Garou had arrived.
And the universe was beginning to notice.
---
Avengers Tower, New York
The holographic display floated in the center of the war room. Red warning sigils blinked across the map, feeding constant updates from the Nova Corps and S.W.O.R.D.
Tony Stark paced.
"This guy took out a Kree battle moon and walked away without a scratch," he muttered. "No armor. No weapons. Just fists. That's not even in Hulk's league."
Steve Rogers leaned forward, arms folded. "What's the motive?"
"Best guess?" Natasha Romanoff replied. "He's looking for a fight. The kind that ends civilizations."
Thor, arms crossed, was unusually silent. His golden hair hung low over his face.
Finally, he spoke. "I've heard whispers across the Nine Realms. An entity born of conflict. A man who rejects the gods. Not out of hate, but out of instinct. Like a wolf that doesn't know peace."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "So, what? He's cosmic rabies?"
"No," Thor said grimly. "He's nature, made flesh. The kind of nature that tears empires down."
Wanda Maximoff stood near the window, feeling something ripple through her Chaos Magic.
"He's different," she murmured. "I don't feel hatred in him. Just… resolve."
"Should we contact Strange?" Steve asked.
Already done. The Sorcerer Supreme was monitoring Garou from the Astral Plane.
But what disturbed Strange the most wasn't the power Garou wielded. It was the direction. The purpose.
He was heading to Earth.
---
S.W.O.R.D. Space Station: The Peak
Abigail Brand stared at the footage on the monitor—Garou in battle with a Shi'ar war fleet. The entire exchange had lasted ninety seconds. The fleet was now floating in debris.
Her voice was steady as she addressed the room.
"I want satellites watching every trajectory. I want the X-Men briefed. I want Reed Richards online."
Behind her, Director Fury stepped from the shadows.
"He's a variable we weren't ready for," Fury muttered. "And you know what that means."
She nodded. "Contingency protocols?"
"No." He narrowed his eye. "We don't contain a storm. We ride it, redirect it… or let it burn our enemies."
---
The Dark Dimension
Dormammu stirred.
The swirling madness of his realm pulsed with eldritch light as he gazed through interdimensional veils at the being tearing across the stars.
Garou.
A mortal, and yet something more.
Dormammu watched him rip through a Chitauri war nest, body surrounded in flickering energy. Adaptive. Accelerating. Limitless.
"How curious," the demon lord whispered.
His voice echoed across the dimension, warping time and space.
"Not born of magic. Not touched by fate. Yet a harbinger of entropy."
He extended a clawed hand, casting a slow, burning rune into the void.
"Let the worms of Earth panic. Let the Avengers scramble. Let the Sorcerer Supreme gaze into the abyss…"
His eyes glowed like suns.
"I will greet him first."
A rift opened in a shadowed corner of Earth's orbit—small, hidden, and dormant.
For now.
---
Krakoa
Charles Xavier sat alone in the Cerebro chamber, his mind reaching into space.
He felt it. Like a thunderclap across the stars.
Mutant telepaths across the world flinched in unison.
Emma Frost entered, holding a glass of wine.
"You feel him too?"
Xavier nodded slowly. "He's not mutant. He's not alien. He's… conflict incarnate."
Emma's eyes narrowed. "Will he come here?"
"He will come everywhere."
---
Wakanda
In the heart of Wakanda's capital, Shuri reviewed seismic and atmospheric data. The energy patterns Garou was leaving behind were bizarre—neither cosmic radiation nor magic, yet something reactive.
"His biology shouldn't be possible," she whispered.
Behind her, King T'Challa—Black Panther—stood with arms behind his back.
"Power is not what makes him dangerous," he said. "It is the purpose behind it."
Shuri turned. "You think he's coming to challenge us?"
"I think he's coming to challenge everything."
---
Latveria
In the throne room of Castle Doom, the ruler watched the growing crisis unfold.
Doctor Doom's fingers steepled before his masked face.
"An interdimensional invader with no kingdom, no army, no science… yet entire empires fall in his wake."
He chuckled.
"How… poetic."
Behind him, Doombots stood silently as sensors flickered with cosmic readings.
"Perhaps I will welcome this calamity. Let the heavens quake. Doom does not kneel. Not to gods… and not to wolves."
---
The Savage Lands
Ka-Zar stood beneath the stars as a shooting flame crossed the night sky.
Garou.
The tribes below murmured. Some prayed. Others prepared for war.
"The balance has shifted," Ka-Zar whispered. "The world is about to bleed."
---
Meanwhile… in Transit
Garou sat atop the floating wreckage of a Skrull warship he'd destroyed hours earlier.
The void surrounded him.
He wasn't lost in it.
He was it.
His body had grown stronger—faster—since arriving. The laws here were… looser. His adaptive biology, honed in his old universe, was evolving again.
Every battle made him more than he was.
He didn't sleep. He didn't tire.
He only moved forward.
Earth was near now.
He felt it calling.
No—she was calling.
That strange psychic presence he'd brushed against on the edge of the galaxy. Not hostile. Not divine.
But powerful.
Curious.
Lonely.
Garou's golden eyes narrowed.
A voice echoed in his head, soft and Southern.
"Who are you?"
He didn't respond.
Not yet.
But the connection lingered.
---
Earth
Rogue woke up in a cold sweat, breathing hard.
Her cabin was still, tucked deep in the Appalachian forest. She lived alone now, far from X-Men affairs.
But something had brushed her mind.
Something… monstrous.
Yet not evil.
"Who the hell was that…?" she whispered.
Outside, the wind howled.
---
Elsewhere…
Back in New York, a mirror cracked in Strange's Sanctum.
Wong frowned. "What now?"
Strange stared, eyes glowing with foreboding.
"Dormammu has opened a gate," he said.
"And the calamity is coming through it."