-The Island-
"Are you KIDDING me?!" Sam's voice cracked with disbelief.
"That thing just... dissolved?" Barton stared at the space where the Elemental Giant had stood moments before. "Like it was nothing?"
"Damn it," Banner muttered, his scientific mind trying and failing to process what he'd witnessed. "That entity's power operates on a completely different dimensional scale than anything we've encountered. We're not even playing the same game."
Everyone on the island had watched the Elemental Giant—a fusion of four god-like entities, each one previously requiring the combined might of the Avengers to defeat—simply cease to exist under Arishem's casual glance.
Tony's fists clenched inside his armor, the servos whining in protest. He couldn't even begin to calculate what kind of power they were facing. His anxiety, usually manageable through engineering problems and sarcastic banter, started spiraling out of control.
We're ants. We're less than ants. We're bacteria on an ant's back.
But Arishem the Judge knew nothing of Tony's existential crisis, nor would he have cared if he did.
His vast gaze swept across Earth's surface, observing the struggling beings below with the same dispassionate interest a human might show toward microorganisms under a microscope.
The Hulk's furious roaring, the lightning crackling around Thor's body, the photon energy flickering around Captain Marvel—none of it warranted more than passive observation. Even the Power Stone's purple glow on Tony's armor was unremarkable. The stone was powerful, yes, but this mortal couldn't access even a fraction of its potential.
Arishem's attention focused instead on something invisible to mortal senses—the space where the Elemental Giant had dissipated.
As the fusion creature had dissolved, Arishem's cosmic awareness had detected something subtle yet profoundly abnormal. A ripple in reality that didn't match any known pattern.
In his perception, it wasn't the Elementals' own power but rather something hidden far deeper within the planet itself. A consciousness. Hazy, primitive, but clearly self-aware and capable of self-preservation.
This discovery created a ripple of curiosity in Arishem's ancient mind—the first such feeling in millennia.
Throughout countless eons, he'd traversed innumerable galaxies, witnessed the birth and extinction of civilizations beyond counting, overseen the Emergence of thousands of his kind from countless worlds.
But never—not once—had he encountered planetary consciousness arising spontaneously from a naturally-formed celestial body.
Living planets like Ego existed, certainly. But Ego had created his planetary form from nothing, building it atom by atom through conscious will. Earth was different. Earth had formed naturally through cosmic processes, accreting from stellar debris over billions of years.
And yet somehow, impossibly, this ordinary planet had developed genuine awareness.
It exceeded the Celestials' understanding of cosmic law. It shouldn't exist.
Perhaps I should observe this phenomenon. Study it. Understand how natural planetary consciousness can arise.
Arishem raised one finger. Incomprehensible cosmic energy began gathering at the tip—not enough to harm Earth physically, but more than sufficient to extract and examine the planet's nascent will.
Then he stopped.
In the instant before acting, Arishem's intuition—refined over billions of years, operating on levels that approached universal law itself—screamed a warning.
Don't.
He looked up at the broadcast still hanging in Earth's sky. In his vast experience, only a handful of entities in the entire universe could trigger his danger sense. The most powerful cosmic abstracts. Perhaps the Living Tribunal. Eternity itself.
And apparently, whatever force operated the broadcast.
Arishem pondered for a long moment, weighing curiosity against risk. Then he allowed the gathered energy to dissipate, abandoning his investigation.
Earth's will could remain a mystery. For now.
He turned his attention instead to the Eternals frozen on the island below, still pinned by his cosmic pressure.
These beings had violated his direct orders. They required judgment.
With a thought, invisible force enveloped Ajak, Sersi, Phastos, Druig, Thena, Makkari, Kingo, Gilgamesh, Sprite, and even the imprisoned Ikaris.
It was as if a massive hand had simply plucked them from Earth's surface. In the span of a single heartbeat, all ten Eternals vanished from the planet and reappeared in the cold vacuum of space before their creator.
Taking the Eternals was his purpose for coming. Earth's consciousness had been merely an intriguing interlude.
His business concluded, Arishem didn't linger. His impossibly vast form simply... ceased to be present. Not traveling, not teleporting—just no longer there.
And simultaneously, the absolute cosmic pressure that had rendered 99.9% of humanity unconscious and pinned every superhuman to the ground vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
-The Island-
"Huff! Huff!" The Hulk stood up, his massive chest heaving. He looked up at the sky—blue, clear, empty. The entity that had nearly crushed him through sheer presence was simply gone.
"Did he leave?" Mysterio scrambled to his feet, looking around wildly. "Where did—oh no. Oh no."
"He took them," Natasha said quietly, staring at the empty spaces where the Eternals had been standing. "All of them."
Tony remained silent, his mind churning. He hadn't even figured out what that cosmic giant was, let alone how to fight it. He only knew one thing with absolute certainty: that entity possessed the power to destroy Earth at any moment. Casually. Effortlessly.
And there was nothing—nothing—any of them could do to stop it.
Thor's expression was grim. "My father may have knowledge of this being. I must consult with him immediately."
He raised Stormbreaker high. "Heimdall! The Bifrost!"
Rainbow light erupted around Thor, and he vanished, transported back to Asgard to seek Odin's wisdom.
Star-Lord stared at his hands, confusion evident on his face. When Arishem had appeared, the energy channel connecting him to Tiamut's petrified form had been severed completely, cutting him off from his power source.
But now that the Celestial had departed, the connection had reestablished. Energy was flowing again—less than before, since Tiamut was stone rather than living tissue, but still substantial.
Relief flooded through him. Without that power, he was just an ordinary human with a Walkman and daddy issues.
"What do we do now?" Natasha retrieved Mjolnir from where it had fallen, the hammer's weight somehow comforting in her hands despite the cosmic horror they'd just witnessed.
She felt lost. They'd successfully prevented Tiamut's Emergence, saved Earth from being cracked open like an egg... and apparently attracted the attention of something infinitely worse.
Arishem had taken the Eternals for unknown purposes. Whether what came next would be benevolent or catastrophic was anyone's guess. The uncertainty was crushing.
Tony's voice was heavy when he finally spoke. "We need to get stronger. Much stronger." He turned to Strange. "How's Wanda?"
Strange had been kneeling beside Wanda's unconscious form, running diagnostic spells. "She's stable. Just completely exhausted from maintaining that shield and saving Rhodes. She'll wake up after some rest."
"She's not going to sleep for days again, is she?" War Machine asked with concern, walking over while massaging his neck. The impact from his fall had left him sore despite the Extremis healing.
"No, nothing that severe," Strange assured him. "This isn't like the Dormammu incident. But—" He looked at Rhodes meaningfully. "—you should thank her. If she hadn't caught you, that fall would have broken your neck. Extremis or not."
Rhodes's eyes widened. He'd been unconscious the entire time Arishem was present, had no memory of falling. "I... I will. As soon as she wakes up."
"Let's get out of here," Strange said, standing. "Wanda needs a quiet, safe place to recover." His hands moved in circular patterns, opening a portal to the New York Sanctum.
-New York-
New York was chaos. The entire world was chaos.
Every human being on Earth had lost consciousness simultaneously for nearly a minute. Pilots had collapsed at their controls. Drivers had slumped over steering wheels. Surgeons had dropped their instruments mid-operation.
The death toll was still being calculated, but early estimates were horrifying.
Nick Fury sat in his S.W.O.R.D. office, rubbing his temple, trying to formulate a response that would prevent global panic while his team investigated the cause.
Then Strange's portal opened, and the Avengers stumbled through, carrying an unconscious Wanda.
Fury listened to their report in grim silence. An entity beyond comprehension had visited Earth, casually erased their most powerful defense, and kidnapped ten cosmic beings for unknown purposes.
When they finished explaining, Fury rubbed his head even harder.
"Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "We just survived an extinction-level event. We stopped a god from being born. We saved seven billion people. And our reward is that an even bigger god showed up, demonstrated that everything we can do is completely meaningless against his power, and took away the only beings who might have understood what we're dealing with."
"That's... accurate," Tony confirmed.
"Outstanding." Fury's voice dripped with bitter sarcasm. "Absolutely outstanding. I'll add it to the list of cosmic threats we can't do anything about."
He looked at each of them—exhausted, battered, some still bleeding, all traumatized by what they'd witnessed.
"Get some rest," Fury said, his tone softening slightly. "We'll figure out next steps when everyone's conscious and coherent. You did good today, even if it doesn't feel like it."
As they dispersed to tend their wounds, Fury turned to the window and looked up at the sky—still blue, still peaceful, still concealing horrors beyond human comprehension.
"We need a bigger boat," he muttered to himself.
Behind him, unnoticed, the broadcast flickered once—as if acknowledging his words.
The cosmic game was far from over.