Shattered Horizons

Sokovia's mountains loomed like broken teeth against a bruise-purple sky, the air thick with the acrid tang of burning metal and ozone. Wanda stepped off Stark's quinjet, her boots crunching on snow streaked with ash. Pietro hovered at her side, uncharacteristically still, his silver hair dull under the sickly glow of Hydra's skyline—a pulsating spire where the city's heart once beat.

"Home sweet hell," Pietro muttered, kicking a fractured Hydra insignia embedded in the ice.

Arlan adjusted his Nen-conductive gauntlet, its batik-patterned circuits humming faintly. "The core's in the cathedral. Stark's scans show it's bigger. Angrier."

Bucky shouldered a StarkIndustries rifle, his vibranium arm glinting with frost. "Hydra's nostalgic. They love their dramatic lairs."

Kirana, bundled in a parka three sizes too big, peered out from Daniel's arms. "Why's the sky sad?"

Wanda knelt, brushing snow from a rusted toy car half-buried in the ice. "Because bad men broke it, malysh. But we'll fix it."

Stark's repulsors whined as he landed, faceplate retracting. "Correction: We'll break the bad men. Then fix the sky. Priorities, Maximoff."

The cathedral's spires throbbed with Tesseract energy, its stained-glass windows shattered into jagged teeth. Inside, the air vibrated with a subsonic growl—the core, a massive orb of blue-gold light suspended above the altar, warping stone pews into spirals of molten glass.

Baron Strucker awaited them, his grin a razor cut in the gloom. "Ah. The orphan, the assassin, and the child genius. Hydra's greatest failures."

Pietro blurred, slamming Strucker against the wall. "Say that again. Slowly."

"You think this is my design?" Strucker choked, nodding to the core. "We're but pawns. A titan comes. He hungers—"

A gunshot echoed. Strucker crumpled, a smoking hole in his forehead. Behind him, Ebony Maw lowered his hand, tendrils of cosmic energy writhing like serpents. "Verbose pests. So human."

Arlan's En spiked. "Thanos' lackey. Here to clean up?"

Maw tilted his head. "To cultivate. This… instability… pleases my master." He gestured to the core. "A door awaits. Shall we open it together?"

"Pass," Stark said, repulsors charging. "We're more 'slam-the-door' types."

Chaos erupted. Maw's telekinesis hurled stone pillars like javelins. Wanda's chaos magic met his in a shockwave of crimson and obsidian, their clash cracking the cathedral's foundation. Pietro zipped through debris, evacuating civilians trapped in time-dilated pockets. Bucky picked off Hydra soldiers with sniper precision, each shot punctuated by a flinch—too familiar, too much.

Arlan sprinted toward the core, Nen flaring. "Wanda! Now!"

She disengaged from Maw, her glove fusing with Arlan's gauntlet. Gold and crimson spiraled, their combined energy lancing into the core. Reality screamed.

The core fractured, vomiting tendrils of distorted space—memories made tangible. A younger Wanda and Pietro huddled in a bombed-out apartment. Bucky strapped to a Hydra table. Arlan, in his past life, alone in a Jakarta internet café, scrolling job listings.

"Focus!" Wanda snarled, tears cutting through soot. "Don't let it in!"

Kirana's voice crackled through their comms, tinny and bright: "Al! The glowy crack's singing!"

Daniel's feed showed the Queens rift expanding, tendrils of void snaking through their neighborhood. "It's reacting to Sokovia!"

Maw laughed, levitating above the chaos. "Two doors. One key. Clever, child."

Arlan's mind raced. 'The cores are linked. Breaking one collapses the other.'

"Stark! Overload the Queens rift!"

"With what?!"

"Everything."

In Queens, Stark's armor fused with the AuraFlex generator, channeling the rift's energy into a single, white-hot beam. The Harpers' home disintegrated in the blast, the rift imploding with a thunderclap that shook the planet.

In Sokovia, the core shattered. Maw hissed, retreating into a swirling portal. "This changes nothing. Death comes."

The cathedral collapsed. Arlan's gauntlet melted, searing his skin. Wanda's magic cocooned them, her scream merging with the roar of falling stone.

Silence.

The team emerged from rubble, battered but alive. Sokovia's sky, now clear, revealed stars long shrouded by war.

Kirana's face filled the quinjet's viewscreen, smudged with soot but grinning. "Al! The house is gone!"

Wulan sobbed, hugging her. "We're safe. That's all that matters."

Bucky stared at the stars, Steve Rogers' compass in his palm. "What now?"

Arlan met Wanda's gaze. "We rebuild. Better."

Stark clapped his shoulder, uncharacteristically gentle. "Kid… you're Avenger material."

"Pass," Arlan said, smiling. "We're more 'door-slammer' types."

The Titan's Gaze

Thanos studied the holographic ashes of Queens and Sokovia, the Soul Stone glowing in his gauntlet. "They fight. They fall. In the end, they always fall."

Ebony Maw knelt. "The child's defiance is… amusing."

"Amusement is a distraction. Ready the Black Order. The doors will open."

The stars darkened. Somewhere, a rift wept.