Chapter 115: The Useless Stones
September 30
The ground beneath Titan's rusted surface shuddered as Thanos pulled himself from the wreckage.
He climbed out of the crater, wiping a thick smear of purple blood from his split lip. The Mad Titan was not used to bleeding. He was not used to being outmatched in raw, physical power. He stared at me across the desolate battlefield, his dark eyes narrowing as he tried to process the sheer impossibility of the strike he had just taken.
He didn't bother asking who I was. He didn't monologue. He simply raised his left hand and clenched his massive golden fist.
The Reality Stone flared with a blinding, liquid crimson light.
A wave of red energy washed over the battlefield, warping the very fabric of existence. The rusted dirt beneath my boots instantly transmuted into a bubbling pool of sulfuric acid. The air around my face shifted into razor-sharp shards of glass, meant to be inhaled and shred my lungs from the inside out. Thanos pushed the Aether's power directly into my atomic structure, attempting to turn my impossibly dense Viltrumite bones into brittle, hollow chalk.
I didn't even break my stride. I just kept walking.
My Reality Anchoring trait hummed with a quiet, absolute certainty. The localized reality-warping shattered against my aura like ocean waves breaking against a seawall. The acid hissed uselessly against the soles of my shoes. The airborne glass disintegrated into harmless dust before it could touch my skin. My bones remained dense, fixed, and utterly unaffected.
Thanos watched the crimson energy wash over me and fail completely. His eyes widened. The Reality Stone was one of the fundamental pillars of the universe; it dictated what was and what was not. And it was completely ignoring me.
Panic, genuine and sharp, finally pierced the Mad Titan's stoic composure.
He dropped the crimson frequency and immediately channeled the Power Stone. The purple gem ignited, glowing with the raw, destructive force of the cosmos. Thanos thrust his fist forward, unleashing a concentrated, planet-cracking beam of pure purple energy directly at my face.
The beam hit me dead center.
The impact was deafening. The sheer cosmic heat flash-vaporized the rusted bedrock around me, carving a molten trench hundreds of yards long behind my back.
I didn't raise my arms to block. I just tilted my head slightly, letting the purple beam wash over my face. My Absolute Super Defense absorbed the cosmic energy effortlessly. It felt like standing in front of a slightly overly aggressive space heater.
The purple beam cut out. Smoke rolled off my shoulders. My tailored black shirt was gone, burned away by the cosmic blast, but the skin underneath was flawlessly pale, completely unblemished.
I looked at Thanos, brushing a speck of glowing purple ash from my collarbone.
"Is that it?" I asked, my voice carrying clearly across the silent, devastated battlefield. "The fundamental forces of the universe, and you use them like cheap fireworks."
Thanos roared. If the Stones could not erase me, he would rely on the brute force that had conquered thousands of worlds. He charged.
He crossed the distance with terrifying speed for a being of his size, raising his massive fists. He threw a heavy, looping right hook aimed squarely at my temple, putting his entire weight behind the blow.
I didn't dodge. I raised my left hand and caught his fist.
The kinetic shockwave of our collision flattened the surrounding wreckage, throwing the conscious Avengers and Guardians to the ground once again. But my arm didn't move a single millimeter. I absorbed the titan's strike natively.
Thanos stared at his trapped fist, his cosmic brain entirely failing to comprehend the physics of the moment. He was pushing down with the strength to break a moon, and he was being stopped by a man not even half his size, who wasn't even shifting his stance for leverage.
"You rely too much on the rocks," I told him quietly.
I squeezed my left hand.
The thick, golden armor covering Thanos's knuckles shrieked, bending inward before violently snapping. The bones in his hand crushed together with a sickening crunch.
Thanos let out a guttural roar of agony, swinging a wild left hook with the Infinity Gauntlet to break my grip.
I ducked under the heavy, glowing metal glove, stepping flawlessly into his guard. I drove a lightning-fast right elbow directly into his jaw.
The sound of his jawbone fracturing echoed across Titan. The blow snapped his massive head to the side, completely scrambling his equilibrium. Before he could recover, I drove my right boot directly into his kneecap.
The joint shattered backward.
Thanos collapsed with a heavy, pained grunt, forced down onto one knee in the rusted dirt. He was breathing heavily, his purple face contorted in agony, his broken jaw hanging at a horrific angle.
I stood over him, my breathing still perfectly even.
Ten yards away, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, and Doctor Strange watched in absolute, paralyzed silence. They had thrown drop-ships at him. They had used portal magic, heavy explosives, and advanced nanotechnology, and they had barely managed to draw a single drop of blood.
They were watching a man casually, effortlessly dismantle the most terrifying being in the universe with his bare hands.
Thanos looked up at me, his dark eyes burning with a mixture of hatred and profound disbelief. He tried to raise the Infinity Gauntlet again, his trembling, broken fingers struggling to close into a fist to activate the Space Stone for a desperate escape.
"No," I said softly, looking down at the gleaming golden glove. "I'll be taking that."
Chapter 116: The Gauntlet Harvest
October 1
Thanos's trembling, broken fingers strained to close.
The blue light of the Space Stone flickered to life across the golden knuckles of the Infinity Gauntlet. He was bleeding, humiliated, and operating on pure, desperate survival instinct. He knew he could not win a physical exchange, so he sought to retreat, to regroup, and to strike from afar.
He just needed to close his fist.
I didn't let him.
I reached out and grabbed his massive left forearm with both hands. My fingers dug deep into the golden metal of the gauntlet and the thick, purple flesh beneath it.
Thanos looked up, his eyes widening as he realized exactly what I was about to do. He let out a desperate, guttural roar, trying to pull his arm back with the raw, planetary strength of a Titan.
It was completely useless against me.
I planted my boot squarely against his ribs for leverage. I didn't just pull; I forcefully tore his Muscle with a sickening, wet ripping sound. The indestructible ball-and-socket joint of the Titan's shoulder popped and then violently shattered.
With one brutal, continuous heave, I physically ripped Thanos's entire left arm completely out of its socket.
Thanos let out a blood-curdling scream of absolute agony. A fountain of thick, dark purple blood erupted from the gaping wound in his shoulder, spilling across the rusted dirt of Titan. He collapsed backward, clutching the bleeding stump, his legendary resilience finally breaking under the horror of the amputation.
I stood holding the massive, severed arm. The Infinity Gauntlet, still gripping the arm, glowed with the combined light of the four Stones. I casually tossed the bloody limb onto the dirt.
I took two steps forward, looming over the fallen Mad Titan.
Thanos was gasping, choking on his own blood. He looked up at me, the tyrannical certainty that had defined his entire existence completely erased. He was just a dying warlord on a dead planet.
I raised my right boot and brought it down directly onto his face.
The sound of his skull crushing beneath my heel echoed like a gunshot across the silent wasteland. The Mad Titan went perfectly still.
The Infinity War was over.
Instantly, my vision was swallowed by a blinding, explosive golden light. The Plot Changing System went into absolute overdrive, the text scrolling so aggressively it almost obscured the ruined battlefield.
[CRITICAL CANON EVENT FRACTURED.]
[Cosmic Threat Level: OMEGA Eliminated.]
[Hostile Entity 'Thanos' Executed.]
[The 'Infinity War' Narrative Permanently Terminated.]
[Impact Analysis: Half of all life in the universe secured. Universal timeline violently derailed.]
[Calculating Supreme Harvest...]
[Reward: 100,000,000 System Points.]
[Current Point Balance: 649,885,000 pts.]
A hundred million points. It wasn't quite the billion I had earned for erasing Apokolips, but it was a staggering fortune, reflecting the salvation of literally half the universe.
I dismissed the golden screens with a thought. The light faded, leaving the grim reality of Titan exactly as it was.
"Don't touch it!"
The voice was sharp, laced with panic and mystical authority.
I turned around. Doctor Strange was walking toward me, his red cloak snapping in the wind. Behind him, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, and the rest of the surviving Guardians were picking themselves up, staring at the headless corpse of Thanos in profound disbelief.
Strange stopped a few yards away. He looked at the severed arm lying in the dirt, the Gauntlet still attached.
"You don't understand the forces you are dealing with," Strange warned, his scarred hands trembling as he summoned a pair of glowing, orange mandala shields. "The Infinity Stones cannot be wielded by a single entity. The cosmic radiation will burn you to cinders. Step away from the Gauntlet, and hand over the Time Stone. Now."
I looked at the Sorcerer Supreme. He was trying to project the authority of a guardian of reality, but I could hear his heartbeat fluttering like a trapped bird.
"You looked into fourteen million, six hundred and five alternate futures, wizard," I said smoothly, bending down and gripping the golden edge of the Gauntlet. "You saw every possible way this fight could end."
I ripped the Infinity Gauntlet off the severed purple hand.
I slid my own right hand into the massive golden glove. The moment my flesh made contact with the conductive metal, the raw, cosmic power of the four Stones surged into my body. A violent, multicolored wave of cosmic radiation exploded outward.
Tony Stark shielded his eyes. Strange braced himself, fully expecting the cosmic surge to instantly vaporize my arm and turn me to ash.
The surge washed over my Absolute Super Defense. It tickled. The limitless power of the universe tried to burn me, but my Royal Viltrumite density and System-granted invulnerability completely walled it off. The Gauntlet automatically resized itself, shrinking to perfectly fit my hand.
I raised my fist. The Space, Power, Reality, and Soul Stones glowed brilliantly against my knuckles.
I looked back at Doctor Strange, a cold, mocking smile pulling at my lips.
"Tell me," I whispered, the power of the Stones vibrating in my voice. "Did you see this one?"
Strange stared at me, his magical shields flickering and dying. He was looking at an impossibility. A being who had effortlessly butchered Thanos and was now holding the universe's greatest weapons without taking a single point of damage. His fourteen million futures were officially obsolete.
I didn't wait for his answer. There were still two Stones left on the board.
I clenched my golden fist, activating the blue Space Stone.
The fabric of reality tore open in front of me, revealing a swirling portal that led directly to a lush, green jungle currently engulfed in an apocalyptic war.
I stepped through the portal, leaving the broken heroes of Titan stranded in the dust. It was time to visit Wakanda.
Chapter 117: The Wakanda Massacre
October 2
The blue portal tore open in the humid, blood-soaked air of Wakanda.
I stepped out of the swirling cosmic gateway, the heavy, golden weight of the Infinity Gauntlet resting comfortably on my right hand. The Space Stone faded back to a dull, resting glow as the portal snapped shut behind me.
The battlefield was an absolute slaughterhouse.
Thousands of six-armed, feral Outriders were pouring through the breached Wakandan energy dome, a black tide of gnashing teeth and mindless fury. The Avengers and the Wakandan army were completely overwhelmed, drowning under the sheer, endless weight of the alien swarm. Captain America was bleeding, using his wakandan shields to bludgeon a beast that was trying to tear his throat out. The Black Panther was buried under a pile of snarling bodies. Thor was in the sky, raining lightning down with Stormbreaker, but it wasn't enough.
Leading the charge at the edge of the treeline were the remaining children of Thanos—Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive, and the massive, hulking brute, Cull Obsidian. They were carving through the royal guard, pushing relentlessly toward the forest where Vision was hiding.
I hovered ten feet off the ground, looking out over the sprawling, chaotic warzone.
I didn't care about Wakanda. I didn't care about the fate of the universe. I looked at the endless sea of alien monsters and the elite generals of the Black Order, and I saw a localized gold mine.
(That is a lot of points,) I thought, my eyes tracking the density of the swarm.
I didn't use the Infinity Stones. Using the Gauntlet would have been overkill, and honestly, I wanted to stretch my new legs.
I floated to the direct center of the battlefield, hovering just above the heads of the Wakandan frontline. I drew my arms back, spreading my hands wide. I didn't need to punch every single alien. A Royal Viltrumite did not fight armies; a Royal Viltrumite was an extinction-level event.
I brought my hands together.
The impact of the clap did not sound like two hands meeting. It sounded like the atmosphere of the planet physically cracking in half.
The raw, leverage-free kinetic output generated by my Royal Bloodline created an omnidirectional shockwave of catastrophic proportions. It ripped outward from my palms at hypersonic speed.
The top ten feet of dirt, grass, and trees were instantly peeled off the surface of the earth.
The Outrider army didn't even have time to shriek. The concussive wave hit the frontlines and immediately vaporized them into a fine, black mist. The shockwave rolled over the jungle, completely disintegrating thousands of alien beasts in a fraction of a second.
Cull Obsidian raised his massive armored shield to block the invisible wall of pressure. The shield shattered into powder. A microsecond later, his entire massive body was ripped apart by the sheer kinetic force, followed instantly by Proxima and Corvus. The Black Order was erased from existence without a single drop of blood hitting the ground.
I had perfectly angled the primary force of the shockwave outward, sparing the Wakandan lines from total annihilation, but the residual wind still knocked every single human soldier, King T'Challa, and Captain America violently off their feet.
Then, the dust settled.
The deafening, apocalyptic roar of the Wakandan war was completely, terrifyingly gone. It was replaced by the soft, eerie rustle of alien ash drifting down from the sky like dark snow.
The battlefield was empty. An entire invading armada, wiped off the map with a single gesture.
Steve Rogers groaned, pushing himself up from the flattened dirt. He wiped the ash from his eyes, his chest heaving as he stared out at the sprawling, empty wasteland where an army had stood three seconds ago.
Thor dropped out of the sky, landing heavily near Captain America. The God of Thunder tightened his grip on Stormbreaker, his blue eyes locking onto me floating above the dirt.
Thor's expression shifted from battle-rage to profound, unadulterated shock. He recognized the face. He remembered the man who had caught a nuclear missile in New York, and who had butchered Malekith in Greenwich.
"The warrior from New York..." Thor breathed, lowering his axe slightly.
But then, Thor's eyes drifted down to my right hand. He saw the massive, gleaming golden glove. He saw the purple, blue, red, and orange stones glowing against my knuckles.
"By the Norns," Thor whispered, absolute dread creeping into his ancient voice. "He has the Gauntlet."
Steve Rogers froze, his tactical mind trying to process the horrifying reality. The man who had just saved them from the army was wearing the weapon that the army had come to collect.
I didn't acknowledge them. I didn't offer a reassuring smile or a dramatic villain speech. I simply lowered my boots until they touched the flattened, scorched earth.
The golden interface of the System flashed rapidly in the corner of my vision, calculating the massive harvest of erasing the Black Order and the Outrider swarm, but I ignored it. I had my eyes locked on the tree line just a few hundred yards away.
Sitting against a shattered log, clutching the glowing yellow stone embedded in his forehead, was Vision.
I adjusted the cuffs of my tailored black shirt with my left hand, the golden metal of the Gauntlet clinking softly on my right. I stepped over the vaporized remains of an alien warship and began to casually walk toward the forest.
There were only two stones left to harvest.
Chapter 118: The Chaos Hex
October 4
The Wakandan jungle was dead silent. The ash of millions of Outriders coated the broad green leaves like dark, toxic snow.
I walked slowly across the scorched earth, my heavy boots crushing the charred remains of alien drop-ships. The remaining Avengers and Wakandan soldiers watched me pass, completely paralyzed. They were seasoned warriors, but they had just watched a single man clap his hands and erase a planetary invasion force. Their tactical training had no contingency for a walking extinction event.
I reached the edge of the tree line.
Vision was slumped against a massive, shattered oak log. The android was severely wounded, his vibranium hull leaking synthetic fluids from Corvus Glaive's earlier ambush. The yellow Mind Stone embedded in his forehead pulsed with a weak, frantic light.
Standing protectively over him was Wanda Maximoff.
Her hands were trembling, but her eyes burned with a blinding, furious scarlet light. She had lost her brother, her home, and her peace. She was not going to let anyone take the machine she loved.
"Stay back," Wanda whispered. Her voice carried no echo, but the sheer, raw emotion behind it made the air around her physically vibrate.
I didn't stop walking. I didn't even slow my pace.
Wanda screamed. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated grief and rage.
She thrust both of her hands forward, unleashing a catastrophic tidal wave of Chaos Magic. It wasn't just a concussive blast; it was a fundamental, reality-altering hex designed to tear my atomic structure apart at the molecular level. The scarlet energy ripped the surrounding trees out by their roots, turning the wood and dirt to dust as it roared toward me.
I didn't raise the Infinity Gauntlet. I didn't brace for impact.
I let the hex hit me.
The moment the scarlet wave breached the exact ten-meter perimeter around my body, it hit a completely invisible, impenetrable wall. My Magic Nullification Aura flared with a cold, absolute certainty.
The Chaos Magic didn't just bounce off; it violently disintegrated. The terrifying, reality-warping scarlet energy instantly turned into a shower of harmless, dead gray sparks that drifted lazily to the dirt at my feet.
Wanda gasped, her eyes widening in absolute horror. She pushed harder, pouring every ounce of her soul and trauma into the hex, trying to force the magic through the dead zone.
The aura pushed back. The metaphysical feedback of a reality-warper trying to alter a being who fundamentally deleted magic was catastrophic.
Wanda's eyes rolled back in her head. The scarlet light short-circuited entirely. She collapsed to the jungle floor, her nervous system completely overloaded, slipping into unconsciousness before she even hit the dirt.
"Wanda!"
Steve Rogers broke his paralysis. The Captain sprinted forward, his battered Wakandan shields raised, throwing himself directly into my path to protect the fallen witch and the android.
"Move, Captain," I said, my voice quiet and utterly devoid of effort.
I didn't punch him. I simply kept walking. My shoulder brushed against his shield. The leverage-free kinetic density of my Royal Viltrumite Bloodline hit him like a bullet train. Rogers was casually swept aside, his body spinning through the air before crashing heavily into a nearby tree.
I stopped in front of Vision.
The android looked up at me. He didn't try to fire his laser. He didn't try to phase. He possessed an intellect powered by a cosmic singularity, and his calculations had already reached their inevitable conclusion.
"You do not intend to destroy the universe," Vision said, his synthetic voice calm and highly analytical. "I can feel the Stones resonating within your gauntlet. You have no desire for balance or genocide. What are you?"
"A collector," I answered simply.
I reached down. I didn't need to shatter his vibranium skull the way Thanos had in the original timeline. My Royal Viltrumite physiology granted me absolute, flawless control over my own physical output.
I pinched the glowing yellow gem between my thumb and forefinger. With surgical, microscopic precision, I pulled.
The vibranium housing clicked, yielding perfectly to the overwhelming pressure without cracking the surrounding skull. The Mind Stone popped free. Vision's eyes faded to a dull, lifeless gray, and his robotic body slumped backward against the log, powered down but entirely intact.
I slotted the Mind Stone into the knuckle of the Infinity Gauntlet. The yellow energy surged up my arm, washing harmlessly over my Absolute Super Defense.
Five stones down. One to go.
Behind me, the air sizzled with the sharp, crackling sound of Eldritch magic.
A shower of orange sparks spun into existence, opening a portal directly over the ash-covered battlefield. Doctor Strange stepped through, his red cloak snapping sharply. Behind him, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, and the surviving Guardians of the Galaxy stumbled out onto the Wakandan dirt, battered and exhausted from Titan.
Strange took one look at the battlefield. He saw the vaporized alien army. He saw Wanda unconscious on the ground. And he saw the five glowing stones on my hand.
"Trap him!" Stark yelled, his ruined armor deploying a desperate array of repulsor cannons.
Strange didn't hesitate. He slammed his hands onto the ground, channeling everything he had.
The world around me suddenly fractured. The jungle, the sky, and the dirt violently folded inward, shifting into massive, kaleidoscopic panels of glass. Strange was throwing me into the Mirror Dimension, attempting to lock me in a pocket reality where my physical strength couldn't harm the real world.
The shifting, magical dimension collapsed around me, trying to seal me inside.
The folding glass walls hit the ten-meter edge of my Magic Nullification Aura.
A sound like a million shattering windows echoed across Wakanda. The Mirror Dimension physically rejected my presence. The Eldritch magic fueling the pocket reality instantly turned to ash, and the kaleidoscopic walls violently exploded outward, returning the jungle to its normal, physical state.
Strange stumbled backward, clutching his head as the spell was forcibly deleted from the fabric of the universe.
"My turn," I whispered.
I didn't use the Space Stone. I engaged my sub-light acceleration.
To the mortal and enhanced eyes watching, I didn't move. I simply teleported.
In a fraction of a microsecond, I crossed the fifty yards separating us and appeared directly in front of the Sorcerer Supreme. The wind from my movement hadn't even reached him yet.
Strange froze, paralyzed by the sheer, impossible speed.
I reached out, my fingers wrapping around the golden Eye of Agamotto resting against his chest. I snapped the heavy leather cord and pulled the amulet away.
I squeezed my fist. The ancient magical housing of the Eye shattered like brittle plastic in my grip, revealing the glowing green Time Stone hidden inside.
I dropped the broken golden casing onto the dirt. I raised the Infinity Gauntlet and slotted the final stone into the thumb mount.
A blinding, rainbow wave of absolute cosmic power erupted from the Gauntlet, washing over the entire planet. The six fundamental forces of the universe were finally united.
I stood in the center of the Wakandan jungle, the complete Infinity Gauntlet gleaming on my hand, listening to the terrified, rapid heartbeats of the broken heroes standing around me. The harvest was complete.
Chapter 119: The Multiversal Architect
October 5
The cosmic hum of the six Infinity Stones vibrated through the heavy golden metal of the Gauntlet.
The rainbow-colored radiation washed over the Wakandan jungle, casting long, eerie shadows across the ash-covered dirt. The air felt suffocatingly heavy, thick with the concentrated power of the universe's fundamental forces.
A few yards away, the surviving defenders of Earth braced themselves.
Tony Stark raised his trembling, ruined hands, his repulsors whining uselessly on low power. Captain America stood tall, his jaw set in grim defiance, ready to face the end of the world without blinking. Doctor Strange was entirely paralyzed, his scarred hands locked at his sides as he stared at the complete Gauntlet. They had fought across dimensions, sacrificed their friends, and bled on multiple planets to prevent this exact moment.
They were waiting for me to snap my fingers. They were waiting for half the universe to turn to dust.
I raised my right hand, looking at the glowing gems nested in the knuckles. The power inside them was staggering, a raw, chaotic storm of reality-altering potential. To a mortal, wielding them was a death sentence. To Thanos, they were a religious tool.
To me, they were raw data.
I didn't position my thumb and middle finger. I didn't snap.
Instead, I raised my left hand. I reached over, pinched the glowing green Time Stone resting on my thumb knuckle, and effortlessly popped it out of its housing.
Doctor Strange gasped, stumbling forward a half-step before freezing. He had no idea what I was doing.
I didn't stop with the Time Stone. I plucked the Mind Stone, the Space Stone, the Power Stone, the Reality Stone, and finally, the Soul Stone, pulling them completely out of the Uru metal glove. I held the six glowing, humming pebbles in the palm of my left hand.
Without the stones, the heavy golden Infinity Gauntlet was just a useless, oversized metal glove.
"System," I whispered, my voice perfectly calm in the deafening silence of the jungle. "Assimilate the fundamental cosmic catalysts."
The six Infinity Stones did not flash. They didn't explode.
They simply dissolved.
The solid gems liquified into streams of pure, concentrated, multicolored cosmic energy. The energy spiraled upward, wrapping around my forearm before sinking directly into my skin. It didn't burn. It felt like a freezing, electric current merging directly with my atomic structure.
The Plot Changing System instantly went supernova.
The familiar golden text that usually populated my vision completely shattered. It was replaced by a blinding, incandescent platinum light. The interface didn't just update; it underwent a massive, fundamental structural overhaul, frantically processing the raw blueprint of the Marvel universe.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM OVERRIDE INITIATED.]
[Fundamental Universal Catalysts Absorbed: Space, Time, Power, Reality, Mind, Soul.]
[Processing Raw Cosmic Energy...]
[Reward: +500,000,000 System Points.]
[Maximum Threshold Exceeded. Assimilation Complete.]
The platinum text burned with a divine, terrifying clarity, reorganizing my entire existence.
[NEW TIER UNLOCKED: THE MULTIVERSAL ARCHITECT.]
[Host has transcended standard physical and genetic limitations.]
[Native Reality Manipulation acquired. Host may now bend, alter, and rewrite the fundamental forces of the universe at will, without the requirement of external catalysts or physical tolls.]
The blinding platinum light faded from my vision, settling deep into the marrow of my Royal Viltrumite bones.
I lowered my left hand. The Infinity Stones were gone. They were not destroyed; they were a permanent part of my biology. I was no longer just a physical god of war. I was the architect of reality itself.
I looked down at my right hand, still wearing the empty, golden Infinity Gauntlet.
"You built an entire religion around a handful of rocks," I said quietly, my voice carrying across the silent, devastated battlefield.
I clenched my right fist.
I didn't apply physical pressure. I simply willed the gauntlet to cease existing.
The enchanted, indestructible Uru metal instantly turned into a cloud of fine, golden dust. The breeze caught the particles, blowing them effortlessly through the trees, leaving my hand completely bare.
Tony Stark dropped to his knees in the dirt. The billionaire genius stared at the empty space where the gauntlet had been, his brilliant mind utterly fracturing under the weight of what he had just witnessed. Thanos had needed a magical forge and a dying star to harness the stones. I had simply eaten them.
"It's over," Steve Rogers whispered, his shield finally slipping from his bruised arm, clattering against the scorched earth. He looked at me, a profound, weary resignation in his eyes. He fully expected me to wipe them out.
I looked at the broken Avengers. They were bruised, bleeding, and entirely defeated.
"It is over," I agreed, my tone flat and devoid of malice. "This universe has been thoroughly harvested. There is nothing left here for me to break."
I didn't raise my hand to open a portal. I didn't need the Space Stone, and I didn't need a Boom Tube. I simply commanded the fabric of dimensions to part for me.
A pristine, glowing golden tear ripped open in the center of the Wakandan jungle. Through the portal, the sprawling, infinite void of the Hub World waited—a dark, serene nexus filled with floating spheres of countless alternate realities.
I adjusted the cuffs of my tailored black shirt, completely unbothered by the cosmic ash settling on the shoulders.
I didn't say goodbye to the heroes of Earth. I simply stepped through the golden tear, the portal snapping cleanly shut behind me, leaving the surviving Avengers alive in the dirt to rebuild their shattered, empty universe.