"Matt had been pulled back from the maws of death, but he wasn't out of danger yet. He lay in intensive care, hooked up to monitors, with doctors watching him closely.
Schiller turned to Strange. "Doctor Strange, consider this a favor I owe you. If you ever need something in the future, come find me."
Strange looked pale and worn out. He'd been dragged from his apartment that afternoon and forced into nearly ten straight hours of surgery. He muttered irritably, "God save me—I hope I never see you again, weirdo."
Schiller's expression didn't change. "You've already seen what I can do. So I'll leave you with one bit of advice: be careful driving."
Strange groaned. "Don't play your creepy tricks on me. I'm going home to bed." He stalked off.
Schiller just shrugged. He knew he couldn't change Strange's fate. Not right now. In this state, Strange wouldn't listen to anything anyway. But when the time came—when he was desperate enough to beg for a cure for his ruined hands—he would remember Schiller.
Back at the clinic, Schiller finally allowed himself a good sleep. When he woke, he found he had two new random chat connections available. That meant he'd once again altered the course of two key figures—most likely Daredevil, Matt, and Spider-Man, Peter.
He decided to use one immediately. After Matt's accident, Schiller realized his own defenses and reflexes were still too weak. Short-teleportation only worked if you had the fraction of a second to react. And betting his life on Spider-Sense(basic), a power that wasn't even his, was reckless. He needed something more.
He opened the system and activated a random chat.
The new contact appeared. But the avatar was odd—pitch black, with only two glowing eyes.
The call connected. A torrent of guttural sounds blasted into Schiller's ears—fast, alien syllables he couldn't recognize.
Until now, every chat partner had spoken English. Even the Ancient One, communicating directly by thought, had been comprehensible. But this… Schiller couldn't make out a single word.
He rapped the system panel. "Don't tell me you can't translate? What language is that?"
The system answered: [The chat system automatically translates any language. If comprehension still fails, it indicates that the host lacks the biological structures required to process the signal.]
Schiller got it instantly. His partner wasn't human. Those weren't words—they were signals. And without the right alien brain organ, he couldn't decode them.
He clicked the avatar. The name appeared in stark text: Knull, God of the Symbiotes.
Schiller blinked. Of all the random draws—he'd just connected to that guy.
He knew the lore. Knull, born from the void at the dawn of the universe. Creator of the All-Black Necrosword—the blade that had lopped the head off a Celestial. Ruler of symbiotes, father of countless nightmare spawn, wielder of living dragons, scourge of civilizations across the stars. Until Thor had blasted him to pieces with a single lightning strike and severed his link to most of his children.
The betrayed symbiotes, realizing their creator's evil, had turned on him, chained him in exile on the so-called Symbiote Homeworld. And there he remained.
Schiller wasn't in a rush to burn his second chat attempt. Instead, he leaned back, curious.
Knull kept ranting, unleashing strings of alien syllables, furious and endless. Schiller couldn't grasp the meaning, but he could pick up the tone and rhythm. After all, profanity is universal.
There it was—again and again, the same harsh syllable. "Nataru." The way Knull spat it, with venom and emphasis—it had to be their version of the F-word.
So when Knull paused to catch his breath, Schiller casually replied, "Nataru."
Silence.
For the first time in who-knows-how-many eons, the God of the Symbiotes had just been cussed out.
He roared back, even angrier, hurling an even longer string of alien curses. Schiller waited, then answered just as lazily: "Nataru."
By the third round, Schiller had picked up a couple of other insults too. He even mimicked the guttural clicks and tongue pops perfectly.
Knull thundered his rage across the link. Schiller cussed right back, unbothered. What was the ancient god going to do, crawl through the chat line to kill him? Please. Deepest abyss or not, he was stuck.
So Schiller insulted him, and at the same time thought through the implications.
Knull was powerful, yes, but he was also pathetic. His own spawn had betrayed him. His own creations had locked him away. And he'd been trapped there for ages, left to stew in fury, boredom, and profanity.
Honestly, Schiller couldn't blame him. If he were locked alone on a barren rock, he'd probably spend eternity cussing too.
The system pinged. Replication possible.
Schiller hesitated. Knull's ability was to spawn symbiotes. That was the last thing he wanted. Cutting himself into little slime pieces just waiting to betray him? Hard pass.
But something was different. The replication text glowed red, with a warning: [Target ability is currently mutating. Proceed with caution.]
This was new.
It tied back to Knull's latest scheme. In his prison, the god had been trying to birth a unique offspring—not a solid symbiote, but a sentient, formless mist. One he could shift his consciousness into, escaping the planet's chains. A desperate gamble, maybe hopeless, but what else could he do? For him, existence was just two things: spawn and curse.
And Schiller, by sheer timing, had connected right in the middle of that experiment.
He didn't overthink it. If the ability was in flux, maybe it wouldn't be raw "spawn symbiotes" but something more useful. Stealth. Intangibility. Something survivable.
He hit Copy.
The system chimed: [Symbiote Grey Mist (Special Ability) has been loaded.]
Instantly, Schiller felt it. Another perspective blossomed in his mind. His own eyes still saw—but something else was seeing through them. A second consciousness, faint but present, nestled inside him.
Not a parasite like Venom, not a separate entity that could leave him. This one had been rewritten by the system. It was part of him now. If he died, it would vanish too.
Still, it carried symbiote traits. Thought. Instinct. A whisper of another mind sharing his head.
The Grey Mist was unique. Not Venom. Not Carnage. Not even Knull's true essence. It was something new, something the system had warped into existence—one of a kind in the entire universe.
And Schiller, half amused, half uneasy, realized he had just gained the strangest ally imaginable."
Footnote:
Knull, the God of the Symbiotes — First introduced in Venom (Vol. 4) #3 (2018) by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman, Knull is a primordial godlike entity born from the void before the creation of light. He forged the All-Black Necrosword from the living abyss itself, using it to decapitate a Celestial. With the Celestial's head, he created the first symbiote hive, and from his abyssal essence he birthed the symbiote race (including Venom and Carnage). For eons, Knull led his symbiote dragons to conquer worlds, until Thor's lightning strike severed his control, causing the symbiotes to rebel. Horrified by their creator's bloodlust, they imprisoned Knull inside the "Living Abyss" on the symbiote homeworld, Klyntar.
Knull's return arc spans Venom (Vol. 4) and culminates in the crossover event King in Black (2020–2021), where he breaks free and descends upon Earth with his horde. His existence reshaped Marvel lore, tying together the origins of symbiotes, Gorr the God Butcher's Necrosword (Thor: God of Thunder), and even connections to the Celestials.