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The light faded, and Nolan found himself standing once more within the ritual circle at Kamar-Taj as if nothing had happened. Yet his mind still rang with the Vishanti's words.
It was simple, really.
The Vishanti had told him the answer was already in his hands. His multiversal path was sound.
As for breaching the barrier into Universal Singularity he had known the method all along.
Unify the Infinity Stones within himself, then use the two dimensions he'd mastered to transpose reality and abstraction as the Ancient One had once hinted.
Make the unreal real; render the real as malleable as thought. Fuse the Six into one matrix and birth a cosmos within.
A "universal singularity" was, at its core, a person whose inner cosmos could be measured against a universe.
If his internal universe matured enough, he would be a universe.
Creating a universe was impossibly hard unless you lived in Marvel reality, where shortcuts existed.
The Infinity Stones were that shortcut. Unite all six and you tap a portion of cosmic totality. From there, keep walking the multiversal road, gathering sets from other realities—
—and collide with a problem: across the multiverse, the Stones are fragments of Nemesis.
If Nolan fused a set here, would Nemesis manifest? And if he fused them into himself… where would Nolan end and Nemesis begin?
So the plan shifted. He would become the structure the Stones require replicating their lattice and essence within his own being.
At the instant of fusion, the cosmic total the Six would normally resolve into would be drawn inward, devoured by his nascent inner cosmos.
For most, that was impossible. For Nolan, it might not be. The Particle Dimension and the Psionic Plane offered an unusual bridge: the Particle Dimension let him abstract the Six, turning the concrete into the conceptual, while the Psionic Plane served as a converter, recasting that conceptual mass back into structured creation he could pour into a universe seed within.
He exhaled. "Then we start with the Stones."
A portal rippled open, and he stepped through.
---
Stark Tower — Strategy Floor
Tony Stark rubbed at his temples, sketching protocols for "enhanced individuals" a tangle of liability rules and response guidelines.
After the Chitauri invasion, black-market scavengers had hacked alien tech into ugly, lethal toys.
Add spontaneous mutant awakenings, Inhumans popping up in clusters, and… there was always another fire.
On top of that was the Starship Initiative. The primary capital ship's frame was up, but Stark was still piecing together subsystems, auxiliaries, and a dozen specialized craft. Oscorp had schematics, sure but those were for the flagship; the web of support vessels was on him.
"This is a nightmare," Tony muttered.
FRIDAY cut in with a piercing alert. "Sir, orbital arrays detect multiple incoming fleets."
"Fleets?" Tony snapped upright. "Bring up the satellites."
The holoscreen bloomed black space flecked with distant starlight. Normally, only rock and cold fire drifted at that range. Now, warships. Bigger, sleeker, far more advanced than the Chitauri carriers.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Any outfit with eyes in orbit saw them, and panic spread fast. Off-world visitors had not exactly been… neighborly.
Tony patched in Charles Xavier. "Options? We've got an armada on the doorstep."
"They have not fired," Charles said calmly. "If they're holding position, perhaps they are not hostile. Our starship is unfinished; only the support craft are flight-worthy and even then…"
"Where's Reed?" Charles added.
"Neck-deep in a critical experiment."
"Then call Nolan."
"Already tried." Tony grimaced at the flood of encrypted pings from the U.N. "FRIDAY, scramble all auxiliary starships."
A new tone. "They are initiating descent," FRIDAY warned.
Tony froze. "Where?"
"Wakanda."
Tony didn't hesitate. "Alert the Enhanced Alliance Wakanda defensive posture, now!"
---
Jets screamed across the sky toward Wakanda. Tony launched, armor locking around him with a cascade of clicks, and shattered the sound barrier en route. Below, drop-ships fell like iron rain.
S.H.I.E.L.D. assets converged: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Clint Barton, and a cadre of X-Men led by Logan.
Tony touched down; his faceplate retracted with a hiss. He stared up at the descending flagship, an obsidian mountain bristling with gravitic spines.
He'd seeded monitoring satellites around Mars for early wormhole warnings. These ships had blinked in clean wormhole transit, no ripple until emergence.
"That's a lot of tech," Tony said tightly.
Steve stepped beside him. "Nolan?"
"Radio silence. When he dives into certain kinds of research, he disappears."
The lead dreadnought settled. A ramp unfurled, and figures in formal combat dress strode out. The vanguard halted as they registered the gauntlet of drawn weapons and armored heroes.
A woman at the front glanced over the assembled defenders, surprised at the reception. "We mean you no harm."
Tony flicked his wrist; a hard-light shield flowered over his palm. "Identify yourselves."
"We are envoys of Xandar," she said. "We've come to propose a strategic alliance with Earth. Has the Sorcerer Supreme not informed you?"
Tony traded looks. "You were invited by Nolan?"
"Not invited," the envoy corrected. "Grateful. The Sorcerer Supreme saved our world. We respect his power. We seek a treaty of mutual defense, technology exchange, and shared resources."
Tony let the shield hum, eyes narrowed calculating, suspicious, and, under it all, relieved.
If this was a trap, it was the most polite one he'd ever seen.
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