The declaration hit the Dimension of Manifestations like a front-page headline nobody saw coming.
Trial by combat.
For one full second, the gallery held its breath, then it lost its mind entirely.
Sound erupted from every tier at once with a roar that had no single source, born from beings that had watched civilizations fold and rise and fold again across a billion years, and underneath all their cosmic titles and ancient responsibilities, they had never stopped wanting to watch two sides actually throw punches. Abstract forces and primordial entities, the oldest things in the multiverse, slammed whatever they had against the floor of infinite space and moved with the energy of a crowd that had just been told the main event was on.
Luv pressed both hands over his ears while Bonk, recovered enough to sit upright, leaned against him and made a low sound that landed somewhere between distress and fascination, probably both.
Jay looked at Domino, and Domino looked at Jay.
"Huh?" Jay asked in surprise.
"Yep," Domino said.
Oblivion rose from his throne and let the noise build to its peak before raising one hand with the gesture of a being that had been practicing patience since before patience needed a word.
"This," he said, "is a mockery." His voice cut through the noise with the particular ease of something that predated sound itself.
The gallery quieted, not completely, but enough.
"You preside over cosmic law," Oblivion continued as he turned to the Living Tribunal, "authority that derives from its legitimacy, from the principle that judgment here is measured, fair and above the appetites of the gallery, and now you propose to reduce that to a brawl." He paused and let those words sit before continuing, "Before creation was, I was. I am the Void, and you would have me watch while the nothing is judged equal to the everything? In what framework of cosmic justice does that comparison hold?"
The Living Tribunal regarded him with all three faces looking at Oblivion at the same time, an experience very few beings in any multiverse had the constitution to sustain for long.
Equity weighed the argument while Necessity evaluated what the situation required, and Vengeance had already formed its own view, which wasn't sympathetic.
"It is genuinely surprising to hear such concern for the image of this proceeding from the entity that brought this motion," the Living Tribunal said with measured precision. "The Queen of Nevers has already identified on the record that it was a mechanism for personal agenda rather than cosmic law." One beat passed, precise and deliberate, before he continued, "Your concern for legitimacy would carry more weight had it arrived before you attempted to use my court to erase a child."
Oblivion went very still.
"The question of equal standing has an answer, and it is present in this courtroom," the Tribunal continued while his gaze swept across the assembled entities. "Neena Thurman currently governs Death, which is an abstract of equivalent standing to any entity in this gallery, and her participation in a trial is not just a courtesy but a right." He looked across the court with finality and added, "The motion stands."
The gallery erupted again.
Oblivion's shadow pulled tighter as his gaze moved from the Tribunal and landed on Jay with the contempt of something that had been waiting to say it since Jay cracked the containment barrier with his fist. "The outsider," he said with venom in every syllable, "parasite who remains what you have always been, a state of affairs that would please me no end if not for the fact that you continue to exist at all. Eternity's declaration changes nothing fundamental about what you are."
"Oblivion!"
Eternity's voice wasn't loud and didn't need to be as he descended from his position in the air, slow and enormous, while the galaxies in his chest rearranged themselves and reality adjusted around him the way the universe has always accommodated the others in it.
"Jay and his family," Eternity said with warmth threading through every word, the specific warmth of a universe looking at something it's pleased with, "they were, they are, and they will always be under my protection, which has been true longer than this court has been in session." He looked at Oblivion, and the warmth went out of his voice to leave something clear and old and unargued as he added, "Where creation ends, I do not, and neither do those I have chosen. As my queen's and my successors, they carry the rights of our station, the same rights."
The gallery made a sound that wasn't a roar but something more deliberate, the sound of a room full of beings recalibrating what they thought they knew.
Even the Living Tribunal's three faces shifted, just slightly, which on anything less than a cosmic abstraction of judgment would have read as surprise.
Jay stared at Eternity before looking at the Queen of Nevers, who was watching him from her seat with an expression that was steady and patient and carried something that might have been apology or might have been the look of someone who has chosen the right moment to show you something important and is choosing it now.
She nodded once before speaking just to him, saying, "We chose well, love. We always knew we would."
"That was never part of the wish," Jay said with his voice coming out considerably flatter than he intended.
Eternity looked at him while the galaxies in his chest did something that, in a being composed of nearly the entire universe, was the equivalent of a fond smile.
"Jay," Eternity said with the patient delivery of something that has been waiting a while to say this, "who do you think has been protecting Domino since before you arrived? Every time she jumped into danger, every improbable survival, every situation where the odds said she should not have walked away yet she walked away regardless, every bullet that missed by a margin that defied logic, every fight she should have lost and didn't, I have been protecting her from the moment your wish was made, yes, but also retroactively, back through every moment of her life that needed protecting, because that is what it means to be under my protection, and time is, after all, something I encompass."
Domino had gone very quiet.
Jay looked at her and saw her staring at Eternity with an expression he had never seen on her face before, not in any fight or in any crisis, not even in any of the moments they'd been through together. She looked like someone who has spent their entire life explaining away miracles as sheer luck and has just been told, with full cosmic authority, that every impossible survival, every defied death, every moment she should have died and didn't, wasn't entirely hers but borrowed, gifted actually.
Her jaw had gone tight and her hands were shaking, those same hands that had stayed steady through every fight they'd ever been in together.
"Your powers, all this time," Jay said slowly while trying to process what he was hearing, "the luck, all that impossible luck."
"My luck," Domino said with her voice steady but something in it fractured around the edges, "always been mine. Earned every goddamn impossible second of it with blood and training and choices that nearly killed me, except apparently I had a cosmic co-signer and nobody thought to mention it. That's not a gift but a secret, and I don't like secrets kept from me."
"Supplemented," Eternity said gently, "not replaced. Your skill is yours, your will is yours, even your courage is yours, and your power was never a lie. I simply ensured that courage had the opportunity to matter."
She took one breath that didn't quite steady, then another before responding, "Right. Okay. We are absolutely going to have words about that, long words about consent, about what counts as protection and what counts as control, about the difference between keeping someone safe and keeping someone in the dark. Later though, much later, because right now I've got a fight to get through."
"I look forward to that conversation," Eternity said, and he sounded like he genuinely meant it.
Jay's hand found hers, though she didn't pull away, she didn't grip back either since she was somewhere else, processing something he couldn't follow her into.
The Living Tribunal's gavel handle touched the floor, and the sound pulled the noise back to something workable.
"Trial by combat is sanctioned," the Tribunal said with absolute authority, "though the terms require detail. The participants will be established, the scope of permitted abilities will be determined, and the gallery will maintain order until those terms are set, or I will determine the terms unilaterally, and no one in this court wants that."
The gallery maintained order.
Jay looked at Luv, who had stopped trying to track all the moving parts and was now watching his father specifically, waiting to take his cues from him.
He looked at Domino.
"As long as I get to bash that bastard's skull in, I genuinely don't care about the rest of the details," he said.
"Hon," Domino said.
"I'm being sincere."
"I know, and that's why I'm saying hon."
Oblivion turned to the wider court and spread his hands with something that almost passed for generosity while declaring, "All weapons and powers are legal for use. I think even the Tribunal's gallery can agree on that much since this is, after all, what you have all been waiting for."
He raised one hand, and the scythe came from across dimensions, from across the void between this court and the plateau on Vormir where a battle had recently been concluded, materializing in his grip with the ease of something returning home. The gallery recognized it instantly as the weapon he had given to Thanos, the weapon that should still be on Vormir unless Thanos was no longer able to hold it.
Oblivion looked at it briefly and noted without visible distress that Thanos had failed, though the scythe was here, and that was what mattered now.
"We agree to call upon our allies," he continued as his voice broadened to address the full gallery, "all those willing. I imagine a great many of you have been sitting in those tiers for some time now, waiting for a reason to stop merely watching." He gestured toward the assembled cosmic forces and added, "Give the boys a chance to stretch."
The gallery's response was immediate and very loud.
Oblivion looked at the numbers gathering to his cause, then at Jay's side, and his mouth did what, on the void made sentient, served as a smile, though it was not a pleasant expression. There was no cruelty in it, just the comfortable assessment of someone who has already done the arithmetic.
The Living Tribunal brought his gavel down with a sound that was final and non-negotiable.
"The terms are set, and the participants have agreed."
What happened to the court happened fast as the infinite tiers of the gallery folded outward and then inward while the architecture rearranged itself with the efficiency of something built to serve multiple purposes. The dais and thrones rose and widened and found new configurations at the perimeter while the floor between them became something else, boundless and flat and open in a way that made the space feel simultaneously enormous and intimate, a celestial arena with enough room in the middle for civilizations to end.
Golden light radiated from the boundaries, warm and absolute, and as it settled into everyone present, it carried the pressure of cosmic equalization. Powers weren't taken but were leveled, adjusted, brought to a common ceiling the Tribunal had set with the mathematical precision of something that had been balancing forces for longer than balance had required a word.
Jay felt it arrive like a pressure moving through him like warm water, finding every channel of power he possessed and gently, firmly, capping it. The Tachyon Field, the Elemental Force, his reality warping, all of it still there, still his, just restrained to a common measure.
On Oblivion's side, they assembled.
Master Order came first, precise and inevitable, his stillness carrying the weight of every law ever written. The Powers That Be descended with all her arms and her fear of being replaced, the fear that had driven her to this vote and hadn't diminished with the arrival of a combat she hadn't initially planned for. Sire Hate moved into position with the slow deliberateness of something that had been looking forward to hurting someone for some time while the Goblin Force shifted and settled at the flank like bad weather finding its shape. Abraxas took his position without looking away from Luv, his interest unchanged from the moment the boy had arrived, and the Griever stood with the patience of something that cleared away civilizations, which this one had been marked for clearing. The Beyonders materialized from the edge of everything, cold and calculating, having voted for erasure out of curiosity about what a disrupted timeline would produce, and combat was simply the next variable to observe.
Jay's eyes went wide when he saw them, the Beyonders, the things that had murdered the Living Tribunal in other timelines, reality-killers who existed outside multiversal law, all on Oblivion's side.
"Fuck," he said very quietly.
Then the Celestials arrived, not walking but simply present suddenly at the back of Oblivion's formation, their armor pulsing with power that could birth or destroy galaxies. Arishem the Judge, who had condemned the Earth, Exitar the Executioner, who had ended civilizations, and others whose names Jay didn't know but whose presence added sheer overwhelming scale to everything Oblivion had assembled.
Jay looked at his side, then looked back at Oblivion's side.
"We are fucked," he amended.
Then the Elders came, dozens of them, each ancient beyond mortal reckoning. The Collector with his white eyes fixed on Luv with the specific interest of something that wants to add a specimen to a collection, the Grandmaster already grinning with the anticipation of the best game he'd been offered in eons, the Gardener, the Runner, the Contemplator, all beings who had spent their entire incomprehensible lifespans obsessing over single passions and had long since run out of new things to acquire or experience. A combat trial involving an outsider who had disrupted the multiverse's established order was, for each of them, exactly what they'd been waiting for.
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