"Whenever something shatters reality, it rings like a bell across the universe."—Dr. Stephen Strange
New York CitySanctum Sanctorum, Greenwich Village
The tea went cold before Wong returned.
Doctor Stephen Strange stood at the window, gazing past the Manhattan skyline toward a single red anomaly in the upper stratosphere. A rift, barely visible to the naked eye, but screaming in the arcane frequencies he'd trained himself to hear.
Something has pierced the Veil, he thought grimly.
He didn't like the feeling curling in his gut. The multiverse had been fragile since the Incursion Event. Every ripple risked a tsunami.
Wong entered, holding a thick scroll and a worn leather tome that smelled of ancient ink and ozone.
"It's not from any known dimensional family," Wong said without preamble. "Not Valtorr, not Watoomb. Not even the Dark Dimension."
Strange frowned. "Then it's new."
Wong shook his head. "Worse. It's old, but forgotten."
Elsewhere — Wakanda
A hologram shimmered to life in Shuri's laboratory. Vibranium sensors had picked up a burst of exotic energy—foreign even to the deepest databanks of Wakanda's archives.
Shuri's fingers danced across a projection of the shard's waveform.
"This isn't just energy," she murmured. "This is... narrative entropy. Like someone rewrote a story—and left the ink bleeding off the page."
She sent a pulse to her global allies.
"Contact Stark's successors. And the Sanctum. This isn't natural."
Chicago – Riri Williams' Lab
The message came through coded frequencies.
Riri Williams—aka Ironheart—looked up from her kinetic gauntlet project as her A.I. pinged her screen.
[UNREGISTERED COSMIC SPIKE DETECTED — PROBABLE LEVEL 6 EVENT]
Riri raised an eyebrow. "That can't be right. That's a level we reserve for..." She trailed off, eyes scanning the data.
"Oh."
She was already suiting up.
Jakarta, Indonesia
Kael lay in bed, awake, staring at the shard on his desk.
It no longer glowed. It just sat there, silent, ordinary—like a forgotten souvenir.
But Kael knew better.
He hadn't told anyone—not his mom, not his best friend Arya, not the school counselor who kept asking about his "disassociation episodes."
He couldn't explain it, but something in the back of his mind felt stretched. Like a radio tuned to multiple stations at once.
He'd seen a version of himself burning. And in the mirror that morning, for the briefest second, his reflection had smiled back with different eyes.
A knock at his window startled him.
He spun—and stared.
Hovering just outside was a girl in a high-tech suit, her helmet retracting to reveal tight curls and a serious face.
"Hi," she said casually. "Name's Riri Williams. You're Kael Iskandar, right?"
Kael blinked. "Uh... yeah?"
"Cool. We need to talk about the glowing space crystal you bonded with. And the fact that several highly advanced civilizations just registered your existence as a Class-X multiversal variable."
Kael blinked again. "A what?"
Riri sighed. "Short version: you're not just special. You're dangerous."
Behind her, the sky shimmered again—like it was watching.
[To Be Continued in Chapter 3 – The Boy with the Rift Inside]