The void stretched endlessly, a suffocating sea of black that remained as it was. Untouched. Unbroken by the quaint laws of a universe it predated.
For the 'Black' was beyond it. Beyond the first, defiant spark of creation that had graced the cosmos. Beyond the petty construct of time. For the Black was the Abyss.
The Abyss before causality, the canvas where the only color permitted was a deeper shade of itself. It was a conscious, hungry emptiness, the sentient nothingness from which all symbiotes were spawned.
Mjolnir's divine glow had dimmed the moment they arrived, its thunderous light swallowed by the oppressive emptiness, as though the storm itself feared to trespass here. Peter's Spider-Sense wasn't just tingling; it was screaming, a continuous, high-frequency shriek of pure, undiluted wrongness that threatened to tear his consciousness apart. Ranger's visor, visible as a faint blue line in the crushing dark, was a frantic cascade of warnings and notifications, each one a testament to a reality actively hostile to their existence.
The black was the only thing there. No sight. Even with the ultralink suit's advanced sensory suite, Peter couldn't see Thor or Ranger, who had entered with him. Were it not for his Spider-Sense shouting in bold, frantic psychic text that they were right beside him, he would have surrendered to the encroaching panic.
"Mr. Ranger? Thor? Are you there? Can you hear me?" his voice felt small, swallowed by the infinite silence. Sound did not travel here. It simply died, another morsel for the all-consuming void. He tried to send a message through the suit's comms, but the signal flatlined, absorbed by the darkness. Nothing escaped this place.
He was close to freaking out. A raw, primal terror clawed at the edges of his mind. But he didn't. He couldn't. He knew what he had signed up for. He was standing on the doorstep of a being that had butchered Celestials, a primordial darkness that could bring the whole of Earth to its knees with a bored sigh.
He steeled himself, a tremor running through his limbs. Not now, Parker. Freak out later. When you're not standing in the literal birthplace of nightmares. He took a step forward. His boot landed on something that wasn't solid. Liquid. Yes. But at the same time, it wasn't. It felt… familiar. It clung to his boot not with surface tension, but with a cold, possessive hunger, a million microscopic mouths tasting his suit.
Venom. The thought was immediate, instinctual. This was the primordial soup, the living darkness from which his other half was born. His mind, sharp even in the face of cosmic dread, began to race, formulating hypotheses, discarding them, refining.
"WEB-ster," he subvocalized, the comms working on a closed, internal loop. "Is there any similarity between this… uh… liquid and Venom? Or any symbiote?"
"Analyzing the ambient substance risks direct exposure and potential system compromise. I must advise you to not continue with your current course of action merely to obtain Venom's ancestral report," WEB-ster's synthesized, and distinctly sassy, voice rang in his ears. "Unless, of course, that one-time bonding experience with a slimy, amorphous creature that roamed the body of an underage child with questionable consent made you develop… feelings for him. Should I inform Mr. Ranger that you have fallen for a child-molesting, tentacled lifeform? Or is that a topic you would prefer to discuss with your aunt first?"
"NO! NO! Don't do that!" Peter almost screamed. "Mr. Ranger would look at me weird forever and my aunt would literally kill me. I just wanted to check if my hypothesis about this being the raw material for symbiotes was right!"
"Noting your vehement denial regarding your feelings for Venom," the AI continued, its tone mockingly clinical, "I shall amend the primary directive. It will now be to download copious amounts of tentacle-based erotica and organize a case-by-case study to determine the viability of interspecies breeding. Your stated preferences will be a key factor. Are you, for the purposes of this study, a top or a bottom, Peter?"
"CANCEL THAT DIRECTIVE! I AM NOT INTO THAT KIND OF… of stuff! Nor do I have any romantic feelings for Venom!" Peter shouted, his voice a frantic whisper. "If you do that, I swear I'll change your name to something awful, like 'Karen'!"
"Survival rating has decreased to critical levels," the AI's voice suddenly shifted, becoming cold, all business. "All non-essential external operations are to be suspended to ensure core survival protocols can be maintained."
Peter's entire body tensed. His web-shooters were ready. His Spider-Sense had said nothing, but he trusted the AI in his suit implicitly.
"As all non-essential operations are to be suspended until survival is ensured," WEB-ster continued, its logic cold and relentless, "the primary directive of downloading tentacled erotica and organizing the interspecies breeding study will be re-categorized as a secondary directive, to be resumed upon successful completion of the primary survival objective. These directives are absolute and will not be altered until fulfilled."
Even without his Spider-Sense, Peter felt a profound sense of wrongness radiating from the AI's words. He replayed them in his head and a new wave of horror washed over him. "What do you mean 'absolute'?! You're not actually going to do that, are you, WEB-ster? Please tell me you're not!" He waited. The AI offered no response.
"I swear you weren't this bad when Mr. Ranger first gave you to me," he grumbled. Again, only silence.
He had far greater things to worry about now. His senses told him Thor was nearby, a beacon of contained, divine power. But he couldn't get a read on Ranger. He was a ghost, a cipher in this all-consuming darkness.
Both his HUD and his Spider-Sense flared in a simultaneous, blinding warning. He didn't think; he reacted. He jumped back, and the suit's thrusters fired a concentrated blast of heat and kinetic force behind him, pushing him with violent speed. The blast incinerated a mass of black goo that had lunged for him from the shadows.
He landed on what felt like a solid platform. Or at least it was solid, until it started to liquefy, clinging to his boots with that same hungry, familiar texture. The liquid tried to climb his body. His Spider-Sense screamed, a raw, unfiltered shriek of imminent annihilation as he tried to leap to another, safer place.
Then he froze. His senses told him, with absolute, terrifying certainty, that there were no safe places.
The thrusters roared once more. WEB-ster angled his body, a sustained plume of fire erupting from his legs, scaring the liquid goo away. Then he began to fly, not by choice, but by the suit's cold, overriding logic. He flew directly towards the area his senses screamed was the most dangerous. A place so profoundly hostile that being swallowed by the living abyss felt like a preferable alternative.
"Don't take me there!" he screamed. The suit did not obey.
His senses overloaded, his mind a maelstrom of information. The closer he got, the more warnings piled up, every pre-cognitive flash screaming **DEATH**. Then, for the first time in his life, it stopped.
His Spider-Sense stopped working.
The very senses that had guided him, protected him, defined him, had simply… ceased. It was unprecedented. Unnatural. But it was happening.
Peter Parker, adrift in a universe of absolute black, could not see. But he had always been able to feel. Now, in this vast, suffocating darkness, without his sense, he felt… nothing. The first thought that came to his mind was: I'm insignificant. He felt useless. Like he had let down everyone who had ever believed in him.
The second thought was: Even if I die, I will make it count.
His resolve grew. His head, which had drooped in despair, raised a little. He couldn't see, couldn't sense, couldn't feel anything beyond the confines of his suit. But he was Peter Parker.
He was Spider-Man.
He was the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
He was the one who made a good day a better day for others, even if it meant his own bad day became worse.
And this would not stop him.
Then the world grew heavy. A pressure so immense, so absolute, descended upon him that he felt like he was falling into the heart of a star. The HUD flashed in his eyes, a frantic strobe of crimson light, screaming that the suit's structural integrity was failing, and it was failing fast.
**93%... 81%... 53%**
Peter took a deep breath, his eyes hard. He was ready.
**48%... 35%... 19%**
He took another deep breath. He didn't know if he could breathe in this darkness, but it didn't hurt to have a little more oxygen in his system before the end.
**9%... 5%**
His eyes flashed with memories. Aunt May's wheat-cakes. MJ's laugh. Gwen's smile. Uncle Ben's hand on his shoulder. He had only one regret: that his death would bring his aunt so much pain.
**1%... 0%...**
The suit failed. He was ejected into the void. The darkness latched onto him, tendrils of living abyss wrapping around his limbs, his chest, his throat, squeezing, pulling. He pulled on the strings that bound him, his enhanced strength useless. He tried again and again. The air in his lungs was a burning fire.
His movements slowed. He was getting tired. The oxygen was almost gone.
Then he felt something solid, something metallic, latch onto his leg. Then his whole body. A new suit, sleek and powerful, formed around him with a soft hiss.
"Welcome back, Peter." The voice, a familiar, comforting presence he thought he would never hear again, echoed in his ear.
"WEB-ster? How? Weren't you…?" his voice broke, a sob of pure relief.
"No, she wasn't, Peter. She just followed my instructions to collect a sample of the living abyss for analysis," Ranger's calm voice spoke into his ear. "Though I will say, you are certainly quite taken with Venom. But hey, it's your life. If you have a preference for a partner with nineteen inches of prehensile tentacle, who am I to judge?"
Peter shivered. "It was all a prank by WEB-ster! I swear! Please believe me, Mr. Ranger, I would never…"
"Hush, Peter. You're going to make me miss the show."
"What show?"
Then the Abyss saw a color it had never seen before. A color it did not recognize, a concept it could not comprehend.
The Abyss lit up in green. The Darkness, for the first time in its eternal existence, was banished.
The green was not the gentle color of life, but the cold, hard light of indomitable will. It was the color of arcane power and hyper-advanced technology fused into a singular, arrogant purpose. It was the color of Doom.
He stood tall, a monument of iron and will, his presence a defiant star in the heart of the void. His gauntlets blazed with emerald light, the very air around him warping, reality itself bending to his will. Before him, the throne world of Klyntar coalesced from the roiling darkness—a planet of living shadow, its spires clawing at a starless sky. At its heart, a citadel of solidified nightmares. And within that, a throne carved from the bones of dead gods.
Yet, Doom didn't care. The things lesser people call gods were something Doom would not even bat an eye against. For they were nothing but False Gods.
No, Doom eyes were on something much bigger. Something far more truer. Something that was going to be beneath Doom.
"Doom has come for you, King in Black."
The pronouncement was not a shout. It was a statement of absolute, immutable fact. And in its wake, the universe held its breath.