The shifting sands of the Gulmira Valley in Afghanistan were a stark contrast to the lush, manicured lawns of Westchester. Here, the air tasted of cordite, cheap diesel, and the desperate, metallic tang of fear. To Elena, the desert was not a wasteland; it was a collection of silicon and heat, a vibrating floor of atoms that she commanded with the same ease as her own breath.
She manifested atop a jagged ridge overlooking the camp of the Ten Rings. Below, in the darkness of a cave, Tony Stark was hammering at a sheet of crude iron. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of his mallet was the heartbeat of a new era. Using her Akashic Record, Elena didn't just see the man; she saw the trajectory of his life—the guilt of the merchant of death, the eventual sacrifice against a titan, and the myriad of ways this specific night could end in his demise.
"Too much pressure on the heart," Elena murmured, her eyes glowing with a soft, golden hue. "The palladium is already weeping into his bloodstream."
She didn't intervene immediately. An Elder God understood the necessity of the struggle. If she plucked him from the cave now, he would remain the arrogant man who sold destruction. He needed the iron to forge the hero. However, she would not allow the "glitch" of a stray bullet or a faulty wire to extinguish the light of the Earth's primary defender.
As the insurgents began to pound on the heavy steel door of the workshop, Elena stepped off the ridge. She did not fall; she simply adjusted her Vector Command so that gravity treated her like a falling leaf. She glided through the rock of the mountain, her atoms slipping between the molecules of the stone as if it were water.
Inside the cave, the air was thick with smoke. Yinsen was frantically shouting, trying to buy Stark time to initialize the Mark I suit. The power bar on the computer screen crawled upward—80%... 85%.
The door exploded.
Yinsen grabbed a gun, prepared to throw his life away for a man he barely knew. But as he stepped into the line of fire, time didn't just slow down; it curdled. The bullets fired from the insurgents' AK-47s hit an invisible barrier six feet in front of Yinsen. They didn't flatten or ricochet; they simply stopped, their kinetic energy drained instantly by Elena's will, falling to the dirt like harmless pebbles.
"What... what is this?" Yinsen gasped,
staring at the hovering lead.
Elena stepped out of the shadows. The dim light of the cave reflected off her white silk robes, making her look like a ghost in the machine. "It is not your time to die, Ho Yinsen. Your wisdom is required for the soul of the man in the iron shell."
Tony Stark, bolted into the massive, clanking suit of armor, stared through the narrow eye-slits. "Jarvis? No, I don't have Jarvis yet. Who are you? Are you with the circus? Because the timing is spectacular."
"I am the one who keeps the world turning, Anthony," Elena said, her voice cutting through the roar of the fire.
She turned her gaze to the insurgents rushing into the room. She didn't raise a hand. She simply willed the oxygen in their immediate vicinity to vanish. Not enough to kill them, but enough to send them collapsing to the ground, gasping for air that refused to enter their lungs.
"Go," Elena commanded Stark. "Burn your way out. I will ensure the path is clear."
The Mark I suit lumbered forward, flames erupting from its arms. Elena walked calmly behind the metal giant, a serene goddess in a house of war. Every rocket fired at Stark veered off course as if repelled by a magnetic god. Every structural collapse of the cave tunnels was halted by her mental grip on the stone.
When they finally burst out into the blinding sunlight of the desert, Stark's suit began to fail, the flight thrusters sputtering. As the armor tumbled toward the dunes, Elena caught it. Not with her hands, but by seizing the vectors of his descent. He landed as soft as a feather on the sand.
Stark pried the helmet off, coughing, his face covered in grease and sweat. He looked at Elena, then at Yinsen, who was staring at the sky in disbelief.
"You're not a hallucination," Tony wheezed, clutching the glowing circular light in his chest. "You're... you're something else. A mutant? Is that what the kids are calling it now?"
"Mutant is a word for those born of the X-Gene," Elena said, kneeling beside him. She placed a finger on the arc reactor. Through the metal, she felt the poison. "You are a man of science, Tony. But science is just the language I used to write the laws of this world."
With a pulse of her Divine Spark, she didn't just fix the reactor; she transmuted the palladium inside it into a stable, non-toxic element that wouldn't be discovered for another three years. The grey veins on Tony's neck receded instantly. His breathing leveled out.
"Consider this a grant from the universe," she said with a small smile.
Before Tony could retort with a sarcastic comment, the air behind Elena began to crackle and spark. A circular portal of orange energy opened, revealing a view of a courtyard in Kathmandu. A woman in yellow robes, her head shaved and her eyes full of ancient weariness, stepped through.
The Ancient One looked at the wreckage of the camp, then at Tony Stark, and finally settled her gaze on Elena.
"You are interfering with the flow of the Sanctums, Great One," the Sorcerer Supreme said, though she bowed her head in respect. "The threads of fate were supposed to be much more... tragic today."
"Tragedy is a teacher, Yao, but I am a mother who has grown tired of watching her children suffer through the same lessons," Elena replied, standing up. "The Sorcerer Supreme protects the soul of this world from the outside. I am the world. It is time we coordinated."
Elena looked back at Tony. "Build your tower, Stark. The stars are watching, and they are hungry. I will be in New York when you are ready to talk about the future."
In a flash of light that outshone the desert sun, Elena vanished, taking the Ancient One with her to the space between dimensions. Tony Stark sat in the sand, staring at the spot where the girl had been.
"Yinsen," Tony muttered, "forget the cheeseburger. I think I need a drink and a very long explanation of the laws of physics."