Four figures hovered in the fractured void before Rowan Mercer.
They looked like they had stepped out of some forgotten age, each clad in battle-worn ceremonial gear, each carrying a weapon saturated with violent, unstable power.
One wore pale robes, broad-shouldered, gripping two colossal war hammers rimed with frost.
Another stood beside him in black combat armor, a living storm coiled around the lightning whip in his hand.
Across from them hovered a heavyset man in deep blue robes, clutching a shimmering spectral staff.
Beside him stood the most striking presence of all.
A child.
Bare feet rested on two rotating wheels of flame. A spear forged from condensed fire burned in his grasp, while a crimson mantle of living energy spiraled around his body like a restless serpent.
Rowan narrowed his eyes.
At first glance, the boy looked like a mythic fire prodigy.
But something was wrong.
The energy inside the child wasn't simply violent.
It was corrupted.
Warped.
Like a power that had been forced into existence against its own nature.
The four were clearly divided into two sides.
The white-robed hammer wielder and the lightning-whip fighter stood together.
The blue-robed man had positioned himself beside the flame-born child.
Between them floated a single object.
A slender brush.
Its presence distorted space subtly, as if reality itself resisted touching it.
They were fighting over that brush.
Rowan remained hidden, observing.
He had shattered the boundary of one world and emerged into another.
The experience reminded him of old cosmic theories. Step beyond a closed system, and you don't find nothing. You find a larger structure.
Which meant a disturbing possibility.
The world he had come from might be nothing more than a subordinate reality nested inside this one.
Much like the pocket universes Rowan himself had once created within Marvel.
If one of his creations escaped into the larger multiverse, their situation would mirror his perfectly.
"So where exactly did I land?"
Rowan's gaze returned to the flame-wreathed child.
A thought crept in, cold and heavy.
This might be a primordial myth-realm.
A category of reality where cosmic archetypes walked openly, where gods were not legends but local residents.
If that were true, Rowan's current power meant very little.
He was strong.
But in a realm like this, strong was ordinary.
Entities existed here that could erase star systems without effort.
Against beings like that, Rowan was irrelevant.
No hidden protector would descend to save him.
No cosmic overseer owed him anything.
Speculation wouldn't give answers.
Direct contact would.
As Rowan prepared to reveal himself, the fight below reached a violent conclusion.
The white-robed man slammed his twin hammers together.
A shockwave of freezing force exploded outward.
Ice swallowed all four combatants in an instant, forming a massive transparent sphere.
The brush was knocked free, tumbling to the ground just outside the frozen prison.
Inside the ice, the four struggled furiously, but the sphere held.
Rowan descended.
He landed calmly in front of the frozen orb and picked up the brush.
Power thrummed beneath his fingers.
He could tell immediately.
This artifact was extremely dangerous.
Layered with complex internal seals.
Not something he could casually decipher.
A startled voice echoed from inside the ice.
"Who are you?"
The heavyset man in blue stared at Rowan in disbelief.
"How are you inside my World-Seal Canvas?"
Before Rowan could respond, the man with the lightning whip shouted urgently.
"That brush can open the domain and free us!"
His voice shook with desperation.
"I don't care who you are. Give it to me and the Deep Tide Dominion will reward you generously!"
The blue-robed man's expression darkened.
"Don't listen to him."
He fixed Rowan with a steady gaze.
"My name is Archsage Solarian. This sealed domain was gifted to me by a High Architect. The brush you're holding is its control key."
He turned his head slightly toward the whip-wielder.
"If Vexar escapes, he will slaughter everyone in Chentang Pass. You cannot let him go."
Vexar snarled.
"Lies."
"My disciple, Glacien, carries the Aether Core. His disciple, Pyros, carries the Infernal Core. The High Architect wants the Aether Core."
Rowan stared at them.
Glacien.
Pyros.
Vexar.
Solarian.
The names meant nothing to him.
But the pattern did.
Two children.
Two incompatible cosmic cores.
One corrupted.
One pure.
Someone had tampered with fate.
None of this resembled any single myth Rowan recognized.
Which told him something important.
This wasn't a definitive version of any legend.
It was a variant.
A parallel myth-reality.
A world running on familiar archetypes but rewritten rules.
Rowan exhaled slowly.
He sat down cross-legged in front of the frozen sphere, the brush resting across his palms.
"You're all convinced you're right."
His eyes moved calmly from face to face.
"That doesn't help me."
He tilted his head slightly.
"So you're going to tell me everything. From the beginning."
"When I understand what's actually happening, I'll decide who gets the brush."
Blind allegiance had no place here.
Only information.
Only judgment.