The void was torn apart by white light.
Without warning.
The radiance simply appeared—straight, brutal, and absolute—in the depths of Universe-404.
Then came a piercing hum that could hardly be called a sound.
It drilled directly into everyone's minds, making their very souls tremble.
Distant stars twisted violently around the edges of the rupture.
Then went dark.
Levi's pupils contracted instantly to pinpoints.
That wasn't light.
Every instinct he possessed was screaming.
It was a gaze.
Like a microorganism under a microscope suddenly realizing that an eye was pressed against the lens on the other side.
Cold.
Indifferent.
Completely devoid of emotion.
The chill didn't crawl up his spine.
It exploded from the very core of his existence.
Cold seeped into the cracks of his bones, threatening to freeze his consciousness itself.
The command center fell into despair.
Clark's super-vision saw nothing but endless white.
He shut his eyes in pain.
When he opened them again, the world was still white.
Nothing else existed.
Thor's grip on Stormbreaker trembled.
Not from fear.
His divine body was issuing a warning.
Run.
Even the leather wrapped around the handle creaked under the strain.
Wanda held Adam tightly.
Chaos Magic instinctively erupted into a crimson barrier around them.
Yet before that pure white radiance, the scarlet shield couldn't even struggle.
It flickered weakly like a candle in a storm.
Reed's holographic displays went completely insane.
Data cascaded downward like waterfalls.
Countless red warnings flooded the screens.
Sparks had already begun crackling along the edges.
Tony's armor screamed with alarms.
Nanoparticles poured out desperately, attempting to construct defenses.
In the end, they formed nothing more than a vague shimmering membrane.
Even a basic shield shape refused to stabilize.
"No readings..."
Tony's voice trembled.
Not from fear.
His brain had simply overloaded while trying to process something fundamentally incomprehensible.
He swallowed.
His throat felt scorched.
"This isn't energy..."
"This is..."
He couldn't continue.
He wanted a word.
Any word.
But humanity simply didn't possess the language for it.
Every instrument had reached the same hopeless conclusion.
Unmeasurable.
Not because the numbers exceeded the limits.
Because the very act of measurement had been denied.
Screens displayed either blank emptiness or meaningless gibberish.
As though mocking physics itself.
Within Levi's golden-red eyes remained only the widening white light.
He could see what it was doing.
Scanning.
But not scanning for energy.
It was reviewing existence itself.
Byte by byte.
From the conceptual root of reality.
Everything that had ever existed within this section of spacetime.
The destruction of the three Cartographers.
The scars left by the Logic Virus.
The Ark's energy signatures.
Everything.
It was all being reconstructed and analyzed.
Levi could even feel an invisible probe lightly scraping through his thoughts.
The precision of it made every hair on his body stand on end.
His heartbeat thundered like a war drum.
More than anyone else, he understood.
This thing hadn't come to fight.
If it locked onto them, the consequence wouldn't be death.
It would be nonexistence.
Even the fact that you had ever existed would become a joke that had never happened.
His muscles tightened instinctively.
Every nerve stretched to its limit.
"Detection confirmed: Higher-Dimensional Will Projection."
Zero's voice suddenly sounded.
For once, the usually stable electronic tone carried faint static.
"Source coordinates... impossible to parse."
"Target is performing full-spectrum conceptual scanning."
A brief pause followed.
Then:
"Estimated time until lock-on: three seconds."
Levi's fingers tapped lightly against the armrest.
Once.
Twice.
Inside the deathly silent command center, the sound was painfully sharp.
Everyone's eyes unconsciously followed the movement of his hand.
He gave no order to retreat.
Nor did he prepare to resist directly.
Instead, he slowly closed his eyes.
Drawing in a deep breath.
His chest rose and fell violently, as though inhaling the despair of an entire universe before forcing it back out.
Then, one second before the white light locked onto the Ark—
Levi opened his eyes.
Calculation burned within them.
Cold.
Near-mad.
"Zero."
"Spit out everything we just consumed."
His voice was soft.
Hoarse.
Every word felt like a blade forged from ice.
"Everything."
"Not a single byte left behind."
Zero obeyed instantly.
The silver scales covering the Ark's hull writhed violently.
Three masses of compressed white energy erupted from the bow like vomit.
The clusters floated in space.
Cartographer runes still flickered across their surfaces.
Like three freshly dead corpses that had not yet gone cold.
Tony stared.
Then a horrifying realization struck him.
Levi was trying to disguise them.
To make it appear that the Cartographers had completed their mission and entered self-destruction protocols.
His blood ran cold.
This was insanity.
Absolute insanity.
That thing could rewind concepts themselves.
It could see through everything.
Levi ignored all outside reactions.
He slowly raised his right hand.
Golden-red Phoenix Fire ignited in his palm.
This time, however, the flames did not expand.
A tremendous force compressed them inward.
Further.
Further.
Until they collapsed into a single point.
A black vortex formed.
A darkness that seemed capable of devouring light itself.
Authority over Origins.
He intended to rewrite the very definition of those three energy clusters.
"Zero."
"Pull up the Cartographers' core code."
"The deepest layer."
"Retrieved."
Streams of runes and data appeared before him.
Complex enough to distort reality itself.
Levi inhaled deeply.
The vortex began rotating.
He dismantled the instructions one by one.
Then used his Authority to rewrite them.
Not destroy them.
Complete them.
He would make these energy clusters appear to be the remains of Cartographers undergoing standard self-destruction after mission completion.
Sweat rolled down his temples.
His face grew pale.
Every rewritten instruction consumed enormous amounts of Origin Power.
His body resembled an overloaded engine.
An ominous glow leaked from beneath his skin.
But it wasn't enough.
The white light had already begun penetrating deeper.
A low hum spread through the void.
As though the entirety of Universe-404 were groaning in agony.
Then Adam moved.
The child didn't even wake up.
He merely shifted uncomfortably in Wanda's arms.
Beneath his eyelids shone the same silver radiance as the Ark's hull.
More strangely—
A trace of pale white energy flashed briefly from his body.
The unmistakable signature of Beyonder power.
"No!"
Wanda panicked.
Instinctively she moved to suppress it with Chaos Magic.
Levi spun around instantly.
His golden-red eyes locked onto hers.
His voice was colder than ice.
"Don't."
Wanda froze.
She could sense how dangerous his condition had become.
The fact that he was still diverting attention to stop her meant only one thing.
That power inside Adam was their only lifeline.
Adam raised a tiny hand.
Grasping absentmindedly toward the void.
A nearly invisible silver-white thread drifted from his fingertips.
Silently entering the three energy clusters.
Tony's instrument panel suddenly jumped.
His eyes widened.
"My God..."
The frequency patterns within the energy masses were changing.
Perfectly aligning themselves with the white light.
It was as though they were broadcasting a signal:
One of us.
Reed jerked upright.
His glasses slid halfway down his nose.
He understood immediately.
Someone was using the Beyonder-origin power inside Adam as an authentication key.
An identification signal.
It was like placing your head beneath a guillotine and betting the blade would break first.
A cold smile appeared on Levi's lips.
He raised both hands.
The vortex deepened.
Drawing Adam's silver-white thread into itself.
Like weaving a web, he wrapped it layer by layer around the energy clusters.
Then, with a roar, he poured in the last of his strength.
The fragile disguise fused into reality itself.
Pale runes emerged across the surfaces of the three clusters.
Radiating a cold light.
The light of death.
The mark used by the Beyonders to designate:
Mission Complete. Target Eliminated.
"Disguise signal complete."
Zero spoke again.
This time, a faint upward inflection could be heard in its voice.
For an AI, it was practically excitement.
"Simulating self-destruction sequence."
"Countdown initiated."
The moment the words ended, all three clusters began trembling.
One rune after another went dark.
Like oil lamps exhausting their final drops of fuel.
Then the white light arrived.
Silently.
Swallowing everything.
The Ark and the three false corpses disappeared within suffocating purity.
Nobody breathed.
Invisible hands seemed to squeeze their hearts.
Time itself froze.
One second.
Two.
Three.
The silence inside the command center became unbearable.
Tony's fingers had already gouged deep marks into the armrest.
Clark stood rigid as stone.
Thor gripped Stormbreaker so tightly that veins bulged across his arms.
The six Infinity Stones embedded in the axe glowed ominously.
Then—
Just as everyone's nerves approached their breaking point—
The white light stopped.
It hovered motionless.
Like an eternal sculpture of ice.
Levi could feel it comparing data.
Every detail.
Every definition.
Every concept.
Being verified one by one.
Sweat ran down his back.
Ice cold.
Finally.
After five seconds that felt like centuries—
The white light began to contract.
It was leaving.
Actually leaving.
The radiance slowly receded like an outgoing tide.
Without taking anything with it.
"Haaa..."
Tony collapsed into his chair.
Gasping like a fish dragged onto dry land.
Reed removed his glasses.
His hands shook violently as he wiped away the fog on the lenses.
"Absurd..."
"This is a miracle..."
Clark slowly unclenched his pale knuckles.
Thor released a long breath.
The crackling lightning around Stormbreaker finally settled.
Wanda hugged Adam tightly.
The little boy was asleep again.
A faint smile lingered at the corners of his mouth.
As though he had merely enjoyed a pleasant dream.
Everyone relaxed.
The air filled with the exhaustion and emptiness that followed survival.
Then Levi's pupils suddenly contracted.
He felt it.
As the white light withdrew, it left something behind.
A mark.
A conceptual imprint designating a universe as already cleansed.
Worse.
That mark was triggering a chain reaction.
The spacetime structure of Universe-404 began trembling violently.
Tiny fractures appeared from nowhere.
Spreading across reality like a spiderweb.
The universe had been classified as a worthless zone.
Scheduled for deletion.
Like taking out the trash.
"Zero!"
Levi spun around.
For the first time, urgency entered his voice.
"Activate the Dimensional Transit Engine."
"Now."
"Immediately."
"Mark-X Engine requires twelve seconds to charge."
Zero remained calm.
At this moment, that calmness felt almost cruel.
Twelve seconds.
The universe had less than fifteen remaining.
Levi inhaled sharply.
A fanatical determination ignited within his eyes.
He raised his hand once more.
The black vortex spun again.
This time, however, it targeted neither energy clusters nor debris.
Instead—
It locked onto the nearly invisible trail left behind by the retreating white light.
"Have you lost your mind?!"
Tony shouted.
The relief of survival instantly transformed into fresh terror.
"That's a projection of the Ivory King!"
"Exactly because it's a projection."
A cold, insane smile spread across Levi's face.
"That's why there's an opportunity when it retracts."
Before anyone could react—
He clenched his fist.
The Concept of Greed exploded outward.
An invisible hand formed from pure avarice reached across causality itself.
In the one-millionth of a second before the white light completely vanished from this dimension—
It tore away a fragment.
A fragment of transcendent power.
The instant it happened, every instrument in the command center erupted into shrieking alarms.
Reed's displays died completely.
Static consumed the screens.
Tony's armor emitted an electronic wail.
Then went silent.
For three full seconds.
Only afterward did it begin struggling back to life, producing broken sounds:
Beep—
...click...
...beep...
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