-Broadcast-
Groot thrust both hands into the ground, his eyes blazing with determination. His arms transformed into thick vines that erupted from the earth beneath Thanos, wrapping around the Titan's legs and torso, binding him with living wood.
Thanos didn't even pause. He flexed his arms outward, and the vines—thick as tree trunks—snapped like twigs. Pieces of Groot's body fell away, and the young Guardian cried out in pain as his limbs were torn.
Wanda watched her friends sacrificing themselves to buy her precious seconds. With a sob of anguish, she extended her second hand toward Thanos. The chaos magic beam intensified, doubling in power, red energy crackling with greater intensity against the Mind Stone.
Captain America saw Thanos advancing despite Wanda's assault. Steve slid beneath a punch that would have taken his head off, came up on the other side, and drove both shields into the back of Thanos's knee. The Titan stumbled slightly—just slightly—and Steve used that moment to pivot and deliver an uppercut with the edge of his shield directly to Thanos's jaw.
The blow would have decapitated a normal person. Thanos's head snapped back. That was all.
Vision, still locked in place as Wanda's beam destroyed the stone keeping him alive, looked at her one last time. He closed his eyes slowly, accepting what was coming. A single tear rolled down his synthetic cheek—his last tear, shed for her.
"It's okay," he whispered, though she couldn't hear him over the roar of her own magic.
Thanos recovered from Captain America's strike and reached out with his left hand. Steve caught the gauntleted fist with both shields, his enhanced muscles straining, every fiber of his being focused on holding back that unstoppable force.
Thanos looked down at this human with something approaching respect. Of all the beings he'd fought across the cosmos, few had possessed the sheer will to even slow him down. This one—small, fragile, mortal—was actually making him work for it.
But will alone wasn't enough.
Thanos's right fist came around in a brutal hook that caught Steve square in the temple. Captain America's head snapped to the side, his vision went white, and he collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Wanda turned her head just in time to see Steve fall. Every friend who'd bought her time—Thor still chasing the ships, Natasha trapped in stone, Bucky embedded in a crater, Sam's wings broken—all of them defeated. All of them helpless.
She was alone.
Wanda withdrew one hand from destroying the Mind Stone and redirected it at Thanos. Scarlet energy erupted from her palm, raw chaos magic that could rewrite reality itself.
Thanos raised the Infinity Gauntlet defensively. The beam struck his guard, and even with four Infinity Stones protecting him, the force knocked him backward more than a meter, his boots carving trenches in the earth.
But then he planted his feet. Leaned into the assault. And began walking forward against the onslaught, step by agonizing step.
Vision opened his eyes one last time. His voice was barely a whisper, meant only for her. "It's alright. I love you."
Wanda's heart was breaking with each word, each step Thanos took, each crack that spread across the Mind Stone. She could feel Vision dying beneath her hand, could feel the stone fracturing, could feel her entire world ending—
The Mind Stone shattered.
A massive explosion of golden energy erupted from Vision's forehead, a shockwave of released power that threw Wanda backward and sent ripples across the battlefield. When the light faded, Vision was simply... gone. Not even a body remained. Just empty space where the man she loved had been.
Wanda lay on the ground where she'd fallen, staring at nothing, unable to process what she'd done.
Thanos walked forward, his breathing slightly labored from Wanda's assault. He looked down at her with something that might have been genuine sympathy.
"I understand, my child." His voice was soft, almost gentle. "Better than anyone."
Wanda raised her head slowly, her eyes red from tears and filled with absolute hatred. Her voice was a broken rasp. "You could never."
Thanos tilted his head slightly, acknowledging her pain. He reached out and touched her head, the gesture almost paternal. "Today, I lost more than you can know." His expression was genuinely sorrowful. "But now is no time to mourn." He looked at the sky, at the fading light. "Now is no time at all."
He walked past her toward the empty space where Vision had been obliterated. As he moved, the Time Stone on his gauntlet began to glow brilliant green. A circular band of energy formed around his wrist, rotating, building power.
Thanos opened his palm toward the empty air. A mandala of green light appeared, spinning, pulling. He slowly twisted his wrist, and reality obeyed.
Time began to flow backward.
The explosion reversed. Golden energy contracted, compressed, reformed. The empty space filled with Vision's body, whole and unmarred, the Mind Stone glowing yellow in his forehead. In seconds, it was as if the destruction had never happened.
"NO!" Wanda scrambled to her feet, horror and fury propelling her forward—
Thanos backhanded her almost casually. The blow sent her flying more than ten meters, her body tumbling across the ground before finally sliding to a stop. She lay there, stunned, watching helplessly.
-Real World-
"Oh my God! That's so cruel!" someone shouted.
"Wanda just killed the person she loved most with her own hands," another voice said, thick with emotion. "She went through that impossible choice, that unbearable pain—and it meant nothing! He just undid it like it never happened!"
"There's no greater torture than this," a third person whispered. "To make that sacrifice for nothing."
"The Time Stone can reverse the destruction of other Infinity Stones?" Pietro Maximoff's voice was incredulous. "That's completely broken!"
Doctor Strange's expression was somber. "Now you understand why the Ancient One guarded it for centuries. Why she considered it her most sacred duty. The Time Stone doesn't just show you the future—it gives you the power to rewrite the past. In the wrong hands, it's the most dangerous weapon in existence."
"Yeah, and you handed it over!" War Machine couldn't keep the frustration from his voice. He understood Strange must have had reasons, must have seen something in those fourteen million futures, but he still couldn't comprehend how they could possibly turn this around.
Thanos had all six Infinity Stones now. That meant he wielded absolute power over reality itself. He could solve any problem with a snap of his fingers. How the hell were they supposed to fight that?
Unless Thanos was stupid enough to give up the stones voluntarily, Rhodes couldn't imagine any scenario where they won.
-Broadcast-
Having dealt with Wanda's interference, Thanos walked over to where Vision lay, restored but helpless. The synthezoid tried to move, tried to phase, tried to activate any system that might help him escape—
Nothing worked. The Mind Stone's connection to his body had been severed and restored, but the trauma left him weak, his systems scrambled.
Thanos grabbed Vision by the throat and lifted him effortlessly, holding him up to eye level. Vision struggled weakly, his hands grasping at Thanos's wrist, but he had no strength left.
"I'm sorry," Thanos said, and he sounded genuine.
He raised his right hand to Vision's forehead. His fingers closed around the Mind Stone—the final piece of his lifelong quest. With his Titan strength, Thanos began to pull. The vibranium of Vision's forehead—one of the strongest materials on Earth—crumpled like aluminum foil beneath his grip.
Vision screamed, a sound of pure agony that no synthetic being should be able to make, as Thanos tore the Mind Stone free. The yellow gem came away in Thanos's hand, and Vision's body immediately went gray, lifeless. His eyes dimmed to darkness.
Thanos tossed the body aside like garbage. It hit the ground and didn't move. Vision—Jarvis—was dead.
Thanos held up the Mind Stone, the final piece of his grand design, and placed it in the last remaining slot on the Infinity Gauntlet's forehead.
The moment the six Infinity Stones united, power beyond comprehension erupted through the gauntlet. Thanos gasped as infinite energy coursed through his body—more power than any single being was meant to wield, more than even the Infinity Gauntlet could fully contain. Rainbow light leaked from the gauntlet's surface, reality itself unable to be fully bound.
The pain was excruciating. Every cell in Thanos's body screamed in protest as the stones' collective power threatened to tear him apart from the inside. He threw his head back and roared at the sky, his voice echoing across the battlefield.
It took several seconds—seconds that felt like hours—before his Titan physiology adapted, before he could withstand the overwhelming force flowing through him.
Just as Thanos caught his breath, just as he began to appreciate the full scope of what he now commanded—
A massive bolt of lightning struck him from above.
The blast hit with the force of a falling star, catching Thanos completely off-guard. He was thrown backward, tumbling across the ground for dozens of meters before finally crashing to a stop in a crater.
Thor had noticed something was wrong during his pursuit of the fleeing ships. He'd turned back, flying faster than he'd ever flown, but he'd arrived seconds too late. The Mind Stone was already in place.
Thanos climbed to his feet, rage replacing his earlier calm. He raised the Infinity Gauntlet, and all six stones blazed simultaneously—purple, blue, red, orange, yellow, and green light combining into a beam of pure annihilation that lanced toward Thor.
"You DARE?!" Thanos's voice shook the air.
Thor didn't hesitate. He hurled Stormbreaker with every ounce of his divine strength. The axe spun through the air, channeling the full power of the Bifrost, wreathed in lightning that turned the sky white.
Stormbreaker struck the beam of six Infinity Stones—and cleaved straight through it.
The axe blade cut through cosmic power itself, dispersed it like mist, and continued forward to embed itself in Thanos's chest with a sickening crunch. The impact drove Thanos to his knees.
Thanos stared down at the axe protruding from his sternum in complete disbelief. He'd channeled all six stones. ALL SIX. And this Asgardian's weapon had simply... overpowered them?
Thor landed in front of the kneeling Titan, grabbed Stormbreaker's handle, and Thanos's head with his other hand. He began pushing the axe deeper, driving it toward Thanos's heart.
"I told you." Thor's voice was quiet, deadly. "You'd die for that."
"AAAAHHH!" Thanos screamed, finally feeling genuine fear. He'd never been wounded like this, never felt his life slipping away. The pain was unimaginable—worse than anything he'd endured in his conquest of the universe.
But Thanos hadn't survived this long by giving up. His willpower—the same iron will that had driven him to sacrifice everything for his goal—allowed him to master the agony. His screams stopped. His eyes focused.
Thor, believing victory was assured, paused. Stopped pushing. Wanted Thanos to feel this, to understand what was happening.
That hesitation was fatal.
Thanos looked up at Thor, blood leaking from his mouth, his voice a rasp. "You should have..." He coughed. "You should have gone for the head."
Thor's eye widened in horror as he understood his mistake. "NO!"
Thanos raised his left hand. The Infinity Gauntlet was still functional, all six stones still blazing with power.
He snapped his fingers.
The sound echoed across Wakanda like the closing of a book. Like the sealing of a tomb. Like the end of everything.
A wave of white light exploded outward from the gauntlet, washing across the entire planet, spreading beyond it at faster-than-light speed, reaching across the galaxy, across the universe itself.
-Broadcast-
Thanos opened his eyes slowly. He was... somewhere else. Not Wakanda. Somewhere orange and red, warm and soft. He touched his chest instinctively, expecting to feel Stormbreaker's blade still embedded there—
Nothing. The wound was gone. Healed. Or perhaps it had never existed in this place.
His left hand was still raised in the snapping position, but empty. The Infinity Gauntlet had vanished.
Thanos looked around. He stood in a vast expanse of orange-red void—the Soul World, the realm within the Soul Stone itself. In the distance, he saw a simple structure, a pavilion. And standing in it, with her back to him—
"Daughter?" His voice cracked with emotion.
Gamora—young, perhaps eight years old, wearing the simple clothes from when he'd first taken her—turned slowly to face him.
"Did you do it?" Her voice was small, curious. Not accusing.
"Yes." Thanos's head bowed under the weight of that admission.
"What did it cost?" Gamora asked, though she already knew the answer.
Thanos looked up at her, meeting her eyes—the eyes of the child he'd loved more than life itself, the daughter he'd sacrificed for his vision. His voice was steady, accepting. "Everything."
Gamora smiled at him then, a sad smile of understanding, and nodded.
The vision faded. Thanos returned to Wakanda, to his damaged body, to reality.
But reality had changed.
Half of all living things in the universe had just ceased to exist.