetics and civilization. He could've had complete samples, keys to unlocking their superhuman reflexes, their millennia-long lifespans.
Instead, he'd spent the fight trading blows with that damn hunk of metal, watching them vanish in the Bifrost's glow without leaving so much as a strand of hair behind.
A total loss.
"Jarvis, combat assessment." Paul massaged his temples, eyes shut.
"Crossfire Armor integrity at 27%. Repair deemed nonviable. Anti-matter stabilization array fully overloaded. However, we successfully retrieved 17 kilograms of Uru alloy fragments from the Destroyer."
A pause. Jarvis seemed to be weighing the next report carefully.
"Additionally, from your earlier encounter with Thor, 'Nini' secured viable dermal samples. Analysis confirms a complete, active genetic sequence of an Asgardian deity."
Paul's eyes snapped open. He straightened.
Thor's DNA.
That—that was worth a hundred of the other warriors' samples.
A sliver of light pierced the gloom of his defeat.
"Excellent work, Jarvis. Initiate Project Divinity—highest priority. Redirect all available resources into full genome mapping and biological profiling. I want results yesterday."
"Understood, sir."
Paul rose and strode toward the underground lab. His steps remained heavy, but his gaze had sharpened.
Failure wasn't the end.
Stagnation was.
And Paul Stark never lacked direction.
The anti-matter weapon's failure against magic had been a wake-up call.
Raw power alone had hit a dead end. If physics could be casually overwritten by higher-dimensional forces, he needed... something more ruthless.
A game-changer.
Standing before the holographic display, he swiped through archived weapon concepts.
A mega-goliath mech? Too cumbersome. Prime target for an enemy like the Destroyer.
Stronger shielding? Useless if magic could bend reality itself.
His eyes landed on a cosmic navigational map.
Earth—a blue marble spinning quietly in the void.
He'd been thinking too small. Confined to the planet's surface.
Why not break free?
A mad idea struck like lightning.
If ground combat was limiting, the battlefield needed shifting to where no one expected.
Space.
"Jarvis, pull up Project Skyfall archives."
"Sir, access requires triple-trigger biometrics: voice, retinal, and neural."
"Execute."
After the security gauntlet, two holographic designs materialized.
The first, Rod of God—brutally simple.
An orbital platform loaded with rods of tungsten alloy, each several meters long, weighing metric tons. Upon launch, the rods would strike at hypersonic velocities, hitting with tactical-nuke force—clean, radiation-free, unstoppable.
Paul dismissed it.
"Too crude."
Effective against armies or bunkers, but imprecise for a single target like the Destroyer. Collateral damage would be catastrophic.
And worse—it lacked finesse.
The second model loomed: Damocles' Sword.
A masterpiece of engineering.
An orbital railgun merging arc reactor tech, particle accelerators, and quantum targeting. It could fire near-lightspeed particle streams, precise to centimeters, adjustable from building-level to continental annihilation.
This—this was the iron fist he needed.
Absolute power suspended above all enemies, forcing them to shudder before its might.
The technical hurdles were monstrous. Heat dissipation in vacuum. Stabilizing energy throughput over planetary distances. Locking onto hypermobile targets from geosynchronous orbit.
Any one problem could consume a team of Nobel laureates for life.
But Paul?
The challenge sent blood roaring through his veins. His fingers hovered over the activation panel—
"Alert."
Jarvis's tone had flattened. All warmth gone.
"Sir, an unidentified signal is attempting deep-layer intrusion on the quantum encryption net. Method: Phantom Protocol."
Paul froze.
Phantom Protocol wasn't an attack.
It was something far worse—a ghost slipping past every defense, watching unseen from the shadows.
And the timing? The moment he greenlit Damocles' Sword.
Coincidence?
Paul's pupils contracted.
The dark forest had other hunters.
And as he lit his forge to craft the deadliest weapon yet, another pair of eyes—deeper in the abyss—had already fixed upon him.