The air was different here—colder, sharper, carrying the distant scent of exhaust, pretzels, and concrete. Aaron blinked, his senses reeling as his surroundings snapped into focus. He stood in an alley, his back pressed against rough brick. Before him, a bustling city street stretched out, a canyon of glass and steel under a pale sky. The architecture was unmistakably Western, grand and angular, a stark contrast to the familiar vistas of his hometown.
A deep, unsettling thrum pulsed from his right hand. He looked down, his breath catching. There, etched into the very center of his palm, was a void—a perfect, infinitesimal point of absolute darkness. It wasn't a wound, but an embedded fact. It seemed to spin with a slow, cosmic laziness, a miniature event horizon that warped the light around it, its edges faintly shimmering as it breathed in and out. Staring into its depth sent a primal chill coursing through his veins, a vertigo that spoke of impossible distances and the silence between stars.
Just moments ago, he had been Aaron, a twenty-two-year-old university graduate in his own apartment, contemplating the first, daunting steps of adult life. Then, without sound or warning, the world had peeled open. A darkness, profound and hungry, had unfolded from the air itself and swallowed him whole.
In that oblivion, he had not been unconscious. He had witnessed. He saw the searing, silent birth of galaxies from a primordial fire, watched cosmic filaments weave the tapestry of existence, and felt the crushing, elegant closure of stars collapsing into eternal night. It was terrifying and beautiful beyond comprehension. As the phantom shockwave of a final, theoretical universal death rushed toward him, he had closed his eyes, accepting annihilation.
He had opened them here.
And with the new air in his lungs came a silent, conceptual understanding, flowing into his mind not as words, but as innate knowledge.
The darkness in his palm was the Primal Furnace. A nascent entity, born from beyond the veils of reality itself. It was a conceptual engine, a paradox made manifest: a forge that could smelt all existence, and from that dissolution, create anything. It could consume any object, any being, extract the fundamental concepts, laws, or properties that defined it, and then reconstitute those abstracts as abilities, enhancements, or items for its host. It transcended conventional physics, operating on a framework where matter, energy, and even abstract notions like time and space were but raw materials.
Theoretically, it stood adjacent to the concept of concepts themselves.
It was, however, newborn. It required data—a vast infusion of information and tangible samples from a rich reality to complete its initial bootstrapping sequence, to calibrate its infinite potential. In its first conscious act, it had chosen a host. It had chosen Aaron.
If that's the case, then why bring me here? He thought, the question sharp and directed inward. You couldn't have asked? You just… ate me.
A sense of profound, dispassionate observation echoed back, not in sound, but in pure meaning. [The native reality was statistically stagnant. Low-yield. This locus possesses greater narrative density and dimensional instability. The potential for acquisition is orders of magnitude higher.]
"Narrative density?" Aaron muttered aloud, his eyes darting around the alley before lifting to scan the skyline. His gaze snagged on a iconic structure piercing the heavens, its name emblazoned near the summit in sleek, modern lettering. His blood ran cold. "Stark Tower? You dumped me into the Marvel Universe?"
Panic, swift and visceral, tightened his chest. This wasn't just a new city or a new country; this was a universe where gods meddled, aliens invaded, and genius billionaires built world-saving suits in caves. A universe where the quiet, orderly life he'd anticipated was laughably impossible. A delivery boy in a warzone.
[Anxiety is a non-optimal response. We are conjoined. Your completion is my completion. Once the foundational accumulation is archived, we will transcend the local paradigm.]
Aaron's expression hardened. A more terrifying question surfaced. "When you say 'we,' what remains of me? Am I still Aaron, or am I just… your interface?"
The response was immediate, carrying a tone of immutable logic. [You are the unique constant. Your consciousness is the seed. Your soul and physique have been remade as the optimal vessel. You are the architect of possibility; I am the instrument. I cannot deceive you, for to deceive you is to fracture our foundational unity.]
It felt true, in the way a mathematical proof feels true. The Furnace was less a separate voice and more an extension of his own subconscious, a cosmic function now wired into his nervous system. He was, in a very real sense, talking to himself. A self that now contained a universe-forge.
He shook his head, the philosophical dread giving way to immediate, brutal pragmatism. He was in New York, in the Marvel Universe, with no identity, no documents, and no money. In this capitalist engine, money was leverage, safety, and freedom. But before he could secure any of that, he needed power. Money was the foundation for living; power was the foundation for surviving.
The Furnace needed to be fed. To grow, he had to provide it with materials.
"So I'm on a cosmic scavenger hunt," he whispered to himself, a grim smile touching his lips. He patted his pockets, the simple, habitual gesture feeling absurdly mundane. His fingers closed around familiar objects. A smartphone—a high-end model from 2025—and a crumpled tissue. That was it. The sum total of his physical transition between worlds.
In his old world, the phone was a lifeline. Here, given the insane technological leaps pioneered by Stark Industries, Wakanda, and others, its hardware might be quaint, but its underlying concepts—connectivity, processing, sensing—were universal. It was a starting point.
Without further ceremony, he pressed the phone against the dark singularity in his palm. There was no sound, only a slight pull, like the passing of a ghost. The device was gone, consumed in an instant.
The reaction was immediate. From the void, several strands of cool, iridescent light erupted. They flowed up his arm like liquid electricity, branching through his nervous system, merging with his cells, flooding his cerebral cortex. He felt a series of pops and clicks inside his skull, a sensation of lenses focusing and processors coming online. Data scrolled behind his eyes, not visually, but as understood knowledge.
[Acquisition Complete. Synthesizing Core Concepts…]
[Superior Cognitive Matrix: Integrates absolute memory retention, instantaneous data retrieval, hyper-accelerated processing, and parallel computational threading.]**
[Enhanced Optical Resolution: Capable of resolving a basketball-sized object at 500 meters with crystal clarity. Includes dynamic tracking sub-routines.]**
[Expanded Sensory Array: Can detect and interpret electromagnetic spectra beyond human range, including standard wireless signals. Can discern physiological minutiae such as heartbeat variance, respiratory rhythms, and micro-tremors within a 50-meter radius.]**
[Energy Mapping & Regulation: Enables precise internal energy allocation and calculation of optimal consumption pathways for all biological and synthesized functions.]**
[Electrostatic Capacitance & Discharge: Capable of storing ambient electrostatic energy and releasing it in controlled arcs. Current limit: 0.5 megajoules.]**
[Network Interface Protocol: Instinctive ability to perceive and interact with local wireless networks. Can establish non-invasive data streams and execute basic remote operations.]**
[Kinetic Refinement: Grants superior kinesthetic awareness and flexibility, allowing for precise, extreme bodily control and fluid motion.]**
[Electromagnetic Field Generation: Can generate and manipulate a localized magnetic field of approximately 0.3 Teslas.]**
[Molecular Agitation: Can induce precise vibrational frequencies in matter at the point of contact.]**
[Controlled Photon Emission: Can emit light across the visible spectrum from epidermal cells.]**
[…Integration Stable.]
Aaron gasped, staggering back a step as the influx settled. He felt different. The world was sharper, louder with data. He could feel the hum of power lines in the walls, see the individual pixels on a distant billboard, and was acutely aware of the Wi-Fi networks pinging his consciousness like distant lighthouses. His body felt lighter, stronger, more responsive.
A laugh, edged with disbelief and burgeoning triumph, escaped him. "A smartphone. You turned me into a 'Phone Guy.'" The potential was staggering. If a common device could grant him a suite of low-tier superhuman abilities, what lay further up the chain? Medical imaging tech? Advanced alloys? Or the truly exotic: Vibranium, Uru, the Super-Soldier Serum? The artifacts littering this world, the so-called "084s," the treasures of Asgard… and the pinnacle, the singularities of power themselves—the Infinity Stones.
Even the beings who wielded such power could, in theory, be analyzed. The very Celestials were, at their core, a complex set of concepts. The hunger of the Furnace mirrored his own newfound ambition.