The New York Sanctum smelled of ozone, ancient paper, and simmering tension. The main chamber, still bearing the psychic scars of the Titan Echo, hummed with displaced energy. Stephen Strange stood before the crystalline core, the fractured tapestry of reality rotating slowly in the air. New threads of sickly orange pulsed to life every few minutes—Delhi, London, Mexico City—each a silent scream from the past.
Wong worked at a side table, his fingers dancing over a series of enchanted brass orbs that chimed with each new anomaly. "The Final Battle Echo is replicating. It's not a single event; it's a meme, propagating through the temporal substrate. It's weaker than the Titan manifestation, more of an image than a gravitational threat, but the psychological impact is… severe."
Sam Wilson leaned against a bookshelf, his arms crossed over his Captain America suit. "We've got global panic. News outlets are calling them 'Sky Ghosts' or 'Thanos's Revenge.' Governments are scrambling. The Damage Control aerial drones over Delhi nearly crashed when they flew through the Echo of a Leviathan. It phased right through them, but the pilots' instruments went haywire."
Bucky stood apart, near the window, his vibranium arm glinting in the sorcerous light. He was watching Marc Spector. The man in white sat on the bottom step of a staircase, head in his hands, muttering under his breath in what sounded like three distinct conversational rhythms.
"He stabilized the Brooklyn event," Bucky said, his voice cutting through the technical report. "Saw the real fracture point when I just saw the spectacle. Says the Echoes are tied to personal grief."
Stephen didn't turn from the tapestry. "He's correct. The energy signature is a hybrid. Temporal distortion, yes, but underpinned by a profound psychic resonance. These aren't random moments. They're universal traumas." He finally turned, his cape swirling. "Spector. Your perception. You said you could 'see the seams.'"
Marc's head jerked up. His eyes were bloodshot. "I see what's broken. What doesn't fit. My head's a haunted house of broken pieces. Makes me a good inspector for a broken world." He stood, his movements oddly graceful yet jittery. "That big map of yours? It's pretty. But it's a lie."
Wong frowned. "The Mystical Atlas of Reality is not a 'lie,' mercenary."
"It shows you where. It doesn't show you why." Marc walked towards the holographic tapestry, ignoring Wong's glare. He pointed a finger at the nexus over Titan. "This one… it's a knot of guilt. Strategic failure." His finger moved to the cluster over the Atlantic. "That's a bruise of sacrifice. A snapped finger." He then pointed to a quieter, but deeper, black fracture over Central Africa. "And that… that's a void. A sucking chest wound of grief so deep it's not echoing. It's pulling."
Everyone followed his finger. The Wakandan fracture wasn't glowing orange. It was a perfect, silent black circle, absorbing the light of the surrounding timeline.
"No Echoes manifest there," Stephen murmured, a cold certainty settling in his bones. "Because the source of the interference is there. The wound is the surgeon."
The Sanctum's large, ornate window suddenly flared with a blinding, white-gold light. It wasn't harsh, but it filled the room with the intensity of a small star. A silhouette resolved, landing with a soft thud on the balcony outside. The light died down, revealing Carol Danvers—Captain Marvel. Her Kree battle suit gleamed under the Earth's moonlight, and her hair was swept back from a face set in grim lines. She didn't bother with the door; she phased through the reinforced glass and wood, the molecules parting around her without a sound.
"Strange," she said, her voice echoing with barely-contained power. "We have a situation."
"We're aware," Stephen replied dryly. "Several, in fact."
"I'm not talking about your ghost stories," Carol said, striding into the center of the room. Her eyes swept over the group, pausing for a millisecond on Marc's unusual attire. "I just got back from the edge of the Kree-Xandarian demilitarized zone. Space is… hiccupping."
"Define hiccupping," Sam said.
"Sensors picked up a massive energy spike from a dead system. When I investigated, I found an Echo. The destruction of Xandar. The Nova Corps' last stand against the Power Stone." Carol's jaw tightened. "It was playing out in perfect, silent detail over a lifeless asteroid field. No gravity wells, no physical debris, but the radiation signature was identical. If a ship had flown through it, their systems would have been fried by remembered gamma bursts."
Stephen and Wong exchanged a look. The Echoes weren't planetary. They were universal.
"The fracture is spreading through time and space," Wong said, a note of awe in his horror. "The trauma of the Stones is a cancer in the body of the cosmos."
"And someone is metastasizing it," Stephen finished. He turned back to the tapestry, focusing on the black void over Wakanda. "The source is on Earth. The method is a fusion of quantum mechanics and vibranium-based harmonic manipulation taken to a theoretical extreme. The intent…" He trailed off, thinking of the precise, surgical pattern he'd glimpsed.
"The intent is to reset the board," Marc said flatly. All eyes turned to him. He was staring into the middle distance, as if listening. "Khonshu is many things. A pompous, demanding pigeon, mostly. But he's old. He remembers when time was less… linear. He says the tapestry isn't being torn for fun. It's being unpicked. Thread by thread. To reweave it without the dark colors."
"Without the pain," Bucky translated, his own past a tapestry of dark threads.
"Without the choices," Stephen corrected, the full horror dawning. "The Infinity Stones were universal constants. Their use, especially their collective use, represents a fundamental pivot point for all reality. If you remove that pivot… you remove every choice that stemmed from it. You don't just undo Thanos. You undo every life saved, every lesson learned, every hero forged in that fire. You create a static, 'perfect,' lifeless universe."
The weight of the statement silenced the room. Even Carol looked shaken, the starlight in her eyes dimming.
"Who has that power?" Sam asked. "And that much… grief?"
The answer was suddenly, terribly obvious. The grief over a lost brother, a lost king. The brilliance to manipulate reality itself. The resources of the most advanced nation on Earth. The moral certainty that came from seeing your world shattered.
"Shuri," Bucky said, the name dropping like a stone.
Before Stephen could confirm, the mystical braziers lining the chamber flared green. Not the orange of the Echoes, but the vibrant, chaotic green of a very specific type of magic.
A portal, rough-edged and crackling with untamed power, ripped open in the middle of the room. Through it stepped Wanda Maximoff.
She looked different. The Scarlet Witch regalia was gone, replaced by simple, dark travel clothes. Her auburn hair was tied back, and the haunting, bottomless grief in her eyes had been joined by a steely, weary resolve. The air around her still vibrated with immense power, but it was leashed, focused.
Everyone tensed. Wong's hands flew up, shields at the ready. Sam shifted his stance. Carol's fists glowed faintly.
Wanda ignored them, her eyes fixed on Stephen. "I felt it," she said, her Sokovian accent soft. "A scream in the fabric of everything. A scream that sounds like my own."
"Maximoff," Stephen said, his voice carefully neutral. "Your timing is… noted."
"I am not here to fight you," she said, and the simple sincerity in her voice was more disarming than any threat. "I have spent two years in solitude, learning control. Learning the true nature of… what I am. The pain I caused is a weight I will always carry. But this…" She gestured to the fractured tapestry. "This is a pain that will unmake everything. It is chaos, but it is a cold, calculated chaos. It is my domain, and it is wrong."
She walked closer to the hologram, her gaze drawn to the black void over Wakanda. "The grief there… it is a mirror. But it has turned inward. It wants to swallow the mirror, and the world with it." She turned to Stephen. "You know who it is. And you know you cannot reason with a grief that has convinced itself it is logic."
"What are you proposing?" Carol asked, her tone skeptical but no longer hostile.
"That you will need someone who understands how to navigate a broken reality," Wanda said. "And how to fight a war not just with power, but with the memory of love. Let me help."
The room was a tableau of distrust, trauma, and desperate need. Stephen saw the calculus. Wanda was a risk of incalculable magnitude. But the enemy they faced was using the very fabric of trauma as a weapon. Who better to counter it than the being who was, in many ways, trauma given form and power?
"Stand down," Stephen said to Wong, who reluctantly lowered his shields. "We are past old quarrels. The universe is at stake, and our roster is… unconventional." He addressed them all. "We have a location: Wakanda. We have a target: Shuri, or whatever she has become. We have a mission: stop the unraveling without destroying the weaver, if we can. But we have no idea what we're walking into. The heart of the most technologically advanced nation on Earth, now likely the most fortified temporal anomaly in existence."
"A frontal assault is suicide," Sam said. "Even with this crew."
"We don't assault," Stephen said, a plan forming. "We investigate. We need data. First-hand observation of the source. A small, stealth team."
"I'll go," Bucky said immediately. "I know Wakanda. I have… history there." He didn't elaborate on the years of cryo-sleep and deprogramming within their borders, the kindness of Shuri herself as she worked to free his mind.
"I'm going too," Sam said. "We're a package deal. And if this is a grief that's turned into a world-ending idea, maybe a counselor needs to be on the team." He said it with a half-smile, but the truth beneath it was solid.
Marc Spector snorted. "Stealth? Not my specialty. I'm more of a 'make a loud noise and see what tries to eat you' kind of guy. But you'll need me. I'm the canary in this cosmic coal mine. I'll feel the fractures before they open."
"And I will provide transport," Wanda said. "My magic does not trigger technological sensors. I can create a bubble of perceived reality that will allow us to pass unseen."
Carol crossed her arms. "My skill set isn't subtle. I'm a broad-spectrum response. I'll be your cavalry. The second this goes loud—and it will—I'll be there."
Stephen nodded. It was a start. "Wong, you hold the Sanctum. Monitor the fractures. If the pattern shifts toward a critical mass, warn us." He looked at the team: Soldier, Captain, Scarred Moon, Scarlet Witch. "We leave in one hour. Prepare."
As the group dispersed—Sam and Bucky heading to a corner to talk low, Wanda closing her eyes to center herself, Marc arguing quietly with himself about the proper footwear for a dimension-hopping mission—Stephen approached the tapestry one last time. He zoomed in on Wakanda. The black void was so absolute it was like a hole in the map. But around its edges, he could now see the faintest, finest lines of silver. Not fractures. Stitches. The Weaver was already beginning her work, tying off threads of possibility, preparing to pull them loose.
His sling ring was on his finger. He thought of Shuri, the brilliant, laughing young woman who had teased him about his "silly spells" when they'd fought Thanos together. What had that grief done to her? What had she seen, in her future, that made oblivion seem like mercy?
A hand touched his shoulder. He turned to see Wong, his face grave.
"This is different from Thanos, Stephen," Wong said quietly. "Thanos wanted to impose his will on the universe. This… this is a suicide note written in temporal physics. How do you fight someone who has already given up?"
Stephen stared into the void on the map. "You remind them," he said, his voice barely a whisper, "what they're trying to erase. You show them the cost of a perfect, painless, empty world."
He turned away, the Cloak billowing behind him as he went to gather his artifacts. The tools of a Sorcerer Supreme felt suddenly inadequate. He wasn't going to a battle. He was going to an intervention at the end of time.