Chapter 14
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Deep within the throat of the dormant volcano, the air shifted.
Vulkan stood in stillness, his massive frame casting long shadows against the molten glow. His eyes, twin embers of ancient patience and resolve, narrowed as the miasma in the Warp pulsed again—denser, darker, screaming of pain and premature birth. The child's instability had ruptured another seam. More would die. More would change.
He turned to the blackened stone table before him, his armor waiting—sleek obsidian plates inscribed with the language of lost Empires. With care and precision, Vulkan began the ritual of armoring himself, not as a warrior lusting for battle, but as a guardian shouldering a burden. Plate by plate, he sealed himself in.
He reached for his weapon. Not a relic. Not a trophy. A tool forged by his own hands, meant to destroy monsters and protect those who could not protect themselves. He gave the blade a single glance before sliding it into place on his back.
The volcano around him rumbled—not violently, but almost reverently—as if acknowledging the moment.
And then, he moved. The caldera behind him blurred as Vulkan sprinted across the terrain at speeds that defied his size. His focus narrowed into a single flame: the child.
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**New York City – Chaos at Ground Zero**
Smoke clawed at the sky, thick and choking, tinted an unnatural violet. The streets below were fractured, bloodied, and glowing with a sickly energy that curled space like heat rising off asphalt.
Tony hovered just above the ground, sword drawn in his right hand, left repulsor raised and glowing. His Mark VII armor—still battered from the earlier blast—hummed with energy, systems struggling to compensate for the anomalies caused by the Warp's interference.
"Jarvis," he muttered between clenched teeth, "tell me I'm not seeing this."
"I'm afraid you are, sir. The corrupted civilians have undergone extreme mutagenic changes. Their biology no longer conforms to any Earth-based schema. Recommendation: treat as highly infectious and dangerous."
"Yeah. Noted." Tony dove low, deflecting a lunging, snarling figure with a backhand slash of his sword. The blade, forged with alien-grade alloys, hummed with kinetic resonance as it cleaved through warped flesh and splattered acidic ichor across the pavement.
Three more closed in. They moved fast—too fast. Limbs bent in ways that defied biology, bones snapping and regrowing in real time. One shrieked, its eyes bulging with crimson voids, and Tony barely avoided its leap, countering mid-air with a repulsor blast that sent it crashing through a car windshield.
"These things don't stop!" he shouted, exasperated.
"Then you must, sir," Jarvis said calmly, "and faster."
Tony landed hard, sword spinning once in his hand as he skewered a corrupted woman through the chest. She hissed—not in pain, but pleasure. A grotesque smile tore across her face before she exploded into a shower of foul smoke.
He gagged. "God, these things smell like fermented socks and burnt death."
More were coming. From the shadows, the subways, the alleyways.
And all of it—centered around the boy.
Kevin. The kid was curled up at the epicenter of the explosion, his body trembling violently, eyes rolled back, mouth frothing as Warp energy coiled around him like a storm given flesh. The miasma now formed a dome, pulsing like a black heart, corrupting everything it touched.
"Sir," Jarvis said with urgency, "Fury is on the line. Patch through?"
"Do it." Tony ducked behind a chunk of destroyed concrete as three new mutants tore past him.
The audio crackled.
"Stark," Fury's voice barked through the comms, already irritated, "what the hell's going on in Manhattan?"
"Short version? There's a kid. He's… special. I don't mean like 'needs therapy' special. I mean 'warps reality and turns people into Cronenberg monsters' special."
"Jesus Christ."
"No, worse." Tony ducked a swipe from a four-armed mutant and retaliated by severing its spine with a fluid slash of his sword. He turned and blasted another in the chest, but it kept coming, burning, melting, regenerating.
Tony grunted, backpedaling. "Listen, I need backup. We're dealing with high-level threat here—category beyond gamma radiation. Civilians are dead, turning into monsters, and I'm about to get overwhelmed. Any SHIELD boys you've got wearing big boy pants? Now's the time."
"Understood. ETA ten minutes. Hold the line."
Tony chuckled bitterly, panting. "I'll set the table."
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**Far Away – But Not For Long**
Vulkan moved like a comet on Earth's surface—effortless, silent, fast. Trees bent as he passed. Roads cracked. The wind around him carried embers.
And through the Warp's veil, he felt the boy. Suffering. Screaming silently in a realm between dreams and reality. And around him—the first whimpers of the Dark Ones, curious and hungry.
Vulkan's face hardened.
"I will not let you be born," he whispered. "Not here. Not now."
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**Back at the Battle**
Tony was bleeding inside the suit. The armor's systems were buckling under constant regeneration bursts from the corrupted civilians. Even with Jarvis helping direct his repulsors for more precise blasts, the creatures seemed endless.
He staggered back. One of them—formerly a teenager, now a skinless blur of claws—latched onto his chestplate and tried prying it open. Tony screamed and drove his sword up through its skull, twisting hard before kicking it off.
"I am really," he panted, "getting tired of this horror show."
Then the air shifted.
A thunderclap without sound. Heat—but not from fire. Pressure—like gravity had turned aggressive. The miasma pulsed, then trembled… and a presence began to descend from the far hills.
Tony turned toward it, sword slack in his grip.
The earth groaned.
Jarvis, for once, sounded unsure.
"Sir… Something approaches."
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