Location: The Quantum Realm, 2018 (Post-Ant Man & The Wasp, Pre-Infinity War)
Janet van Dyne felt it first. A tremor in the probabilistic weave of reality, a wrongness that wasn't Subatomic. Scott Lang, preparing to leave, saw it too—a silent, golden flash that carved through the kaleidoscopic chaos like a scar.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a un-mattering. A point of absolute, immutable law asserting itself in a realm of pure potential. Where it passed, the unpredictable quantum foam stillened, forming perfect, momentary crystals of geometric certainty before shattering into nothing.
It struck Janet's makeshift garden. A single, palm-sized fragment of what looked like golden, hieroglyph-etched metal buried itself in the soil of a quantum fern. It hummed with a low, resonant frequency that spoke of forgotten languages and cosmic balance.
"What in the name of Hank's bad ideas was that?" Scott breathed, his helmet retracting.
Janet, her face pale, reached out but didn't touch it. "It's… old. Older than this realm. It's not energy. It's… rules."
She was right. The fragment was a piece of the Helmet of Fate, shattered when the Lords of Order and Chaos of its native universe clashed in a cataclysm that bled through the Bleed, the interstitial tissue between realities. It had followed a ley-line of dimensional trauma, a path worn thin by Thanos's impending snap, and fallen here.
And it was calling.
Location: New York City, Avengers Compound
Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes sat in his physical therapy suite, the whir of the advanced leg braces a constant reminder of the fall. The Battle of Leipzig haunted him. The Accords. Tony's rage. Steve's conviction. Vision's accidental beam. The *snap* of his own spine.
He was War Machine. A man of structure, of chain-of-command, of *order*. His world had been one of clear missions and defined enemies. Now, the world was chaotic—fractured Avengers, a paranoid UN, and whispers of threats from the stars. And he was trapped in a body that no longer obeyed the orders of his mind.
He dreamed of golden light. Of symbols that burned themselves behind his eyes: the Ankh, the Eye of Horus, geometries that spoke of a universe bound by sacred laws. He heard a voice, not in his ears, but in the very concept of his thoughts.
"A WILL, UNBROKEN BY BREAKING. A MIND THAT CRAVES ORDER YET KNOWS THE COST OF ITS ABSOLUTE. YOU ARE A SOLDIER. I AM A LAW. TOGETHER, WE MAY ANCHOR A REALITY UNRAVELING."
He'd wake, drenched in sweat, the phantom smell of ozone and papyrus in the air. His doctors called it PTSD. Rhodey feared it was something worse—or perhaps, something desperately needed.