The cherry blossom grove on the Moon lasted for three days.
During that time, countless petals drifted through the air, forming a vast pink sea that blanketed the lunar surface. When the third day ended, the flowers faded away completely, as fleeting and unreal as a dream in the cold expanse of the Universe.
As night once again fell over the United States on Earth, the Moon returned to silence.
With a single thought from Malrick, the remaining traces of the cherry blossom grove dispersed, dissolving like dust into space. In an instant, the scenery around the four of them shifted, and they were back in their residence in New York.
Malrick sent the other three to their respective rooms. Alone, he prepared to depart for a parallel world.
Since Eternity had given him no answers, he decided to investigate the cause of the multiversal collisions himself.
With the number of m-bodies Malrick had spread throughout the Multiverse, he was already witnessing several worlds brushing against destruction every day. However, each m-body carried only a limited portion of his power. Observing events personally, with his true body, might reveal details his fragments could not perceive.
Malrick stepped forward and merged into space itself, like a fish slipping into the sea. In the next moment, he crossed the endless void and arrived at his destination.
Traveling freely through time and space, unaffected by paradoxes, was merely a basic ability of a Golden Superman.
"This is a world where Doctor Strange caused a collision," Malrick concluded the instant he arrived.
He looked around, and the entire timeline of the Universe unfolded before his eyes. Every life drifting through the long river of time was laid bare, without secrets.
This Universe was a normal branch of the Sacred Timeline. The cause of the impending collision was familiar, Doctor Strange interfering with other Universes once again.
Malrick shook his head. With a casual motion, he pushed the two approaching worlds apart, unraveling their dangerous entanglement. Then he took another step and entered the next Universe.
An m-body was already stationed there.
Malrick raised an eyebrow as he observed the surroundings. "This world is still in the Iron Man 2 era, yet the Universe itself is collapsing. The anchor individual has already died."
His gaze turned toward Earth. He quickly discovered that the older Ant-Man of this world had slaughtered all the heroes who were meant to become the Avengers.
"Fixing this is simple."
With a thought, Malrick activated one of his m-bodies. A beam of light descended from the cosmos and landed in the hands of Peter Parker, who was still an elementary school student in this world. Empowered by that force, Peter became the new anchor, and the collapse of the Universe gradually slowed to a halt.
Malrick then looked beyond the edge of that reality.
The next approaching world was the Universe of Party Thor, and it was unusually lively. In that world, Darcy Lewis and Howard the Duck had produced an egg. That egg would eventually hatch into a child of extraordinary potential, drawing the attention of nearly every major power in the Universe.
Malrick observed with mild curiosity for a short while, then withdrew his attention.
What troubled him was something else entirely.
Why were two Universes, with no apparent connection, on a collision course?
With that question in mind, Malrick activated his super vision, using it seriously for the first time since becoming half of a Golden Superman.
For an ordinary Superman, even super vision could be blocked by lead. For Malrick, it was closer to the perspective of a god.
The world became transparent before him. Layers of dimensions faded into clear, overlapping forms. The once complex multidimensional structure flattened into something like a vast, readable map. Even the rules governing the Universe appeared as countless distinct lines.
With a thought, he could alter those lines and rewrite reality itself.
Yet even from this vantage point, he found no direct link between the two Universes.
"There is no temporal entanglement, no spatial overlap, and no interference at the level of reality," Malrick muttered.
Two worlds with no visible intersection were still drifting toward destruction.
"Could this be a natural law?"
He considered the possibility carefully. Aside from both being extensions of the Sacred Timeline, the two Universes shared nothing else.
"Is the problem rooted in the timeline itself?"
Unable to reach a definitive conclusion, Malrick pushed the two Universes apart and moved on.
In a single day, Malrick traveled through thousands of worlds. Not only those monitored by his m-bodies, but also many he encountered by chance were nearing collision.
It became increasingly clear that Doctor Strange was a persistent source of instability.
In this era, Reed Richards had yet to influence the Multiverse, and Tony Stark had not begun exploring it. Doctor Strange stood at the center of countless crises across different realities.
After observing so many worlds, Malrick identified a pattern.
Aside from variants of Doctor Strange directly crossing between Universes and causing entanglements, the most likely cause of these collisions was the compression and disturbance of the Multiversal timeline itself, drawing worlds unnaturally close together.
Tracing the timelines backward, Malrick finally located the source.
Several years earlier, in the main Universe, Doctor Strange had cast a memory spell to help Peter Parker regain a normal life. A flaw in that spell had rippled outward, interfering with countless Universes.
It shattered barriers between realities, pulled villains from other Spider-Man worlds into the main timeline, and drew the attention of powerful Multiversal entities. Their interference further destabilized the timelines of many worlds.
Malrick concluded that the memory spell was the primary cause behind the growing number of collisions.
Still, unease lingered.
"If it were only the memory spell, this would be easy to fix," he said quietly. "But something feels wrong."
Malrick had never relied on intuition in the past. At his current level, however, instinct sometimes cut closer to the truth than logic alone.
Lost in thought, he merged into space once more and returned to his own Universe.
By his estimation, Diana and the others should have been awake by now.
When Malrick arrived home, he froze in surprise.
Diana and the others were dressed in formal gowns, adjusting each other's clothing with careful hands.
"Why are you all dressed like this?" Malrick asked with a faint smile. "Are you planning to challenge me again today?"
Diana shook her head. She wore a dark blue knitted gown, a shawl draped to her waist, the fitted design accentuating her graceful figure.
"It's an invitation from Asgard," she said, placing a black hat with a lace veil atop her head. She then handed Malrick a letter edged in gold.
Malrick opened it, his expression stiffening as he read.
"An invitation," he said slowly. "Odin is inviting us to his funeral?"