Agamotto's eyes glowed as he looked at the amount of energy being released by the ritual.
He simply stood there, his hands half-raised as his senses spread through the structure before him.
At the center of it all lay Aurora.
The child floated there, surrounded by layers of protective and restraining magic, her small hands curled into fists, her eyes squeezed shut as she cried soundlessly inside the barrier.
The more he understood of what was happening, the worse it became.
Mephisto and the Maker had made Aurora into something terrible.
A conduit.
Her nature made her perfect for it. Daughter of the Green Lantern, the living connection to the green light of will, and host of the Phoenix Force, the cosmic flame of life, death, and rebirth.
The ritual was using her to draw on the latent energies of the God Quarry itself.
The corpses of dead gods. The fragments of old divine power. The shattered remains of beings that had once shaped worlds and ruled dimensions. All of that power was being pulled upward through Aurora, refined through her nature, and then released outward.
Not to destroy one universe, but all of them.
Agamotto felt sick.
Clea stood beside him, her hands glowing green as she traced the same structures he was reading.
"You see it," Agamotto said quietly.
Clea swallowed. "Yes."
For a brief moment, Agamotto's mind reached for comfort. Clea was here. Thor was here. They had come from the future. That should have meant something. That should have meant the future still existed, that they succeeded, that whatever happened here had already happened and reality survived it.
But the thought collapsed almost as soon as it formed.
The God Quarry was outside ordinary space and time. It did not sit within any timeline. It did not obey the normal sequence of cause and effect. Here, past and future were not fixed points, but reflections on disturbed water. Clea and Thor's presence proved only that a future had existed long enough for them to leave it. It did not prove that future would survive what was happening now.
Everything was in flux.
Every universe. Every timeline. Every possibility. All of it had been dragged into this place where creation and destruction overlapped, where old gods went to die and new realities could be shaped from their remains. If something drastic happened here, Clea's future might vanish. Or worse, it might continue in a form she would never recognize, rewritten from its foundations until every person she knew became a stranger, every event she remembered became a lie.
Max's voice echoed in his memory.
Time travel is bullshit.
Agamotto could not disagree.
Clea's hands trembled slightly as she lowered them. "We need power," she said. "A lot of power."
Agamotto stared at Aurora, then at the ritual lines surrounding her, then at the white fissures spreading across the Quarry in the distance.
"I have a plan," he said.
Clea looked at him sharply. "What?"
Before Agamotto could answer, the others arrived. Odin, Vnn, Fan Azzuri, Thor, Tony, and Nur.
From the distance, Agamotto could see Firehair flying toward them.
"Vnn," Agamotto called.
The bearer of the Starbrand turned toward him.
"I need your help."
Vnn walked forward without hesitation. His eyes moved from Agamotto to Aurora, and something in his expression shifted.
Odin stepped forward. "Aurora is right there. Why have you not taken her?"
"Because if I do," Agamotto snapped, turning on him with sudden fury, "everything will be destroyed."
Odin sputtered.
The others went still.
Agamotto closed his eyes for a moment, forcing his temper back down. His anger was not truly for Odin. It was for himself. For the fact that he was standing within arm's reach of Aurora and could not simply tear her free.
Firehair arrived.
She landed, her eyes fixed on Aurora.
"How do we free her?" Firehair asked.
"The ritual has made Aurora the conduit through which the Quarry's power is collapsing the multiverse. I can sever the connection and free her, but I need more power."
His eyes settled on the glowing mark across Vnn's body.
"I need the Starbrand."
Vnn growled low in his throat.
It was not refusal.
It was acceptance.
As if he were urging Agamotto to stop talking and do what needed to be done.
Agamotto's expression tightened. "Vnn, you may not survive this."
Fan gasped.
Azzuri looked from Agamotto to Vnn, horror and understanding dawning together. Nur's face hardened. Odin's fingers tightened around Mjolnir as he looked away.
Tony took a step forward. "Wait. Hold on. There has to be another way."
Thor nodded quickly. "Yes. Surely there is something else we can do."
"There is not!" Agamotto snapped.
"Do you think I would ask this if there were?" he said, his voice lower now but no less intense. "Do you think I would stand here and tell him that his life may be the price if I had found even one other path?"
No one answered.
Vnn grunted.
Then he nodded.
The decision was immediate.
There was no hesitation in him, no weighing of his own life, no question of whether the cost was fair. He stepped closer to Agamotto.
His brow furrowed with the effort of speech.
"Vnn..." he said slowly, each word dragged out with great difficulty. "Help friends."
He looked at Aurora.
"Vnn help baby."
Fan's hand went to her mouth.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Firehair spoke.
"You will need me as well."
Agamotto turned to her. "I do not think..."
"You have underestimated the extent of the destruction that has already happened," Firehair said, cutting him off. "If we are to stop and restore all that has been destroyed, if Aurora is to be safely revived, Vnn will not be enough."
Agamotto said nothing.
They stared at each other.
No words passed between them. It was as if they were having a silent conversation.
Agamotto nodded slowly.
Firehair smiled.
She turned to the others.
Odin looked as though he wanted to speak, but no words came. Azzuri bowed his head. Nur's eyes were wet. Fan only gave her a nod of understanding.
Firehair took Vnn's hand.
Then both of them flew toward the ritual.
Agamotto exhaled shakily and forced himself to move.
"Clea," he said.
"I know," she replied.
They began the spell.
Amber light and green magic rose from their hands, spiraling upward in interlocking patterns.
The spell spread outward.
It reached Vnn first.
White fire erupted from his body in a blinding wave. The mark across Vnn's chest expanded, lines of stellar energy spreading over his arms, his throat, and his face. He threw his head back and roared as the power poured out of him.
Then the spell reached Firehair. Golden-red flame burst outward from her, forming wings that wrapped around the ritual circle without touching Aurora.
The entire realm began to glow.
The white fissures across the Quarry flickered.
One by one, slowly and painfully, they began to fade.
Agamotto's voice carried through the spell, strained but clear.
"When the barrier falls, Firehair, enter quickly. Take Aurora when I say it is time."
Odin, Azzuri, Nur, Fan, Thor, and Tony watched in silence, all feeling helpless in the face of what was happening before them.
The spell continued.
Agamotto felt himself weakening. The fate of the entire multiverse rested on him. Aurora's life rested on him. And to save both, he had asked a friend to die.
Golden light streamed from his fingers as Clea worked beside him. Together, they wrapped the spell around Aurora's prison, cutting through one layer of demonic binding after another. The outer symbols cracked. The black chains of hellfire began to unravel.
The white fissures across the God Quarry continued to fade.
One vanished completely.
Then another.
The multiverse was healing.
A massive surge of energy erupted, and Agamotto fell to his knees.
Firehair's head snapped toward him. "What happened?"
Agamotto tried to answer.
"I..."
He looked at the spell.
And then he saw Clea.
She was glowing.
At first it was faint, a shimmer around the edges of her body, like the beginning of sunrise behind glass. Then the light intensified, spreading over her robes, her hands, and her face. She looked down at herself, eyes widening as the glow grew brighter.
"Agamotto," she said.
Tony began to glow next. "What the hell?" he muttered, looking at his hands as white-gold light crawled over the surface of his armor.
Thor followed a moment later.
"The reset," Clea whispered.
Then all three of them vanished.
Odin roared, the sound shaking the broken ground beneath his feet.
"WHAT HAPPENED?"
Agamotto stared at the place Clea had been, horror blooming inside him.
"The multiverse is resetting," he said. "...They must have been pulled back. Clea and Thor to their own time. Stark to his own universe."
He should have been relieved.
It meant the spell was working. It meant the universes that had been destroyed were being restored. It meant reality was trying to put displaced pieces back where they belonged.
But Clea had been part of the spell.
And now she was gone.
Agamotto felt it all begin to break apart.
"No," Agamotto whispered.
He poured more power into the spell, trying to compensate for Clea's absence, but the balance had already shifted. Without her, too much fell back onto him.
He could not hold it all.
"I can't," Agamotto said.
He stared at Aurora through the weakening barrier, and the full horror of the situation became clear.
They had reached the point he had feared.
The point where both could no longer be saved.
The multiverse or the child.
Agamotto froze.
For the first time in his life, the Sorcerer Supreme had no idea what to do.
No path that did not end in damnation.
Then Firehair's voice entered his mind.
Agamotto.
He turned toward her.
She was still standing beside Vnn, Phoenix fire rolling off her in waves, her eyes fixed on Aurora.
Leave with the others, she said.
Agamotto's answer was immediate and furious.
"No."
You must.
"No," he said aloud this time, his voice breaking. "No, I will not."
Firehair looked at him, and there was sadness in her eyes.
Vnn and I can restore the multiverse.
"But Aurora!" Agamotto screamed. "Firehair, Aurora!"
For the first time, Firehair's expression faltered.
Only for a moment.
A mother always protects her child, she said. She will be safe.
Agamotto shook his head, refusing the words, refusing the meaning behind them.
"Do not ask this of me."
Trust me, my friend.
Her voice was gentle now.
This was how it was always meant to be. I thought I could prevent it, but fate, it seems, has decided on this path for me.
"We are staying. We will find another way," Fan spoke up.
"If this is the end, we face it together," Nur added.
"The Avengers do not abandon one another," Azzuri said.
Odin remained silent, too stunned to speak, his gaze turning toward the Quarry where Max was.
Firehair looked at them all.
For a moment, she smiled.
"I knew you would say that," she said.
Odin's face twisted. "Firehair..."
Her eyes glowed brighter.
"I did not give you a choice."
Golden-red flame erupted from her and wrapped around the five surviving Avengers. At the same time, the Starbrand flared around Vnn, white fire joining the Phoenix light. Agamotto felt the spell shift, felt Firehair seize part of its structure with terrifying precision.
Agamotto, Odin, Fan, Nur, and Azzuri began to glow.
"No!" Odin roared, fighting against it immediately. "No, damn you! Stop!"
Firehair looked at him, still smiling through the tears that had begun to fall.
"Live well, my friends," she said.
Fan disappeared first.
Then Azzuri, head bowed, one hand over his heart.
Nur tried to speak, but the light took him before the words came.
Odin was next. He was screaming at Firehair as he vanished.
Agamotto lasted the longest, fighting the pull with everything he had, his face twisted with rage and grief.
"FIREHAIR!"
Then he too disappeared.
The light faded.
Only three remained within the ritual.
Vnn.
Firehair.
Aurora.
"Are you ready, my friend?" Firehair asked Vnn.
He nodded.
Then he threw his head back and roared as the Starbrand erupted from him in its full power.
"RHARAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
All of it poured into the ritual, into the wounded multiverse beyond. The Starbrand's power, drawn from the Superflow, began repairing the multiverse, while Firehair unleashed the full power of the Phoenix to restore all that had been lost.
Universes returned.
Timelines settled.
Worlds that had been erased unfolded back into existence.
For one brief moment, the ritual around Aurora weakened.
Firehair moved instantly.
She passed through the collapsing barrier and took her daughter into her arms.
Aurora saw her mother, and she stopped crying.
Firehair held her close, pressing the child against her chest as the Phoenix fire curled around them both.
"Shh," she whispered, her voice breaking at last. "Shh, my little one."
Aurora's tiny hands clutched at her.
Firehair kissed her forehead.
"You are safe," she whispered. "My love. My heart. You are safe."
With one final explosion of power, Firehair unleashed everything she had, protecting her daughter and finishing the restoration of the universe.
Vnn's body burned away along with the Starbrand.
The Phoenix wrapped itself around Firehair, and especially around Aurora, and then, with a burst of light, they disappeared.
Everything went white.
The multiverse was restored.
But at a terrible cost.