Chapter Text
Peter emerged from the Bifrost three hundred metres above the nearest solid object.
For one alarming second, there was nothing beneath him except open sky, fragments of white stone and a distant ocean shining far below.
Then gravity remembered him.
Peter dropped.
“KAREN?”
“The surface beneath you is descending at approximately twenty-seven metres per second.”
“That is not a surface. That is a disaster with buildings on it.”
Peter twisted in the air as the others emerged behind him. Tony’s armor formed before the Bifrost had entirely released him. Vision caught Wanda around the waist and slowed their descent. Hulk dropped past them with his arms folded against his chest, apparently unconcerned.
Loki alone remained suspended inside a circle of green magic, his cloak moving in the violent wind.
“You could have mentioned the lack of ground!” Tony shouted over the channel.
Heimdall’s voice answered from New Asgard. “There was ground when I opened the path.”
“That was four seconds ago!”
“The situation has worsened.”
Hulk struck a smaller island hard enough to split the road beneath him. He rose from the crater, caught the edge of a collapsing house in both hands and pushed it upright before it could fall onto the people sheltering beside it.
“Hulk found ground.”
“Congratulations,” Tony said. “Hold on to it.”
Inside their shared mind, Bruce studied the fractures spreading beneath Hulk’s feet.
The western half is still stable, he said. Stay on it until we know where Thor needs the muscle.
Hulk grunted his agreement.
Peter fired two organic webs from his wrists toward the largest island. They caught the remains of a tower, pulling him into a swing that carried him over a city coming apart in the sky.
Nydis had been built across twelve floating islands.
None of them were staying where they belonged.
The largest tilted toward the ocean, its streets running at an angle steep enough to send abandoned vehicles sliding into buildings. Water poured from elevated canals and vanished over the island’s edge. Smaller districts drifted away from one another while bridges broke between them. White towers leaned beneath skies filled with pieces of stone.
At the centre of it all, Thor stood upon the steeply tilted surface of the eastern island.
Lightning surrounded him. Stormward had been driven deep into the rock, and branching currents travelled from the weapon through the island’s foundations. Each surge strengthened the failing stone and pushed against the unnatural gravity dragging the city toward the ocean.
Even from a distance, Peter could see the strain in Thor’s arms as he held the weapon in place.
“Thor!” Loki called.
Thor looked toward them. Relief crossed his face for less than a second before the island shifted again.
“You came quickly.”
“You failed to mention that you were literally holding a city in the sky.”
“I feared it might sound discouraging.”
“It remains discouraging after our arrival.”
“Less talking,” Hulk said.
He remained on solid ground and shoved the collapsing house back onto its foundation while the trapped civilians escaped. Then he tore two fallen support columns from the road and carried them toward the island’s broad western shelf, where ATHENA was already marking a possible landing site.
Thor glanced toward him. “Welcome, Hulk!”
Peter landed on the side of a building, his feet adhering to what had once been an exterior wall and was rapidly becoming the floor.
“KAREN, connect me to the rescue network.”
“Connected. ATHENA has deployed twenty rescue units through the Bifrost. Additional armor is awaiting viable arrival coordinates.”
A row of white-and-red suits emerged from a second rainbow bridge above the western district. Their thrusters activated simultaneously, carrying them toward marked groups of civilians.
“ATHENA,” Tony said, “prioritize anyone near an edge. FRIDAY, map structural failures. Nobody sends an armor beneath an island until we know which pieces are about to fall.”
“Rescue priorities established,” ATHENA answered.
“Structural projections underway,” FRIDAY said. “Current models remain unreliable due to fluctuations in local gravitational fields.”
Peter looked across the broken city.
People clung to buildings and damaged bridges. Some had gathered in open squares while others remained trapped inside structures that no longer agreed on which direction was down. Hundreds were already moving toward the western islands, where Thor had managed to stabilize the largest surviving bridge before Peter arrived.
Hundreds more were missing.
“Peter,” Tony said, “take the southern district. Trust your senses if they disagree with the scans.”
Peter jumped.
“That is usually when my day gets worse.”
“It’s also usually when you find somebody.”
That was true.
Peter crossed the gap between two islands as Loki raised both hands.
Green magic entered the wind.
The air resisted him at first. Peter saw it in the sharp movement of Loki’s shoulders and the way his spell broke into separate streams before reforming. The magic that had once held Nydis together had not belonged to Loki. It moved differently from the forces he understood, built from currents of air, gravity and something older that seemed to exist between them.
Loki closed his fingers.
The wind changed direction.
Peter’s fall became a glide. The nearest rescue armors stopped fighting the air and accelerated toward their targets.
Tony landed beside Loki on the remains of a bridge.
“You can control it?”
“I can persuade it.”
“That sounded less comforting than you probably intended.”
“It is currently listening.”
A crack travelled along the island beneath them.
Tony looked down. “Is it listening well?”
“No.”
Tony launched away just before the bridge separated.
Loki vanished in green light and appeared on a tower that was still mostly vertical.
Peter swung beneath the southern island. His lenses marked heat signatures above him, but his spider-sense pulled his attention farther east, toward a section ATHENA had identified as empty.
“KAREN, dismiss the scans on building thirty-six.”
“The structure shows no surviving life signs.”
“I know. Mark it for rescue anyway.”
“Marked.”
Peter changed direction.
Far away in Avengers Tower, Ned’s voice reached him through a system that had taken nearly six years to build.
Tony had begun designing it after the battle with Thanos, when he remembered how thoroughly Thor had vanished while travelling through space in search of information about the Stones. Tony had possessed satellites, armor, artificial intelligence and enough money to purchase several small countries, yet none of it had allowed him to call an Asgardian who had left Earth.
He had taken that personally.
Rocket provided the Guardians’ interstellar communication technology. Shuri rebuilt components too primitive to meet her standards, Tony redesigned the result until it fit inside ordinary communicators, and Loki bound the signals to the pathways used by the Bifrost. Heimdall’s restored observatory became the centre of the network, while permanent relays in Avengers Tower, Wakanda, New Asgard and the Benatar carried transmissions farther into space.
The system worked best after the Bifrost had opened a recent path. For several hours, voices, tactical information and selected armor feeds could travel along the fading connection between worlds.
Tony formally named it the High-Energy Interrealm Messaging, Data and Long-Distance Link.
H.E.I.M.D.A.L.L.
Everyone else called it Heimdall’s Hotline.
Heimdall had accepted the official name as an honor. His opinion of the unofficial one remained considerably less generous.
Peter occasionally called it Rainbow Wi-Fi, an opinion Heimdall liked even less.
“I’m comparing your route with the municipal plans Heimdall sent. Building thirty-six connects to a public shelter under the next three structures.”
“How many exits?”
“Four originally. Three are gone, and the last one is currently pointing toward the ocean.”
“So, bad?”
“I was going to say structurally complicated.”
“That is engineer language for bad.”
“Harley says it’s engineer language for interesting.”
Harley joined the channel. “It can be both.”
Peter reached the building and crawled across its underside. The original street was now above his head, along with several objects held in place by nothing except a bent railing.
His senses pulled him toward a fractured column.
“Here.”
He tore through the outer wall.
Dust escaped into the sky. Peter pushed farther inside, following a narrow passage between collapsed sections. His lenses found nothing, but he could hear it now, quick heartbeats beneath the rubble and a child trying very hard not to cry.
“Hello?” Peter called. “My name is Spider-Man. I’m here to get you out.”
A voice answered from somewhere ahead.
“The door is gone.”
“That’s okay. I don’t usually use doors.”
Peter pushed one hand beneath a broken support and lifted. The structure shifted around him.
“Harley, tell me this isn’t load-bearing.”
“It was load-bearing before half the building fell off.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“It’s carrying less weight now.”
“Harley.”
“Hold it eight seconds.”
Nanites separated across Peter’s back. Four articulated spider legs unfolded from the suit, planted themselves against separate sections of the floor and ceiling and distributed the weight while Peter raised the support higher. Two rescue units cut through the wall beside him while a third sprayed stabilizing foam across the fractured ceiling.
This version of the foam hardened exactly as intended and did not consume anyone’s footwear.
Peter considered that progress.
Behind the support, fourteen civilians occupied a shelter built beneath the building. Two adults were injured, and three children were holding tightly to a small, round creature with translucent ears.
One of the adults stared at Peter. “The scanners passed us.”
“They get embarrassed when people hide beneath several metres of alien stone. We’ll apologize to them later.”
The smallest child looked at the mechanical legs braced around Peter.
“Are you a god?”
Peter nearly dropped the support.
“No.”
“A spirit?”
“No.”
The child considered him carefully. “A very strange animal?”
“Technically, still no.”
One of the rescue suits opened around the injured adult. Peter held the passage clear while the others followed it toward the exterior.
The child did not release the round creature.
“Can Tilli come?”
Peter glanced at it.
Tilli had six legs, enormous dark eyes and the alarming ability to inflate when frightened. It currently occupied most of the child’s arms.
“Absolutely.”
“KAREN,” Peter said quietly, “make sure nobody tells Tony I added an animal to an active evacuation.”
Tony answered over the channel. “You know I can hear you.”
“Tilli is essential.”
“Tilli sounds expensive.”
The creature squeaked.
Tony sighed. “Fine. Rescue the balloon hamster.”
The child looked offended. “She is a velti.”
“My apologies to the velti.”
The rescue armors carried the civilians into the sky. A rainbow bridge opened ahead of them, delivering them to the stable western island where Asgardian healers and Nydian medical workers had established a temporary station.
The moment the last person was about to clear the shelter, Peter’s spider-sense flared.
“Move!”
He released the support. Two mechanical legs threw him through the opening while the other two shielded the last child from falling stone. The rescue suit beside him followed as the entire building folded inward.
Peter caught the child with Tilli in one arm and webbed the nearest armor with the other. The collapse threw them into open air, but Loki’s redirected wind caught them before they could fall toward the ocean.
Peter looked toward the distant tower.
Loki stood with both arms raised, green magic burning around his hands.
“Thank you!”
“I would prefer gratitude expressed from stable ground.”
“We’re working on finding some!”
Peter transferred the child and Tilli to the rescue armor.
Once they were clear, the four mechanical legs folded against Peter’s back and dissolved into the red-and-gold nanites of his suit. They would remain there until he needed them again.
Before it flew away, the child reached out and touched Peter’s mask.
“You are certain you are not a god?”
“Very.”
The child looked doubtful.
Peter suspected this was going to become a recurring problem.
Thor was losing his argument with gravity.
He would not have described it that way. Hulk, working several kilometres below him, would have called gravity annoying.
The eastern island continued descending. Stormward held its centre together, but the rock was breaking around the weapon. Wanda hovered beyond the western edge, red magic surrounding the island in broad bands. Every time the stone fractured, she caught the separated pieces and forced them back into place.
Vision moved above her, carrying civilians from the highest buildings while directing others toward rescue corridors.
“I have located a section of stable coastline,” he reported. “If we lower the island by thirty-one degrees, its foundations should settle without entering the ocean.”
“Should?” Tony asked.
“The alternative is certainty of collapse.”
“I miss probabilities with higher numbers.”
On the coastline below, Hulk landed in a crater of solid bedrock and immediately began clearing the marked site. He rolled boulders larger than houses away from the evacuation routes, then dragged the support columns he had carried from the western shelf into position. ATHENA’s heavy rescue units arrived through the Bifrost with additional braces and drove them deep into the ground around him.
One loosened slab struck Hulk’s shoulder and shattered.
Hulk frowned at the fragments. “City throwing rocks.”
It isn't doing it on purpose, Bruce said inside their mind.
“Then city should stop.”
We are not holding up the island, Bruce reminded him. Thor and Wanda are slowing it. We are building somewhere for it to land.
“Hulk knows.”
You said you were going to catch it.
“Catch edge.”
Bruce decided that distinction was close enough.
Above them, Tony flew around the island while dozens of nanite anchors separated from his armor and attached themselves to the fractured stone. More supports arrived through the Bifrost, carried by ATHENA’s heavy rescue units.
“Harley, I need placement.”
A model of the island appeared across Tony’s display.
“I’m using Loki’s wind pattern and Wanda’s pressure points,” Harley said. “Anchor three goes forty metres east. Number seven needs to be lower.”
“Lower puts it directly beside the fracture.”
“Exactly. It keeps the fracture from becoming a canyon.”
Tony redirected the armor carrying the support.
“Ned?”
“The western island is clear. The northern evacuation route still has forty-three civilians crossing it.”
“Tell them to move faster.”
“They’re carrying injured people.”
“Then tell them to move carefully faster.”
Ned switched channels and relayed the instructions to the teams on the bridge.
Peter landed beside Tony on the island’s slanted surface.
“Southern district is clear.”
“You found fourteen people in a building every scanner called empty.”
“And a velti.”
“I am intentionally excluding the velti from your performance review.”
“When did I start getting performance reviews?”
“When you became an employee.”
“That feels unfair.”
“You’re an executive.”
“That feels worse.”
Peter looked toward Loki.
The green magic around him had spread across the sky, following currents that bent around each island. His hands shook once before he closed them more tightly.
Tony noticed too.
“Reindeer Games,” he called, “how long can you hold the wind?”
“As long as required.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It was the answer you are receiving.”
A line of green light broke around Loki’s left hand. He caught it before it could spread.
Tony’s face tightened inside his helmet.
“Five minutes,” he said. “Then you stop.”
“You have no authority over my magic.”
“I have authority over anyone currently connected to my communications system.”
“That is not how authority works.”
“It is today.”
Thor glanced between them despite the city breaking beneath his feet.
“You argue like an old married couple.”
“We are not a couple,” Tony and Loki said together.
Hulk grinned.
Peter decided that maintaining the structural integrity of a falling city was probably easier than entering that conversation.
ATHENA marked the final anchor as secured.
“Lowering system prepared.”
Wanda looked toward Thor. “If we bring it down too quickly, the underside will split.”
“Then we shall not bring it down too quickly.”
Hulk planted the final brace into the coastline and stepped into the reinforced trench behind it.
“Hulk can put city down.”
“Gently,” Peter said.
“Hulk knows gently.”
Tony rotated in the air to look at the crater Hulk had created upon arriving.
Hulk followed his gaze.
“That was landing.”
“Of course it was.”
Vision descended beside Wanda. “All civilians have been removed from the upper district.”
“Ned?” Tony asked.
“The northern bridge is almost clear. Six people remaining.”
The entire island lurched.
One of the anchors tore free. Harley swore over the channel.
Peter’s senses erupted.
“Someone’s still inside.”
Vision turned toward him. “My scans detect no one.”
“Temple at the northern edge.”
Peter ran.
“Peter,” Tony warned, “we have to lower the island.”
“Then give me two minutes.”
“We might not have two.”
“Then I only need one.”
Peter launched from the slanted street as buildings moved around him. A web caught the temple’s highest tower and pulled him through an archway moments before the structure shifted toward the island’s edge.
Inside, enormous silver bells hung at impossible angles.
Peter’s spider-sense pulled him toward the floor.
He tore through it.
A young Nydian crouched beneath a stone table, one arm wrapped around a carved wooden box. The child could not have been older than ten.
Peter dropped beside him.
“I could not leave them.”
Peter looked at the box.
Small lights moved through openings carved into its surface.
“What’s inside?”
“The seed moths. Vaelor gave them to the temple. If they die, the silver trees cannot grow.”
Peter heard Tony counting down over the channel.
“Forty seconds.”
“Okay,” Peter said. “We’re saving the moths.”
The child stared at him. “Truly?”
“I once interrupted an alien invasion to save a goat. This isn’t even unusual anymore.”
Peter lifted the child beneath one arm and secured the box against his chest with webbing.
The temple began to fall.
The nanites across his back opened again. Four mechanical legs snapped into place around the child and the box, forming a protective cage as Peter ran up the wall.
“KAREN, structural line.”
One web-shooter loaded a reinforced rescue formula. Peter fired it through the open roof and pulled them into the sky as the tower slid from the island. His organic webbing could carry them easily, but the specialized line was designed to survive the shearing stone and violent changes in direction around them.
There was nothing close enough to catch.
“Little help!”
Vision appeared beneath them.
Peter and the child struck his arms at the same moment the island’s descent accelerated.
“Everyone clear!” Vision called.
“Now!” Tony ordered.
Thor pulled Stormward from the stone.
The island dropped—but not freely.
Wanda forced the western side downward while Tony’s anchors activated, spreading the pressure across the remaining foundations. Loki sent the wind beneath the island in one final surge. Thor remained on its surface, pouring lightning through Stormward and into the anchors to keep the central fracture from splitting apart.
The western coastline rose toward Peter and Vision.
Far below them, Hulk stood inside the trench with both feet planted against bedrock. The landing cradle surrounded him, Asgardian columns, Stark braces and fragments of Nydian stone locked into a broad slope intended to receive the island’s lowest edge.
The island touched the first supports.
Every brace bent.
Hulk caught the descending edge only after it reached him. He did not hold the island in the air. Thor, Wanda, Loki and the anchors carried most of its remaining weight while Hulk forced its momentum sideways, away from the harbour and into the centre of the cradle.
The ground broke beneath his feet. He drove one shoulder against the stone and roared as the entire island tried to roll over him.
Three degrees to your left, Bruce warned.
Hulk shifted.
The island followed.
Wanda’s magic brightened until the entire sky turned red. Tony’s anchors screamed beneath the pressure. Thor brought Stormward down, and lightning fused the last support into place.
The island settled against the coastline.
Stone thundered against stone.
For several seconds, everything disappeared inside dust and displaced water.
Then the ground stopped moving.
The island rested at an angle against the coast, damaged but intact.
A cheer travelled through the rescue channel.
Peter hung in Vision’s arms above the settling dust. The Nydian child continued holding the seed moths.
“They survived,” the child whispered.
Peter looked through one of the openings. Tiny silver lights moved inside.
“Yeah,” he said. “They did.”
The four mechanical legs unfolded from around the child and drew back into Peter’s suit, disappearing beneath smooth red-and-gold plates.
Below them, Hulk pushed himself out of the earth.
He looked toward Thor.
“Hulk’s edge bigger.”
Thor brushed dust from his armor. “I supported the centre before you arrived.”
“Hulk held more at end.”
“I held it longer.”
Tony landed between them.
“We are not ranking who carried more island.”
Hulk pointed at Thor. “Hulk won.”
Thor smiled. “He believes he won because I permitted him the heavier side.”
Hulk narrowed his eyes.
Tony raised one gauntlet. “There will be no rematch.”
“Why?” Hulk asked.
“Because we have run out of falling cities.”
A distant island cracked.
Tony looked toward it.
“Temporarily.”
By nightfall, all twelve islands of Nydis had been secured, although only four still floated where they had begun.
Three had been lowered safely onto the coastline. Four remained airborne after Loki was able to use a mix of his magic, Stark anchors, Asgardian runes and Wanda’s magic. Two smaller islands had been evacuated and allowed to settle into the ocean where they formed new reefs beyond the harbour.
No one had found stable ground for the last three, so Thor and Wanda guided them toward prepared sites farther inland while Loki controlled the wind and Tony’s anchors limited their descent. Hulk remained on the ground, clearing each site, driving supports into bedrock and forcing the islands into their landing cradles when they reached him.
He and Thor continued disagreeing over who had carried the largest share of the work.
The restored Bifrost remained open in controlled bursts. It carried the injured to New Asgard for easier treatment, brought healers and supplies to Nydis and moved entire groups of displaced civilians onto the western islands.
Heimdall directed every passage from the observatory.
The temporary connection he maintained between worlds carried communications as well as people, although the strange darkness around the dead god’s temple repeatedly disrupted it.
Ned and Harley kept the network functioning whenever the signal broke.
“Relay four is disappearing again,” Ned reported.
“It isn’t disappearing,” Harley said. “The signal is folding back through itself.”
“That sounds like disappearing with extra steps.”
“It means we can redirect it.”
“Can you redirect it before Peter loses communications?”
Harley entered a new sequence.
“I already did.”
Peter’s display flickered, went black and returned.
“You two know I can hear these discussions, right?”
“We were demonstrating confidence,” Ned said.
“That wasn’t what it sounded like.”
“You remained connected.”
“Mostly.”
Peter waited for his display to stabilize and looked at Tony. “You really built an interplanetary communications network because you couldn’t call Thor?”
“I built it because ‘he left the planet’ is no longer an acceptable excuse for ignoring me,” Tony answered.
Loki’s voice entered the channel. “You installed my private relay before Thor’s.”
“Yours required more testing.”
“For four years?”
“It’s a complicated system.”
Thor sounded offended. “Why was mine not complicated?”
“Because you kept hitting it with lightning.”
“I was testing its durability.”
“You were trying to make it louder.”
“It worked.”
Harley’s voice softened. “You all right?”
Peter looked across the survivors gathering beside the medical stations. Parents held children they had feared were lost. Rescue armor carried the last injured civilians from the Bifrost. The child from the temple sat beside the seed moths while Tilli the velti inflated and deflated near their feet.
“I’m okay,” Peter said. “You found the shelter.”
“You found it,” Ned corrected.
“We both did.”
Across the channel, someone announced that the final civilian had been accounted for.
Peter closed his eyes for a moment.
They had arrived while a world was falling.
They had still reached everyone.
Then Heimdall spoke.
“Thor. Loki. Go to the northern temple.”
The relief disappeared from his voice.
Vaelor lay beneath an open sky.
The temple around him had been destroyed, but the stone beneath his body remained untouched. He appeared almost human, though far larger, with silver skin and hair that moved as though an invisible wind still passed through it.
A single wound crossed his chest.
There was no blood.
Darkness filled the opening instead.
It moved within the wound like something alive, swallowing every fragment of light that reached it. The glow from Tony’s arc reactor dimmed when he approached. Wanda’s magic contracted around her fingers. Even Vision’s replacement stone lost some of its white-gold brightness.
Stormward pulled in Thor’s grip.
“I’m taking that as a bad sign.”
“You should,” Heimdall said. “Touch nothing.”
He had arrived through the final Bifrost passage carrying Hofund. His golden gaze remained fixed upon the darkness.
Loki approached no closer than Thor.
“This did not come from Nydis.”
“No,” Thor said. “Nor from any weapon I know.”
Wanda studied the wound. “It feels like grief.”
Peter looked at her.
Her expression tightened.
“Not his,” she continued. “Someone else’s. It has been fed until grief became hatred, and hatred became something that could cut.”
Tony’s scanners moved over Vaelor’s body.
“No radiation I recognize. No conventional energy. It’s absorbing everything we point at it.”
“Then cease pointing things at it,” Loki said.
“That was the next stage of the experiment.”
“There will be no next stage.”
Tony looked at him. “You don’t get to ban science.”
“I do when the subject devours light.”
Loki lifted one hand. A small green illusion appeared above his palm.
The darkness inside Vaelor’s wound shifted toward it.
Loki immediately dismissed the spell.
For the first time since arriving, he looked genuinely unsettled.
Peter turned toward the ruined temple.
“Was Vaelor powerful enough to hold all the islands himself?”
“He did so for centuries,” Heimdall answered. “The natural forces of this world were once unstable. Vaelor bound them together so the Nydians could build their home.”
“He ruled them?” Tony asked.
A Nydian healer stood several steps away.
“No,” she said.
Everyone looked toward her.
She held one hand against her injured side, but she refused the support offered by the rescue armor beside her.
“Vaelor lived among us. He repaired our bridges. He taught our children to listen to the changing winds. When storms came, he remained beneath the islands until they passed.”
Her gaze moved toward his body.
“He could have left when the shadows arrived.”
Thor’s grip tightened around Stormward. “He stayed.”
“He held the city together while we evacuated the outer districts. When the creature struck him, Vaelor used what remained of his power to protect the temple shelter.”
Peter thought of the children hidden beneath the rubble. Of the seed moths and the silver lights moving inside their wooden box.
The god had died protecting them.
Whoever killed him had known exactly what he was doing.
“Did anyone see the attacker?” Tony asked.
“The darkness came first,” the healer said. “It covered the temple and everything near it. We heard Vaelor fighting, but no one could enter. When the darkness withdrew, he was already dead.”
Heimdall looked toward the wound.
“For twelve minutes, Nydis vanished from my sight.”
Peter remembered Heimdall’s expression in Avengers Tower.
“That has never happened before, has it?”
“Not like this, with no warning at all.”
“Could the attacker know you were watching?”
“I do not know.”
The answer disturbed Peter more than certainty would have.
Heimdall almost always knew.
Thor knelt beside Vaelor without touching him.
“You kept faith with your people,” he said quietly. “We will keep faith with you.”
The wind moved across the ruined temple.
For the first time since their arrival, none of them tried to control it.
They returned to New Asgard after midnight.
The Bifrost placed them on the observatory platform beneath a sky filled with stars. Medical transports moved between the harbour and the healing halls. Nydian families who had nowhere safe to return to were being given rooms throughout the city.
New Asgard had learned long ago how to make space for people arriving with nothing.
Peter stepped away from the Bifrost and found a six-year-old boy waiting beside the bridge controls.
Axl stood with both hands clasped behind his back, apparently attempting to look as solemn as Heimdall. The effect was weakened by the fact that his tunic was crooked and one of Sparkles’ smaller descendants was chewing its edge.
He looked at Peter.
“You were late.”
Peter pulled off his mask. “We just saved an entire floating city.”
“You were three breaths late.”
“For what?”
“I saw you arrive before you arrived.”
Heimdall stopped beside his son.
Axl’s eyes flashed gold.
Only for a moment, but Peter saw the same distant light that entered Heimdall’s gaze whenever he looked beyond the world.
Heimdall placed one hand on Axl’s shoulder.
“What did you see?”
“Peter coming through the bridge.”
“And what did you believe it meant?”
“That he was already coming.”
“He was. Sight does not always measure time as we do. You must learn the difference between seeing an approaching moment and knowing when it will arrive.”
Axl frowned as he considered that.
Peter crouched in front of him.
“For the record, I was exactly on time from my perspective.”
“You were falling.”
“I do that a lot.”
“You shouted.”
“I also do that a lot.”
Axl looked toward Heimdall. “Will I shout when I fall from the Bifrost?”
“You will not fall from the Bifrost,” Heimdall said.
Peter stood. “That sounds optimistic.”
“It was an instruction.”
The young goat released Axl’s tunic and attempted to eat Peter’s glove.
Peter pulled his hand away.
“Is this one related to Sparkles?”
“Ember,” Axl said.
Ember sneezed.
A small flame struck Peter’s sleeve.
His suit extinguished it immediately.
“Definitely related.”
Axl smiled.
The expression broke through his attempt at solemnity and made him look six again.
Peter ruffled his hair before following the others down from the observatory.
New Asgard had changed during the years since Thanos’s defeat.
The first settlement had been built from salvaged ships, temporary homes and whatever supplies Earth could provide quickly enough. Now stone roads curved between houses constructed in Asgardian styles and reinforced with Wakandan technology. Golden runes illuminated the harbour. Permanent shields rested beneath the hills, and the restored Bifrost observatory stood where the old lighthouse had once faced the sea.
The city had grown around the people who had survived.
So had Peter.
Since joining Stark Industries, he visited even more often. His bedroom remained his, his tools still occupied half of Tony’s workshop, and nobody in New Asgard treated his arrival like the return of a guest.
Peter had built a life in New York without leaving the one waiting for him across the ocean.
As he crossed the village, three different people greeted him by name. A shopkeeper reminded him that he still owed her an improved heating system. Two children asked whether he had brought the web swing he had promised to install near the school.
An elderly Asgardian woman leaned out her window.
“Peter! The eastern goat is upon my roof again.”
Peter looked up.
A white goat stood proudly beside the chimney.
“I’ll get her down again!”
“You said that last time.”
“She got back up!”
“That sounds like a weakness in your strategy.”
Peter pointed at the goat. “Stay there.”
The goat bleated and jumped onto the neighbouring roof.
Tony walked past him.
“Doing great.”
“I’m respected here.”
“Clearly.”
Their house stood on a hill above the harbour. Thor had insisted it be large enough for family gatherings. Tony had insisted that family gatherings did not require twelve bedrooms.
Thor had won.
Lights already glowed in the windows. Someone had left a basket of red apples beside the door from the orchard Loki and Thor had planted years earlier.
Sparkles stood beside it.
Tony stopped.
“No.”
Sparkles took an apple and walked away.
“I didn’t even say what she wasn’t allowed to do.”
“She understood the general principle,” Loki said.
Bucky appeared from the side of the house carrying another basket.
“Your goat is stealing fruit.”
“She is not my goat,” Tony said.
Sparkles looked at him.
Bucky looked at him.
Tony exhaled. “Fine. Emotionally, she’s my goat. Legally, she belongs to Thor.”
“Thor says she cannot be owned.”
“That is exactly the kind of legal position people develop when they don’t want to pay for property damage.”
Peter took an apple from Bucky’s basket.
“How was everything here?”
“Quiet until the Nydians started arriving. Steve’s helping organize housing. Sam took the first medical shift. Natasha’s trying to convince Fury that bringing displaced aliens into Norway doesn’t require forty-seven forms.”
“Does it?”
“Fury says it requires three.”
Tony nodded approvingly. “That’s why he gets paid.”
Bucky looked toward Loki.
“You’re hurt.”
Loki’s left hand disappeared inside his sleeve.
Tony turned immediately.
“I am not.”
“You’re hiding your hand.”
“I often possess hands beneath my sleeves.”
Bucky carried the apples inside.
“I’m staying out of this.”
“Coward,” Tony called after him.
“An alive coward.”
Loki moved toward the stairs.
Tony caught his uninjured wrist.
“Show me.”
“It is a minor magical burn.”
“Then showing me should be minor too.”
Loki’s expression sharpened. “I do not require your permission to retire.”
“No, but you apparently require supervision to stop before your hand catches fire.”
“The city was falling.”
“And then it stopped.”
“Because I continued.”
“Because all of us continued. You don’t have to burn through your hands every time something goes wrong.”
Loki stared at him.
Peter remained near the door, suddenly certain he should be somewhere else.
“You sent pieces of your armor into a collapsing island,” Loki said. “You entered an unstable gravitational field three times.”
“Four.”
“That does not improve your argument.”
“My armor can be rebuilt.”
“So can my magic.”
“Your hand isn’t magic.”
“It is part of the apparatus.”
Tony’s grip loosened without releasing him.
“That is not funny.”
“I was not attempting humour.”
“That might be worse.”
For a moment, neither spoke.
The distance between anger and fear had always been small for Tony. Peter recognized the exact point at which one became the other.
Loki appeared to recognize it too.
His expression softened.
He withdrew his hand from his sleeve.
A narrow burn crossed his palm, green light moving faintly beneath the skin.
Tony’s face changed.
“Workshop.”
“It requires rest, not machinery.”
“Great. You can rest while I scan it.”
“Anthony—”
“Please.”
The word stopped Loki more effectively than the argument had.
Tony released his wrist.
Loki looked at him for another moment before turning toward the workshop.
“Ten minutes.”
“Twenty.”
“Twelve.”
“Fifteen, and I won’t tell Thor.”
“You assume that is leverage.”
“He’ll hover.”
Loki considered the threat.
“Fifteen.”
They walked away together.
Peter watched them go.
Bucky leaned back through the kitchen doorway.
“Still staying out of it?”
“Completely.”
“They know, right?”
“Apparently not.”
“Should we tell them?”
“Thor has tried. Steve has tried. Natasha made a presentation.”
Peter blinked. “An actual presentation?”
“Forty-six slides.”
“That feels excessive.”
“Ten slides were just six years of dates neither of them admitted were dates.”
Peter looked toward the workshop door.
Green light appeared beneath it, followed by the glow of Tony’s holographic scanners.
“Did it work?”
“No.”
Peter took another apple.
“Maybe slide forty-seven would have done it.”
Three days passed before they reconvened in the observatory before dawn.
New Asgard continued sending healers and supplies to Nydis while the alliance helped reinforce the surviving islands. Peter divided those days between lab work and repairing damaged armor with Tony. Thor remained on Nydis until its people no longer needed his power to keep their homes stable. Heimdall searched the roads between worlds whenever he was not directing the Bifrost.
He found no trace of the darkness.
Thor now stood at the centre of the chamber beside Heimdall. Loki’s hand had been wrapped despite his claim that magical burns did not require ordinary bandages. Tony stood beside him with the satisfied expression of someone who had won an argument and knew better than to celebrate visibly.
Peter joined Wanda, Vision and Bruce around the central table.
After the final island had been secured, Hulk had given their body back to Bruce. He had declined to return for what Bruce described as “the research part,” although he continued offering opinions from inside their shared mind.
Images of four worlds floated above the table.
Nydis appeared last.
Heimdall moved his hand, and points of golden light formed above each world.
“These are the divine presences I can no longer find. Its people all reported the same darkness surrounding their planets”
Thor looked at the first image. “Serron.”
“A god of harvest upon Talass,” Heimdall said. “He disappeared six months ago. His people believed he had withdrawn from them.”
The second point faded.
“Myrra of the Red Moon. Three months ago.”
“Was she killed?” Peter asked.
"Her presence is gone.”
A third world appeared.
“These people reported their god dead seventeen days ago.”
“And now Vaelor,” Tony said.
“The intervals between attacks are shortening,” Vision observed.
Peter studied the images.
“Were all of them like Vaelor?”
Thor understood the question.
“Were they good?”
Heimdall’s expression became distant.
“Serron demanded offerings during famine and abandoned villages that could not provide them. Myrra protected her people, although she refused to protect outsiders who crossed into her lands. The third called himself a god but ruled through fear.”
“And Vaelor died holding up a city,” Peter said.
“Yes.”
Wanda looked at the four lights.
“Whoever is doing this does not care about good or bad.”
“He is no longer distinguishing between those who cause suffering and those who prevent it,” Vision said.
“Maybe he never was,” Tony answered.
Thor placed Stormward on the table.
“Whoever carries that darkness possesses a weapon capable of killing gods.”
“And concealing entire worlds from Heimdall,” Loki added. “They know how to move beyond the sight of Asgard.”
Peter looked at Heimdall.
“Can you find where they went after Nydis?”
“Not yet.”
Axl’s voice came from the observatory entrance.
“He went where the stars do not shine.”
Everyone turned.
Axl stood beneath the archway in his nightclothes. Ember sat beside him.
Heimdall crossed the room and knelt before his son.
“What did you see?”
Axl pressed both hands against his eyes.
“A man inside the dark. He carried something that was hungry. There were shapes behind him, but they did not have faces.”
The room became very still.
“Did he see you?” Heimdall asked.
Axl lowered his hands.
“I think so.”
Golden light flickered through his eyes.
Then every light in the observatory went out.
Darkness filled the chamber for one breath.
Peter’s spider-sense rose.
Stormward sparked. Wanda’s hands turned red. Tony’s armor began forming around him as Loki pulled Axl behind his body.
The lights returned.
Heimdall had a look of extreme concentration.
A fifth world was slowly disapearing from his sight.
A black mark spread across its surface.
Heimdall rose.
“He has begun again.”
Thor reached for Stormward.
“How far?”
“Beyond the Nine Realms.”
The black mark widened.
This time, the world did not disappear all at once.
It was swallowed slowly enough for Heimdall to watch.
Peter's mask formed back over his face.
“We just got back.”
Tony’s armor closed.
“Welcome to the family business.”
Heimdall lifted Hofund.
The restored Bifrost awakened beneath New Asgard, its pathways reaching into the darkness between worlds once again.