Malekith staggered forward, his breath ragged, body torn and burned from the devastating golden strike.
For a fleeting moment, he had truly felt the holy touch of death. But before he was extinguished, the Aether surged around him like a living shield, cocooning his body and halting the fatal blow.
He laughed.
No…
He howled with triumph.
"You… you can't kill me!" He screamed, arms spread wide as Aether particles began to billow from his body once again, smoke seeping from a collapsing star.
"The Aether is free!"
"The veil between worlds has fallen, and the Era of Eternal Night… the Era of the Dark ElvesMY era~has arrived!"
The skies above shimmered in red, veins of Aether snaking into the heavens, reaching across realms like the hands of a dark god.
One by one, the threads of other worlds began to flicker and dim. Even the air changed, colder, thinner as if light itself were losing hope.
Behind Soren, the Avengers and the Ancient One stared in horror.
"W-we're too late."
"No… no! This can't be how it ends." Someone cried, trying to break through the warriors holding them back.
"He's... really doing it." The Ancient One's lips trembled.
Amidst the storm and laughter, Soren stood still, expressionless.
His robes fluttered gently in the rising surge of dark energy, but his aura was almost entirely gone. His magic, once blinding and forceful, now whispering dying breeze.
Malekith noticed.
"What's the matter, mortal?" He jeered.
"Did that little firework burn out your strength? Or have you finally understood that you're nothing before me!?"
He turned back to the sky, arms trembling with anticipation. "Yes! Spread! Flow! Fall into shadow! All of you!"
"Once the particles touch the heart of every realm, I'll reclaim them and become the universe's true king!"
But he had forgotten one thing.
Aether, in its released state, no longer protected him.
Soren… had been waiting.
Soren slowly raised his left hand, and revealed the Time Stone, glowing bright green between his fingers.
Malekith froze.
"Malekith. You talk too much."
The world stopped.
A wave of emerald light surged outward.
Time froze.
The elf warriors mid-strike, the sky mid-collapse, even Malekith himself, mouth agape, arms raised, were caught in suspended motion.
"That's enough."
With a flicker of space, Soren teleported directly in front of the Dark Elf. He calmly drew his Adamantium-alloy blade, its edge humming softly, gleaming unnaturally bright against the stillness of time.
He looked Malekith directly in the eyes, unmoving as they were, and almost seemed... regretful.
"You were never my opponent. Just a scared man who hid inside power he didn't understand."
He plunged the blade into Malekith's chest.
The red light inside the Elf's body flickered violently. Soren twisted the blade once. Slowly.
Aether began to rupture from the wound like vapor escaping a broken dam.
Without Malekith's guidance, the particles lost control. The sky started to pulse, destabilizing and then contracting.
Soren closed his eyes and raised his free hand, calling upon his Psychokinesis. Aether particles across the realms reversed course, spiraling inward in streams of crimson, pulled back toward their origin.
In seconds, they collapsed into a single point, a glowing, dark red crystal.
Reality Stone.
It dropped neatly into Soren's hand.
"And now you're just another stain."
Time resumed.
Malekith gasped sharply, one final breath, and then crumpled to his knees.
The cursed warriors screamed as the Aether left them. Without it, they had no strength. They collapsed across the battlefield, inert.
The sky cleared.
The light returned.
The war… was over.
Soren turned, blood dripping from his blade, the red gem pulsing faintly in his palm.
The System's voice rang clearly in his ears:
[Congratulations, Host. Reality Stone acquired — 3/6 Infinity Stones collected.]
He let out a slow breath.
A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"Three down. Three to go."
Malekith's body had already fallen into ruin, the light of his ambition snuffed out, but Soren wasn't finished yet.
He looked down at the fading wisp that was once the Dark Elf King.
"Did you think you were the only one who could wield Infinity Stones?" Soren said coldly.
The battlefield around them was littered with corpses of fallen cursed warriors, the air thick with the stench of blood and the charred remains of battle.
The few warriors who still stood, monstrous beings fueled by spite and despair, roared in fury when they saw Soren tuck the Reality Stone away.
Without a second thought, they charged, massive forms barreling toward him.
A lesser man might have hesitated. Soren... smiled.
"Come then." His voice was casual, the Adamantium alloy blade in his hand glinting under the broken light.
The first cursed warrior lunged, claws slashing the air. But in the blink of an eye, Soren's form shimmered, only to reappear behind him.
A spurt of black blood~
The warrior's torso slid away from his legs and collapsed to the ground, twitching.
Without pausing, Soren vanished again, dancing across the battlefield like a phantom of death.
A dozen cursed warriors fell in mere heartbeats, their howls silenced mid-scream.
When the dust finally settled, the field was a graveyard.
Soren's blade in his hand, gleaming clean, not a single drop of blood daring to stain it. He sheathed it with a metallic click.
Above, the phantom image of the Nine Realms, a once terrifying spectacle of cosmic convergence, began to fade like mist in the morning sun.
The light returned.
The people behind Soren, who had been frozen in horror earlier, now stirred.
"Soren... is it over?" Steve Rogers' voice broke through.
Sunlight streamed over the battlefield, burning away the last shadows.
Soren turned toward them, a slight, almost boyish grin spreading across his face.
He tilted his head toward the handful of straggling dark elves that still remained, crawling and broken.
"Over?" Soren chuckled lightly. "Not quite. Care for some leftovers?"
The Hulk, already beginning to shrink down from his monstrous form, grunted and waved him off.
"Hulk… tired. No smash."
Tony Stark floated down, his armor hissing and de-pressurizing. He flipped up his mask and wiped his brow exaggeratedly.
"I'll pass. I left my 'murderous rampage' setting back at the tower." He quipped dryly. "Besides, you seem to be doing just fine without us."
Soren laughed under his breath and, with a flick of his wrist, materialized a blade of pure psychic energy.
The blade zipped through the last remnants of the dark elves, slicing cleanly without a sound.
Without even waiting for the bodies to hit the ground, Soren casually opened a small time rift with a twist of his fingers, tossing the corpses into the shimmering void… forgotten trash.
"And now..."
"we're done."
He turned back to the stunned heroes and grinned wider.
"We won. There'll be no more dark elves. Ever."
For a moment, there was only silence, thick and weighty. Then~
A roar of victory broke out from the soldiers and fighters across the field.
Thor slammed his hammer into the ground triumphantly, lightning crackling around him.
Steve simply nodded once, a rare smile crossing his weathered face.
Soren didn't join in the cheering. Instead, while the others celebrated, he quietly gathered samples, blood, tissue, and fragments of armor from the fallen dark elves and cursed warriors.
"Waste not."
"There's much to learn yet..."
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
Check out the new story: Garfield Across the Multiverse
PhantomDream