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Chapter 001 – Prologue
The world was gray, red, and ruined.
New York—once the city that never slept—lay in a profane silence, broken only by the distant crackle of insatiable flames and the fading, electronic whimper of buried car alarms. They were the dying hiccups of a fallen giant. Skyscrapers, their steel bones twisted and exposed, dotted the horizon like tombstones of a once-proud civilization. The sky, once a vibrant blue, was now stained with the oppressive red of an apocalyptic dawn, as if the very firmament were bleeding over the debris.
And at the center of this nightmare, a scar.
A monstrous crater where concrete and asphalt had been vaporized, giving way to cracked, barren earth. It was the epicenter of the fall. And there, at the bottom of this pit of desolation, a young man lay sprawled.
He was Spider-Man.
The Amazing Spider-Man.
But there was nothing amazing about his condition now, except perhaps the incredible fact that he was still breathing. His suit—a second skin of fabric and technology—hung in tatters, revealing pale flesh marked by a constellation of purple and green bruises. Open wounds pulsed with agonizing rhythm, and the mask—a symbol of anonymity and hope—was gone. Reduced to rags. His youthful face, now cruelly sculpted by pain, was exposed.
He was Peter Parker.
One eye was nearly swollen shut, a deep, sickening purple, while the other, sunk behind a monstrous bag of exhaustion, struggled to remain open. Dark, thick blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, painting the dusty ground beneath his cheek. Every breath was a knife in his ribs; every heartbeat, a hammer pounding inside his skull.
Pain was a living entity, inhabiting every fiber of him. A heavy, seductive drowsiness tugged at his eyelids, whispering promises of peace, of endings. It was the call of unconsciousness—the cold embrace of shock. But something inside him, a stubborn spark refusing to be extinguished, reacted. With a groan that was more a breath than a sound, he moved his arms. Muscles screamed, bones protested, but he began to crawl. A slug's pace—an epic journey of inches across a desert of agony.
His blurred, flickering vision fixed on a point ahead.
The edge of the crater.
His personal Mount Everest.
With a determination born not of heroism but of sheer human stubbornness, he dragged his broken body toward it.
And then, he saw it.
It was more than a fissure. It was a tear in the fabric of reality itself, a cosmic wound rising from the depths of the city to heights that dared to challenge the clouds. It looked like shattering glass on a divine scale, with sickly purple rays of energy crackling along its jagged edges. From its core, an unbearable pressure radiated, warping the air around it—promising annihilation far beyond New York. This was the end of everything.
"F… fuck…" The word crawled out of his cracked lips, followed by a wet cough that folded him in pain, the metallic taste of blood flooding his mouth. "I… I n… need t—"
Need.
That simple word echoed in his mind, clearing the fog of pain for one precious instant.
He needed to reach it.
There was no one else.
The Avengers, the X-Men—everyone was either fighting elsewhere or already fallen.
The burden, one last time, was his alone.
With a muffled roar pulled from the depths of his soul, Peter planted his hands on the ground. The muscles in his corded arms tensed; the veins in his neck bulged like ropes. The agony was so severe that white spots danced before his eyes, threatening to drag him back into darkness.
But he rose.
Trembling. Unstable.
A marionette with its strings cut.
Still—standing.
The first step was torture. His leg nearly gave out, sending a shockwave of pain through his system. He staggered but did not fall.
The second step was worse—a burning ripple through his hips and spine.
He ignored it.
Focused.
The rift was his only horizon.
Then his mind, treacherous and fading, began to unravel.
Memories flooded his consciousness—not in any orderly sequence, but in a chaotic whirlpool of emotion. Uncle Ben's smiling face, filled with pride and wisdom. The cold, gutting agony of holding his lifeless body. MJ's ironic, beautiful smile, the scent of her shampoo. Aunt May's rough but secretly affectionate voice. Flash Thompson's mockery. Doctor Octopus's gleaming eyes. The Green Goblin's manic laughter. Flash after flash of a life—happy, tragic, ordinary, extraordinary.
Hot tears mixed with blood and dust on his face, leaving small clean trails on his filthy skin. His spider-sense—once his greatest advantage—now shrieked in a crescendo of pure terror. Every instinct screamed for him to flee, hide, survive. It was a primal call—irrational, overwhelming.
But Peter Parker, Spider-Man, knew some things were greater than survival.
With superhuman effort, he silenced the screams in his mind and in his body.
Step by step, the rift grew in his vision until it consumed his entire world.
Its pulsing energy made his skin tingle.
The air smelled of ozone and static—the herald of a dimensional storm.
Before he realized it, he was there.
Just an arm's reach away from the boundary separating existence from oblivion.
He stopped, panting, and looked back one last time.
He saw the skeletons of buildings, the ruined vehicles, the silence of a dead city.
But he saw beyond the destruction.
He saw the seeds of tomorrow.
The people who would rebuild, who would rise again, who would live.
They would have a future.
He would not.
A cold grip wrapped around his heart—a final embrace from the death he had defied so many times.
It was time.
With a solemn calm that contrasted brutally with the storm around him, Peter Parker reached out.
His trembling, bloodied fingers touched the surface of the rift.
TREMOR
It wasn't a sound but a sensation that swept across the world. The earth quaked violently beneath him. Dust frozen in the air began to dance, weightless. Reality itself seemed to groan under impossible pressure, as if the universe had just exhaled a heavy, weary sigh.
And for Peter, came the pain.
Not the physical pain he knew so well, but cosmic agony.
As if every atom of his body were unraveling, every molecule of DNA rewritten, his very soul stretched to the breaking point.
A scream lodged in his throat—a silent roar of absolute torment.
He felt the limits of his being dissolve, darkness devouring his vision until nothing remained.
Nothing except the vortex.
•
•
•
The first thing to return was smell.
A salty, fresh scent filled his nostrils—a living, marine smell so different from the dust and death that had saturated his lungs.
Then sound.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
A rhythmic, steady noise—the gentle crash of waves against a wooden hull.
Consciousness rolled back into him like a slow, lazy tide.
The pain was still there, but distant now—dull, like the echo of a nightmare.
He tried opening his eyes and was immediately punished by a blinding golden light. He shut them again, blinking repeatedly until the spots faded.
Gradually, the world sharpened.
He lay on his back, staring at a sky so blue, so pure, so innocent—utterly free of apocalyptic red. A seagull flew overhead, its call mundane and wonderful. He turned his head—a movement that cost him dearly—and saw a wooden mast rising above him. At the top, a black flag fluttered lazily in the breeze. The cloth was worn, with a few holes, but the symbol was unmistakable:
A skull.
A universal sign of danger—and illegality.
"… Wh… what…" he croaked, his tongue heavy and dry. None of this made any sense.
A ship?
A pirate flag?
Before he could gather his thoughts, a rough, gravelly voice bellowed nearby, slicing through the salty air.
"Well, looks like the sleepyhead finally woke up!"
Peter turned his head the other way. A man leaned against the railing, watching him with a toothless grin. He was round-bellied, with a wild red beard that seemed to devour most of his face—an amusing contrast to the sparse hair on his balding head. Peter tried to sit up—an automatic reflex—and that was when he felt the tightness around his wrists. Rope. Thick rope.
Cold, familiar panic began to rise in his chest. He forced it down.
"Where… where am I?" he asked, voice steadier this time.
The round man burst into thunderous laughter, slapping his enormous belly.
"Hahaha! You're aboard the ship of the future Yonko! The great Silas Saltea!!"
"Yonko?" Peter repeated, the word sounding alien in his mind.
"Captain, it's still way too soon for that kind of claim…" whispered another man—thin, nervous-looking—who was mopping the deck a few meters away. "We barely finished fishing rum barrels off the sea… We don't even have a decent crew..."
"Silence!" the round man—Silas—snapped, glaring at him. "We're the strongest…"
He paused dramatically, glancing around the mostly empty deck before adding, with noticeably less conviction: "… at least in this perimeter!"
Peter stared at the self-proclaimed captain, then looked around.
Wooden deck. Mast. Blue sky. Smell of salt.
None of it connected to the dimensional rift, to the destroyed New York, to his last desperate act of heroism.
A deep, vertigo-inducing confusion overtook him—more frightening than any villain he'd ever faced. His mind, still trying to process the final agony of his world, struggled to accept the absurd reality unfolding before him.
What the hell was happening?
(End of Prologue)
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