The moment the clock on a distant church tower struck midnight, a profound stillness settled over the city. On the rooftop of his apartment building, high above the sleeping streets of Queens, Hawk began his final trial.
This time, there was no sandbag to destroy, no physical target to overcome. He stood in the center of the roof, his eyes gently closed, the cool night air washing over him. He wasn't practicing anymore. He was communing.
As if in a trance, he began to punch. The movements were slow, deliberate, each extension of his fist a silent question posed to the void. He wasn't pursuing speed or power, but a state of absolute focus, a connection to something deeper. With every punch he had thrown for 999 days, he had felt a strange sensation, a flicker of something vast and distant. But tonight, that flicker was a blazing inferno.
His consciousness plunged inward, descending into an existence of infinite, primordial darkness. It was the silent, starless void that existed before creation, a space that resided within his own soul. It was here, in this internal abyss, that his true work began.
With each slow, methodical punch he threw, a single, brilliant spark of light would flare to life within the darkness. It was a nascent star, a potential galaxy being born from the sheer force of his will. He continued, one punch after another, and with each one, a new star was born, populating the void within.
If he had opened his eyes and looked up, he would have witnessed a miracle. The forty-eight constellations of the Bronze Saints—Pegasus, Draco, Cygnus, Andromeda, Phoenix, and all the others—which blazed with impossible clarity in the night sky, were responding to him. It wasn't a subtle flicker. With every punch he threw, the very stars themselves pulsed in a synchronized rhythm, pouring down invisible threads of celestial energy. The night sky had become a cosmic circuit board, and Hawk's will was the current, connecting the macrocosm of the heavens to the microcosm within his own being.
His punches began to accelerate. The movement was no longer conscious or deliberate. His body was a conduit, taken over by the immense energies he was channeling. The slow, graceful movements became a blur, a storm of motion under the starlight. The afterimage of one punch was still fading as the next was already striking, and then the next, and the next, until the air around him was filled with a thousand phantom fists, each one a testament to his three-year ordeal.
He was a whirlwind of focused intent when a soundless roar echoed through the core of his being. It was a vibration that shook the foundations of his soul, a great bell tolling the birth of a new power.
BANG!
In the center of his inner universe, a single, infinitesimal wisp of golden fire ignited. This was the spark. The catalyst. The moment it appeared, the countless stars he had created with his fists began to tremble and glow, their light intensifying until they went supernova in a simultaneous, silent, breathtaking explosion.
The Big Bang.
A tidal wave of primordial energy erupted from the explosion, surging through his being. It slammed against an invisible, intangible wall—the barrier that defined the limits of his mortal potential. For a split second, the wall held. Then, with a catastrophic crash that echoed through his soul, it shattered into nothingness.
The dam had broken. A power that had slept for eons, the very energy of creation, the essence of his Cosmo, was finally, violently, awake.
WHOOSH!
Hawk's eyes snapped open. The familiar golden flame that had flickered in their depths before was no longer a mere spark. It was a raging, unrestrained inferno.
BOOM!!
He felt as if every drop of blood in his body had begun to boil and roar. Every one of his trillions of cells vibrated with an impossible, destructive energy, like ten thousand stars expanding at once. An agony beyond comprehension tore through him as this new power remade him from the inside out. His bones were constantly being crushed into dust, only to be instantly reformed, denser and stronger, in a process that mimicked the violent birth of a celestial body. He was being unmade and remade, molecule by molecule.
His senses exploded. A high-frequency buzz filled his ears as his vision blurred, then sharpened into something beyond human. He saw the world not as solid matter, but as a vibrant, shimmering dance of atomic particles. He saw his own flesh, the atoms that composed it burning and rotating like miniature solar systems. He saw the blood flowing beneath his skin, no longer red, but a boiling, incandescent river of stars. He saw his own beating heart, and with each powerful contraction, it felt like the primal, eternal pulse of the universe itself, sending invisible ripples out into the void.
A sudden, overwhelming inspiration seized him. It was not a thought, but a primal, undeniable instinct. The awakened power demanded release.
Clenching his right fist, he dug his heel into the rooftop, the concrete cracking like thin ice under the pressure. His entire body coiled like a spring, his center of gravity shifting as he drew all of the newly awakened, cataclysmic energy into a single point.
A low growl ripped through him, a sound that came not from his throat, but from the very explosion of his soul.
"Burn, my Little Universe!!"
He punched.
The world broke.
The air around his fist didn't move; it turned thick and viscous like water, rippling outward in a visible shockwave. The space in front of him, the very fabric of reality, fractured like a pane of glass struck by a sledgehammer, visible hairline cracks spreading into the night. For an infinitesimal moment, the flow of time itself seemed to stutter, tear, and come to a brutal, screeching halt.
Then, reality reasserted itself with a scream.
"HSSSSSS!" The air, torn asunder, shrieked in protest. "CRACK!" Space, crushed by impossible force, wailed in agony. "RUMBLE!" A brand new timeline instantly stitched itself over the one his punch had shattered.
The shockwave, now free, slammed into the adjacent apartment building across the street.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Every single window on the building's facade exploded outward in a deafening cascade of shattering glass. Below, on the street, the cars parked along the curb were slammed downward as if struck by an invisible giant's hand, their frames buckling and their windows vaporizing. A split second later, a cacophony of shrieking car alarms tore through the pre-dawn silence.
At the same time, Kamar-Taj.
The Ancient One, Sorcerer Supreme, sat in deep meditation. A flicker of disruption, a violent tremor not in the earth but in the very flow of reality, caused her eyes to open.
"Teacher?" a nearby mystic asked, sensing the sudden shift in her master's focus.
The Ancient One did not reply. Her gaze lowered to the relic hanging around her neck: the Eye of Agamotto. With a complex, graceful mudra, she commanded it. The golden amulet slowly rotated, its intricate parts unfolding to reveal the mesmerizing, ghostly green gem within.
The Time Stone.
A verdant, ethereal light bathed the sanctum as the stone pulsed with power. It was the master key to all of causality, the one thing that could perceive the true shape of time.
"This is..." she whispered, her ancient eyes widening in disbelief as she peered into the timeline. "The future... it has been changed? No... wrenched."
With another hand seal, she closed the Eye and rose, her form dissolving into a swirl of golden sparks, vanishing from her spot to investigate the source of this unprecedented anomaly.
Back on the rooftop, a series of calm, mechanical tones echoed in Hawk's mind as the world spun back into focus.
[Ding! Congratulations, you have activated Cosmo Awakening!] [Ding! It has been an honor to be with you for one thousand days. The system is now unbinding. I look forward to our next meeting!] [Finally, the Cosmo is a method of combat, a path of holy war. Grow in battle. Sublimate in battle!] [Goodbye!]
The voice faded, leaving only silence. A thousand days ago, the system had arrived quietly. Now, its purpose fulfilled, it had departed just as quietly. It had been a key, and now that the door was open, Hawk was on his own.
He stood there, panting, his mind reeling as the sun's first rays began to paint the eastern sky. The chaotic sounds from the street below finally registered.
"Holy sh*t!" "What happened? Was that an earthquake?" "My windows! All my windows are gone!" "Ah, my car! It's crushed!" "Who the hell did this?" "Wait a minute... up there! Look at the sky! What is that?" "Jesus Christ..."
The clamor drew his attention. Hawk slowly lifted his head, his new senses taking in the scene. He saw the chaos on the street, the shattered glass glittering like diamonds in the dawn light. Then he saw what they were all pointing at.
High above Manhattan, the sky itself was being torn open. A ghostly blue light was bleeding from a growing rift, a jagged wound in the fabric of the heavens from which impossible, alien shapes were beginning to emerge.
Hawk stared, his mind struggling to process the two scenes: the localized destruction around him and the cosmic horror unfolding over the city. In his post-awakening daze, his brain made a staggering, terrifying, and completely logical leap.
"Hiss..." he breathed out, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and awe.
"Did I... Did I just punch a hole in the sky?"