-The Island-
Doctor Strange hovered against the violent winds, the Shield of the Seraphim wrapped around his body in layers of protective orange light. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead as he stared up at the coalescing monstrosity. This thing was so far beyond his capabilities it wasn't even funny.
Captain Marvel blazed with photon energy, her body glowing like a second sun against the darkening sky. "We can't let it finish forming!"
She didn't wait for agreement. Carol launched herself skyward, a streak of golden light aimed directly at the Elemental Giant's forming head. If she could destroy its core before full integration—
"Danvers, wait!" War Machine rocketed after her, his shoulder-mounted cannons deploying and unleashing a devastating barrage. Missiles and energy beams streaked toward the massive target.
Rocket slammed the ship's control lever forward. "All batteries, FIRE!" Every weapon on the Guardian's vessel opened up, adding to the assault.
The Eternals exchanged grim looks. No words were needed. They'd spent seven thousand years protecting this planet. They weren't about to stop now.
Sersi pressed both hands to the ground, attempting to transmute the surrounding rock into reinforced barriers. The cliff beneath her feet began to shift, molecular structures rearranging—
Then it crumbled completely. The stone turned to dust, and Sersi pitched toward the edge.
Mysterio's hand shot out, energy tendrils wrapping around her waist and yanking her back to safety just as tons of debris cascaded over the cliff face.
"Thanks," Sersi gasped.
Makkari didn't bother with words. She became a blur of motion, circling the Elemental Giant at supersonic speed, analyzing, assessing. When she returned seconds later, her hands moved in rapid sign language.
"Its energy output is catastrophic. We can't get close—if we're drawn into its field, we'll be integrated into its mass."
"Then we fight at range!" Mysterio's voice was thick with hatred. He could never forget the Fire Elemental that had consumed his hometown. "This is a fight to the death. Either we destroy it, or it destroys everything!"
"It's too fast!" Tony's voice carried genuine alarm. "The integration rate is accelerating exponentially!"
The Elemental Giant completed its formation before Carol could reach it. Her photon-blazing form struck the creature's outer energy field and was violently repelled, sent tumbling through the air before she could arrest her momentum.
Thor's expression was grim, his knuckles white around Stormbreaker's handle. His combat instincts—honed over fifteen hundred years—were screaming warnings. This entity's power rivaled Surtur after his resurrection with the Eternal Flame. Maybe exceeded it.
Everyone braced for the fight of their lives.
But the Elemental Giant didn't attack.
Instead, the two-kilometer-tall fusion of earth, fire, water, and wind slowly tilted its head—a mass of lava, stone, and crackling lightning—upward to stare at something beyond the storm clouds.
It opened what might have been a mouth and roared.
The sound shook the ocean, sent tsunamis radiating outward, made the air itself vibrate. But the roar wasn't directed at the heroes below. It carried warning. Anger. And underneath those, barely detectable, a trace of instinctive fear.
"What's it doing?" Barton asked, bewildered. The creature had them dead to rights and wasn't pressing the advantage.
Then the thunderclouds Thor had summoned were torn apart.
Not dispersed naturally. Not blown away by wind. They simply... parted, pulled aside like curtains, receding to reveal what they'd been concealing.
And everyone stopped breathing.
It wasn't the sky they saw. It was metal. Ancient, impossibly vast metal plating that stretched from horizon to horizon. Cosmic energy pulsed through channels carved into its surface, creating patterns of light that hurt to look at directly.
Just the edge of it—one small portion—covered the entire visible sky.
Sunlight vanished. The world fell into a dim twilight illuminated only by the faint glow of the colossal entity overhead.
Mantis collapsed completely, her antennae going dark. Her voice was a broken whisper: "He... he's here."
-Orbital Perspective-
The view seemed to pull back, yanked upward by an invisible force, racing through atmosphere and into the cold vacuum of space.
Earth hung there—a beautiful blue marble, peaceful and fragile.
And beside it stood a giant.
Not metaphorically. Not relatively. An actual giant composed of cosmic matter and primordial energy, so vast that Earth itself looked like a child's toy in comparison.
Arishem the Judge. Supreme leader of the Celestials. Creator and judge of the Eternals. A being who had existed since before most galaxies had formed.
His arrival sent ripples through reality itself.
-Earth's Surface-
An invisible wave swept across the planet.
It wasn't sound. Wasn't kinetic force. It was something deeper—an absolute crushing pressure at the level of existence itself, operating on frequencies that biological matter wasn't designed to withstand.
More than 99.9% of humanity lost consciousness in the same instant. Like lights being switched off simultaneously across the globe, billions of people simply... stopped. They collapsed where they stood—in streets, in cars, in homes. Some fell mid-sentence. Others crumpled silently.
Global civilization fell into eerie silence.
-The Island-
War Machine drifted in the air like a leaf caught in a hurricane, his armor's systems completely overwhelmed by Arishem's presence.
"Rhodes!" Tony's scream was raw with terror. His own armor was holding—barely—the Power Stone's energy allowing him to resist the cosmic pressure. But Rhodes had no such protection.
War Machine's systems went dark. He began falling, plummeting toward the jagged rocks below.
"No!" Wanda forced herself to move against the crushing weight of Arishem's existence. She raised one trembling arm, and crimson Chaos Magic erupted beneath Rhodes, creating a cushion that slowed his descent.
He still hit hard—the impact would have shattered bone on a normal human. But the Extremis enhancements in Rhodes's body could handle it. He'd survive.
Wanda collapsed immediately after, her strength spent, consciousness fading. The Chaos Magic dissipated as she hit the ground.
"RAAAAGH!" A roar of pure rage echoed across the island.
Banner's Hulkbuster armor had gone dark when Banner lost consciousness. But that had triggered the fail-safe. The Hulk emerged, green muscles bulging as he tore free of the inactive armor.
He tried to stand against the pressure, his legendary strength pushing back against cosmic force. For a moment, he actually managed it—standing upright, defiant.
Then his knee buckled. He dropped down, fists slamming into the rock to hold himself up, still roaring his refusal to submit.
Captain Marvel's photon aura flickered wildly, on the verge of collapse. She managed to land rather than crash, but even standing required all her concentration. Taking a single step felt impossible.
Thor gritted his teeth, channeling every ounce of power Stormbreaker could provide. He tried to summon the Bifrost, to call for Asgardian reinforcement—
Nothing. The connection was blocked. Something greater than the Bifrost itself had severed his link to the Rainbow Bridge.
"Heimdall," Thor whispered desperately. "Please see us."
-Asgard-
Heimdall could see. Of course he could see—his all-seeing gaze penetrated all barriers.
But the moment his vision focused on Arishem the Judge, pain lanced through his skull. It felt like staring into the heart of a star. He gasped and immediately averted his gaze, unable to maintain observation.
Odin approached slowly, Gungnir gripped in his hand, and looked toward Earth. His single eye narrowed as he assessed the Celestial.
Arishem's power far exceeded that of the Celestials Odin had encountered in his youth during the wars of conquest. Those had been mighty beings, yes. But this? This was something else entirely. A different order of magnitude.
There would be no cavalry from Asgard. Not against this.
-New York Sanctum-
The Ancient One stood at her window, looking up at the sky—at the impossibly vast form of Arishem visible even from thousands of miles away.
She sighed softly, a sound carrying the weight of centuries. For all her power, all her knowledge, all her manipulation of time itself... she felt helpless.
-The Island-
The Eternals remained conscious, their cosmic nature allowing them to resist where humans could not. But consciousness was all they had. Their bodies refused to obey commands, frozen by the overwhelming presence of their creator.
And the thousand-meter Elemental Giant—Earth's consciousness's final desperate defense, a fusion of all four elemental cores that had required every Avenger's full effort to defeat separately—stood motionless.
Arishem's gaze shifted. Just slightly. Just enough to acknowledge the creature's existence.
Just a glance.
The Elemental Giant began to disintegrate from the head downward. The fire composing its skull cooled instantly to nothing. The water forming its blood fell away but vaporized before reaching the ocean. The wind creating its breath simply... stopped. The stone comprising its bones crumbled to powder.
In seconds, the most powerful entity Earth's will could create—a god-killer meant to stand against Tiamut himself—was erased as if it had never existed.
Deep within the planet's core, Earth's consciousness felt despair for the first time in its brief existence. This had been its final card, its ultimate defense. And before the Supreme Celestial, it hadn't even been worthy of serious attention.
The effort of creating the Elemental Giant had exhausted the last of Earth's newborn will. Darkness crept in at the edges of consciousness.
Earth's awareness began to fade, falling into silence that might be permanent.
And Arishem the Judge turned his full attention to the island below.