Wanda raised her hands, and a brilliant crimson light bloomed in her palms. Driven by her will, the energy of chaos magic erupted outward, not in a single blast, but as countless tendrils of scarlet light. They were threads of unmaking, shimmering with dimensional power as they plunged into the supernatural storm, seeking the dark corruption at its heart.
They spread throughout the tempest, but the sheer scale of the phenomenon was staggering. Against the colossal, swirling vortex, her threads of power were like dust motes in a hurricane, having no discernible impact on the overwhelming force.
Worse, she was vulnerable. Unlike Thor with his divine resilience or Max in his intangible lightning form, she had to constantly divert a significant portion of her power to maintain the protective shield around her. The winds were not merely winds; they were blades of dimensional cold that would shred her mortal form in an instant.
Even Rhodes was better off, his Iron Patriot armor now calibrated to drift with the currents, allowing him to maintain a stable firing position. Wanda, however, was fighting a war on two fronts: one against the storm, and one just to survive within it. This constant drain prevented her from unleashing the full, terrifying scope of her abilities.
Frustration gnawed at her. Fighting the storm head-on was impossible. A new strategy formed in her mind, born of desperation and insight. You can't break a river by punching it. You must divert its course. Unmake it from the inside out.
She changed her approach. Forming mystical seals with her hands, she focused her power into a single, concentrated needle of scarlet energy. Instead of pushing against the storm, she released the beam and let the winds catch it, guiding it along the spiraling currents, using the tempest's own momentum to carry her power toward its core.
On the far side of the storm, Carol Danvers, locked in her own brutal stalemate, saw the thread of red light weaving its way inward. Understanding dawned in her eyes. She immediately stopped fighting the wind and instead angled her body, allowing the currents to guide her as well. The resistance lessened. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she was making progress.
At that same moment, Strange and Wong arrived at the ruins of the London Sanctum. Without a word, Strange opened the Eye of Agamotto. Time flowed backward in a contained, shimmering bubble of green light.
Shattered stone leaped into place, fractured spells mended themselves with threads of gold, and the ancient temple rebuilt itself from dust. As the final roof tile settled, the Earth's mystical shield snapped back into place, a silent, invisible barrier that instantly severed Dormammu's active link to this dimension. His power, still lingering in the elementals, was now an echo without a voice.
Wanda felt the shift immediately. The dark power in the storm faltered. Her chaos magic, having reached the elemental's ethereal body, wrapped around it like living crimson ropes. Dark, violet lightning—the last vestiges of Dormammu's power—sizzled and died against the tide of her unmaking energy.
With the elemental's defenses weakening, Wanda pushed her senses deeper, searching for its heart. She knew that even if the dark power faded, the colossal storm it had created would not simply disappear. The core had to be destroyed. The energy of the Rainbow Bridge now struck more frequently, lances of cosmic light breaking through the thinning clouds to slam into the elemental itself.
The creature was besieged from all sides. The Bifrost battered it from without, Wanda unraveled it from within, and Captain Marvel was circling ever closer to its inner sanctum. It lost control of the storm's expansion, the tempest now running on sheer supernatural momentum as the elemental focused all its remaining power on survival.
At S.W.O.R.D., the analysts cheered. The storm had stopped growing. Hill let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her mind briefly flashing with the apocalyptic scenarios of a planet-killing storm that had just been averted.
Wanda found it: a pulsing nexus of pure elemental energy, hopelessly tangled with the dark dimensional corruption. She condensed her chaos magic into a mystical rope and pulled, trying to rip the core from the elemental's body.
But it wouldn't budge. No matter how hard she strained, it was firmly anchored by the remnants of the dark magic.
Inside the protective bubble, Thor saw her struggle. "Wanda! What's wrong?"
"The core!" she grunted, her face pale with effort. "It's anchored by the dark magic. My power is too weakened over this distance—I can't pull it free!"
"Then you won't be pulling alone!" Thor roared. He reached out and grabbed the shimmering crimson rope. Divine strength, raw and absolute, flooded into Wanda's intricate magical construct. The rope of chaos magic glowed white-hot, straining under the impossible force of containing a god's full might.
The core, which had been immovable, shifted. Wanda, seeing her chance, poured more power into the tether, reinforcing it against Thor's strength.
With a final, triumphant bellow, Thor pulled with all of his Asgardian might. In a brilliant flash, the core was ripped free from the elemental's body, now a vulnerable, pulsing orb of light and darkness.
"HEIMDALL!" Thor roared, a command that crossed worlds.
Instantly, the brilliant beam of the Rainbow Bridge shifted, its full, planet-breaking power now focused on the exposed core.
At the same time, Captain Marvel finally broke through the last of the defenses. Seeing the target of opportunity, she dove like a living missile, pouring every last ounce of her binary energy into the vulnerable core.
Chaos magic, divine strength, the cosmic power of the Bifrost, and a hero's burning heart all converged on a single point. The storm held its breath, ready to be unmade.