Then a blast of lightning tore through everything and swallowed it whole.
For a brief second, there was nothing but white.
Tony shut his eyes on instinct. The flash was too sudden, too intense, and when he opened them again the world had changed completely.
He was no longer in Avengers Tower.
He was standing in the middle of a ruined city.
The buildings around them were shattered, hollow shells of what they once were, streets cracked and broken, vehicles overturned and rusting as if time itself had rotted everything away. The air carried a stale, dead weight, and it didn't take long to understand why.
Movement.
Everywhere.
Rotten corpses filled the streets, their bodies decayed but still moving, their eyes glowing red as they locked onto the living. They didn't wander like mindless dead—they charged, fast and aggressive, climbing over debris, pushing through each other just to get closer.
"Holy shit… zombie apocalypse," Tony said, and without hesitation he stepped behind Luke, because he wasn't stupid enough to stand out in front without armor in a situation like this.
The other Tony(V) reacted immediately.
He tapped his chest and the nanotech responded, liquid metal spreading across his body in seconds, forming the Iron Man suit with seamless precision until he stood fully armored, systems already coming online.
The first Tony glanced at him even in the middle of this.
"Wow… nanotechnology," he muttered, impressed despite the situation. "Yeah, I really need to work on that."
The ground trembled slightly as the horde closed in, their numbers becoming clearer by the second. This wasn't a few dozen or even a few hundred—this was a swarm filling the streets, pouring in from every direction.
Before the first wave could reach them, Luke moved.
He simply raised his hand, two fingers extending forward as his gaze settled on the incoming mass.
"Null Collapse."
Space bent.
A point of darkness forming at his fingertips, small but absolute, as if something had carved a hole into reality itself.
Then it moved.
The black point shot forward, not like a projectile but like space itself collapsing in a straight line. Everything it touched didn't explode or scatter—it folded inwards.
The first line of zombies vanished instantly, their bodies crushed into nothing before they could even react.
The force didn't stop there, tearing through the horde, dragging everything into that singular point. Concrete lifted from the ground, metal twisted, entire sections of the street were ripped upward and consumed as the collapse advanced.
In seconds, a massive path was carved through the swarm.
Thousands gone.
Erased.
Luke closed his hand slightly and the collapse ended just as abruptly as it began, leaving behind a long stretch of empty, broken ground where nothing remained.
The remaining zombies didn't hesitate.
If anything, they surged faster.
Some leaped across gaps with unnatural precision, others crawled along walls and wreckage like predators. One slammed onto a nearby car, denting it inward, then launched forward with its jaw stretched wide and claws aimed straight at them.
Iron Man reacted instantly.
Repulsors fired in rapid bursts, beams cutting through multiple targets, tearing bodies apart and blasting them into debris, but it didn't slow anything. The gaps closed immediately, more flooding in, climbing over the fallen without hesitation.
"We are outnumbered," Steve said, driving his shield through one and pivoting into another, but even as he fought he could see it wasn't enough.
Wanda stood behind him, red energy flaring as she lifted groups of them and crushed them mid-air or slammed them into the ground, while Natasha moved along the flank, shots precise, each bullet dropping a target cleanly, yet the swarm kept tightening around them.
"Luke, what are you waiting for? Just go full power," Tony said.
Luke looked once at the scale of it, then stopped holding back.
'Divine Cataclysm… Charge Separation.'
The air snapped.
The entire atmosphere shifted at once, pressure rising as if the sky itself was compressing. Static spread across everything, crawling over metal, stone, even skin, the charge building so fast it felt violent.
Then the sky answered.
Lightning didn't strike—it flooded.
The entire city lit up in the same instant as countless bolts came down together, not scattered but continuous, chaining across structures, streets, and open ground. Every path the current took turned into a killing line.
The first wave vanished immediately.
Not thrown back, not burned slowly—gone. Bodies broke apart under the force, disintegrated where they stood as the current ripped through them. The ground cracked open, debris lifted and shattered, buildings already weakened collapsed under the repeated impact.
The lightning didn't stop.
It kept cascading, feeding on itself, turning the entire area into a network of destructive energy that left no space untouched. Every movement in the city was erased as the charge continued to discharge through everything it could reach.
The others had no choice but to shut their eyes.
For a few seconds, there was nothing but light and impact.
Then it stopped.
The sky cleared.
Slowly, they opened their eyes.
The city in front of them was no longer the same. Nothing remained that could even suggest a city had once stood there. Everything was gone. In its place lay only a vast, barren plain, carved down as if something had scraped it clean.
*****
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