CHAPTER 20
Tony's POV
The flight back home was… quiet. Too quiet. My HUD was nothing but static-filled readouts, sparks popping at my shoulder, the servos in my leg joint groaning like an old man with bad knees. I should've been focused on not falling out of the sky, but all I could think about was Fury's face when Vulkan mentioned the warp.
I swear, the guy almost choked on his own paranoia. Can't really blame him though—something that dangerous suddenly waltzing into our world? Even I'd be nervous if I didn't already know the big guy was on our side. Still, no amount of my reassuring seemed to settle Fury down. He nodded, pretended to take it easy, but behind that one-eyed stare of his? You could tell he was already running about a thousand scenarios in his head where Vulkan ends up burning down New York. Typical Fury.
Me? I wasn't going to dwell on that. If Vulkan wanted us dead, he would've let that kid blow instead of stepping in. He didn't. He helped. That was enough for me—for now.
When I finally touched down at the mansion, the armor was barely holding together. Every step up the landing pad was a painful squeal of metal and a cascade of sparks. By the time I peeled it off piece by piece, I was surprised there wasn't a trail of shrapnel leading straight to my sofa.
I collapsed into it, sinking deeper than I expected, my body heavy and my mind… heavier. I've seen people die before—soldiers, innocents, you name it. But this? This was different. Watching people twist into those… things. Watching them lose themselves before their bodies gave out. That sticks with you. It doesn't wash off with a drink.
"Sir," Jarvis spoke softly, almost as if he knew yelling the usual status report would break me. "Might I suggest a moment of rest? I can run diagnostics on the armor independently."
"Yeah," I muttered, rubbing my eyes. "Knock yourself out, J."
I didn't have time to gather my thoughts before the door to the workshop burst open. Pepper. She was half out of breath, eyes darting to me like she expected to find me missing an arm or bleeding out on the couch.
"Tony—are you hurt?!"
Her voice had that edge, that mix of panic and fury only she could pull off. I forced a smile.
"Relax, Pep. Still in one piece. Just… sore."
Her shoulders eased a little, but she didn't buy it entirely. She never does. She crossed the room in a hurry, sitting down beside me like she was ready to start patching me up herself. I leaned into her, trying to mask the ache in my chest—the one no amount of arc reactors or tech could fix.
"Stay with me tonight," I said, softer than I meant to. Not an order. Not a joke. Just… the truth.
Her eyes softened, and she nodded without a word. She didn't need one. Pepper's presence alone was enough to quiet the storm rattling around in my head.
So we stayed there, the world outside still burning, and the weight of what I'd seen pressing down on me. My arms wrapped around her, hers steady around me, and for the first time since I left that battlefield, my breathing evened out.
Jarvis, ever the gentleman, stayed quiet. No updates, no interruptions—just the hum of servers in the background and the faint clicks of his diagnostic scans running on the armor. The world could wait. For now, it was just me, Pepper, and the silence.
And I needed that more than I'd admit.
---
...
The dim hum of failing monitors filled the sterile air of the hidden military lab. Broken bodies of soldiers had long been cleared away, but one man still lay upon the operating bed, his chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm as though each breath was wrestled from death itself. His flesh bore scars from countless battles, his veins blackened from injections of experimental serums, and yet his eyes still burned faintly with that desperate hunger—hungry for strength, for recognition, for something beyond the mortal limits of man.
A doctor, his face pale but resolute, stood above him with trembling hands. "Subject is stable… barely," he muttered, though even as he said it, the words felt like a lie. Around the man's battered body were a dozen tubes latching onto his veins, feeding him a cocktail of experimental compounds—serums meant to replicate the super soldier serum but warped into something harsher, unrefined, almost cruel.
The man on the table—Emil Blonsky—grimaced in unconscious agony as the liquid burned through his body like fire. His muscles convulsed violently, bones cracking and reforming in twisted rhythms as though the very concept of his humanity was being unmade.
And beyond that sterile room, unseen by mortal eyes, something watched.
---
Deep within the immaterium, the Warp stirred. The plain of raw thought and madness trembled, its endless seas of color twisting to crimson and orange as tendrils of energy stretched out like hungry fingers. A faint thrum resonated across the barren void, one that even daemons hushed themselves to listen to—the sound of the god seed breathing.
It had been growing, cocooned in its storm of anger and greed, waiting for something—someone. And now it felt it.
A mortal tether in the material world had burned brightly, a spark of rage, ambition, and broken pride. A man on the brink of unmaking himself willingly for the promise of strength. The Warp turned its gaze, and there it saw him.
Emil Blonsky.
A soldier twisted by war, consumed by envy, and now willingly tearing his body apart in pursuit of power. He was no hero. He was no martyr. He was desperation made flesh, a vessel that the Warp found… suitable.
The immaterium convulsed, storms swirling violently around the god seed as if it laughed in delight. And then—subtly, with the gentleness of poison seeping into a wound—the god seed gave. A sliver of its essence, a single thread of its being, descended like a burning ember from the Warp and touched the mortal soul writhing in agony on that operating table.
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Blonsky's back arched as though lightning had struck him. The doctor stumbled back, horrified as the man's body grew, muscles tearing and knitting back together in monstrous proportions. His skin bubbled, twisted, hardened into scales and thick cords of sinew. Bones stretched unnaturally, his jaw elongating, teeth sharpening into weapons of flesh. The serum alone would have made him into something grotesque.
But the Warp's touch… made him more.
It whispered into his subconscious, feeding the darkest fragments of his mind, binding him not just with rage but with purpose. The god seed's essence carved into him a brand no mortal eye could see, a mark of ownership, of destiny.
The monitors screamed as his heart pounded like a war drum, and the room seemed to shake with the force of his transformation. The doctor shouted for restraints, for containment, but none of it mattered. No steel could hold what was being born.
And in the Warp, the god seed pulsed, satisfied. A vessel had been chosen. A champion.
Blonsky's eyes snapped open, glowing with a sickly green mixed with faint hints of crimson light that flickered in the depths like an ember. He roared, a guttural sound that was no longer human, shaking the chamber with raw fury.
The doctor fell to the floor, trembling, knowing he had unleashed something far beyond what he understood.
And somewhere, deep within the immaterium, the god seed dreamed. Soon, when its transformation was complete, it would have a chaos lord in the material world. A herald of its will.
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