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In an instant, Nolan stepped through the veil and appeared inside the Watcher's Hall.
At first glance, it resembled an ordinary, spacious, gleaming, almost regal chamber, but cosmic energy rippled through every surface.
Technology and sorcery coexisted here, so advanced that the boundary between the two no longer existed.
Though this Hall stood outside the temporal loop, it was still part of this universe's fabric one of its higher dimensions, carved open by the Watcher himself.
If Kamar-Taj could mirror reality through a pocket dimension, it was trivial for the Watchers a species whose understanding of creation had long since surpassed technology and merged with metaphysics.
They had existed since the universe's first light.
What mortals called "science," they called instinct. Their craft had ascended beyond mechanics; it was cosmic magic coded into logic.
And communication with other Watchers across the multiverse came as easily as breathing.
Once, long ago, a Watcher had decided that their knowledge should benefit life.
He had visited the planet Prosilicus, guiding its fledgling civilization toward rapid progress.
But the race of Prosilicus, corrupted by its own newfound power, destroyed itself in atomic fire.
Since that day, the Watchers swore an oath of non-intervention to observe, never to interfere.
Across the multiverse, every Watcher honored this vow.
Only when an event threatened the annihilation of reality itself would they break it.
Even if all life in a universe perished, as long as the cosmos endured, the Watchers would remain silent.
---
"Welcome, Sorcerer Supreme of another reality."
The voice was calm, vast, and knowing.
A colossal, bald-headed figure, his presence filling the Hall, regarded Nolan with an almost human smile.
The Watcher had expected him.
"I'm intrigued by your kind," Nolan said evenly. "I've resolved the crisis plaguing your universe. In return, I need a few of your… materials for research. That's fair, isn't it?"
The Watcher chuckled softly. "I abandoned flesh long ago. This form is pure energy now. And you already know from your walk through the river of time that this universe has repeated itself countless times."
There was no anger in his tone only faint guilt.
Nolan was right: he had saved their universe from collapse. If he wished to study a fragment of the Watcher's essence, that was a small price to pay.
"Long ago," the Watcher continued, "I shed my body. My consciousness exists as a frequency, a pattern of energy.
Unless my soul itself is destroyed, I cannot die."
"Then I'll simply travel back," Nolan replied, "to the origin point of the infection, before the temporal sickness took root. I'll retrieve what I need there."
The Watcher inclined his massive head.
"You may but you must swear this: once you return from that moment, you will remain here, in the Hall. Do not influence any being or event that follows that time-point. Otherwise, this universe will fall into a temporal paradox a self-authenticating collapse far worse than a loop. You'd be trapped in what mortals might call a time recursion, forever proving your own existence."
Nolan's brow lifted. He hadn't expected such easy compliance.
He'd assumed such a request might spark suspicion or even draw the ire of the entire Watcher Council across the multiverse.
Yet the Watcher agreed without hesitation.
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"Then let me see the loop," Nolan said.
"Here."
Reality shifted around him.
The technological grandeur of the Hall melted into a vision that resembled the New York Sanctum arcane circles pulsing in the air, rivers of light spiraling between dimensions.
He sensed raw magic streaming from every direction energies drawn from neighboring realities to sustain the dual-universe time loop.
Of course.
Power on that scale could never emerge from nothing; it had to be siphoned from elsewhere.
No wonder the spell was breaking apart.
A single loop might hold briefly but an eternal one? Impossible.
Each cycle drained more and more from the surrounding dimensions.
What looked infinite was not; even a god's power had limits.
Across countless loops, some dimensions had already been hollowed out, their cosmic energy stripped until they simply ceased to exist.
It was the cost of salvation: to quarantine the zombie infection, the Watchers had sacrificed entire dimensions.
Now the structure itself was failing the loop's energy lattice riddled with cracks.
Nolan's soul-sight unfolded.
He beheld the Temporal Array in its entirety an impossible web of sigils and fractal geometry, intricate enough to rival the Earth's planetary defense barrier, though its purpose was wholly different.
He understood it immediately.
Each glyph represented equations of cross-dimensional harmonics, each line a channel siphoning energy from a dying universe.
And this was only half of it.
The other half of its counterpart existed in the mirror universe, where the second Watcher guarded another infected cosmos.
Until Nolan solved both halves, the cycle would persist.
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"I've already spoken with my counterpart," the Watcher said. "He's awaiting you eagerly. Whatever you require, you'll have his full cooperation."
Nolan nodded, taking in the entirety of the loop's design. "Understood. But it'll take time."
With a thought, he collapsed the vision, stepping back through the Hall's veil and into the mortal world.
Back at Oscorp Corporation, he addressed AER. "Have you extracted the Galactus-strain energy from the infected subjects?"
"Extraction in progress," the AI replied.
"And the zombie-serum trials?"
"Still under observation."
Nolan's eyes flickered with contained power, the colors of six Stones gleaming faintly in his pupils.
"Then let's finish this."
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