At Tony's swearing over the communication channel, everyone fell silent.
At that moment, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and the others jumped out of the Quinjet straight into the battle.
They too felt just how powerful these demons were.
Conventional weapons?
Absolutely useless.
Even the weakest demons were completely resistant to firearms, pistols, machine guns, explosives.
And the stronger ones?
True walking destruction, brutal, unstoppable, tearing through everything in their path like out-of-control tanks.
---
"Has anyone tried to contact Thor?"
"How, exactly? Call him on the phone?"
"Did we ever have Asgard's number?"
---
"Where's the military!? This scum is tearing our city apart!"
"Damn it! Damn it!"
---
Tony Stark was already running out of resources.
Reactor blasts from his palms, laser beams, miniature rockets, everything had already been fired.
He barely managed to take down a few demons.
But in front of him stood hundreds.
It all felt hopeless.
The situation was desperate.
Tony, already broken by PTSD from past battles, began to unravel.
An emotional explosion was inevitable.
"Calm down, Tony."
"We don't need another scientist turning into a big green monster."
Suddenly, a calm voice echoed over the communication channel.
Everyone recognized the voice.
The tension briefly eased.
"You finally showed up, Dr. Banner."
Steve was barely holding his ground while simultaneously attacking five demons.
"Captain, I thought I was used to chaos," Bruce replied.
"But this is worse than anything before."
After that sentence, the transformation was instantaneous.
Hulk appeared, landing in the epicenter of the fight, and immediately began tearing through demons.
His presence tilted the balance, at least a little, in the Avengers' favor.
But only a little.
Because soon, an entity appeared that completely erased that balance.
---
"Besides that group of sorcerers… since when have other forces appeared on Earth?"
"Interesting…"
High up, on the ruins of a building, stood Belath.
A cold gaze fixed on the Avengers.
In his eyes...
These people fighting desperately were just larger insects. Nothing more.
---
"Oh my God!"
"Do you see that huge creature?"
Hawkeye, thanks to his sharp vision, was the first to notice Belath.
He drew his bow and fired an explosive arrow directly at him.
The arrow flew down the entire street, but before it got close to the target, it ignited.
Boom!
An explosion, useless.
Belath didn't even flinch.
The temperature around him was so extreme it burned the projectile before it could get near.
"Pathetic… But I must admit, courage exists."
Belath looked disdainfully in the direction the arrow had come from.
Then, he calmly raised a massive combat knife, over ten meters long, even though he stood hundreds of meters away.
One slash through the air...
"Oops!"
In Hawkeye's view, a blade of light woven from hellfire was rapidly approaching!
At the last moment, Clint Barton fired a cable arrow and zipped to the opposite building.
Boom--!
A moment after he left the position, the spot where he had stood exploded in a sea of flame!
The temperature was so high it distorted the air around it.
"Fall back, Barton. You can't fight this," Steve warned him.
At that moment, the other Avengers noticed Belath too.
Tony Stark flew in from afar, and several cannons from his palms drew Belath's attention.
Repulsors.
Lasers.
Miniature rockets.
"None of this is working!"
Tony was desperately firing everything from the Mark 42 armor, but Belath didn't even move.
He just looked at him with contempt.
"Weak attack… Now it's my turn."
Belath raised the gigantic knife and pointed it at Tony, who was hovering in the air.
"Warning!"
"Major threat detected!"
Jarvis was the first to alert.
"I know, Jarvis! I'm not blind!" Tony immediately accelerated and flew toward Hulk.
Since the Great War in New York, after Thor left with Loki back to Asgard, Hulk had remained their strongest card.
"Hulk! I brought you the big guy… Wait… What the hell!? HE FLIES!?"
Tony didn't even get to finish the sentence.
He was knocked out of the air with one brutal swing!
The Mark 42 began to fall apart, the experimental version couldn't withstand such force!
Luckily, Hulk jumped up and caught him mid-fall, landing him safely.
"Raaahhhh!!"
"Don't yell, I'm still alive…"
Tony crawled out of the nearly destroyed suit and covered his ears.
"Jarvis, launch recovery program!"
He looked up at the sky.
Belath hovered in the air, taller than ten meters.
Behind him, massive fleshy wings spread and blocked out the entire sky.
A shadow covered the whole city.
And the hearts of every Avenger present.
It wasn't an ordinary shadow, it was pressure. True, raw power. The level of an entity like Dormammu.
Can this even be defeated?
That question whispered in the minds of everyone present.
---
Elsewhere, aboard the SHIELD helicarrier.
Nick Fury watched the collapse of the Avengers through a series of holographic screens.
As usual, the High Council was proposing catastrophic decisions.
"Maybe… we should drop another nuclear bomb?"
"…"
Fury's face, already dark enough, now turned black as coal.
"One more nuclear bomb, and I'll slit your throats myself!"
He said it while reaching into his pocket and gripping an old-school pager.
If it comes to the end...
If there's no way out anymore...
There's still one person.
---
In a warehouse in Port Jefferson.
The darkness began to recede.
"Finally over…"
At the exact moment when the Avengers and SHIELD were sinking into despair…
Aron had completed the absorption of energy from the Shadow Dimension.
In silence, he felt that he had mastered the basic and most powerful ability:
turning shadows into substance.
_____
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