The Reality Quarantine was not a wall of fire or a shimmering barrier of energy. It was silence. A profound, unnatural quiet fell across the Earth as the Eidolon's first wave of apathy rippled across the planet. In New York, a taxi driver slowed to a stop in the middle of a busy intersection, his expression turning blank. In Tokyo, the vibrant lights of Shibuya seemed to dim as crowds moved with a strange, listless lethargy. On the Helicarrier bridge, Jane Foster's monitors, which had been tracking the planet's psychic energy, went terrifyingly flat. The attack had begun.
In a solitary meditation chamber, Dr. Stephen Strange was in a deep trance. On the Psychic Plane, his consciousness, a radiant golden figure, extended a vast web of light, successfully erecting the psychic firewall he had meticulously mapped. The first wave of apathy, a grey, creeping tide of nothingness, crashed against it and dissipated harmlessly.
The Eidolon, sensing this unexpected resistance, focused its entire, unimaginable psychic might directly on Stephen. The assault became a multi-sensory, soul-shattering inferno.
He was no longer in his chamber; he was adrift in a sea of his own failures, pulled from infinite realities. He saw a timeline where his surgical arrogance had unleashed a global pandemic from a botched procedure. He witnessed another where his quest for power had led him to become a world-destroying tyrant, a monster far worse than any he had ever fought.
To make it more brutal, he was forced to hear the psychic death-cries and tormented whispers of every soul who died because of his alternate selves' actions. The voices of billions of ghosts accused him, blamed him, and, worst of all, thanked him for their "release," attempting to drown him in an ocean of infinite, second-hand guilt. The Eidolon showed him the "worst of the worst of himself," a being of pure ego and cruelty, forcing him to confront the monster he could have been, the monster that, in some dark corner of the multiverse, he was.
Cross-cut with Mindstorm's torment, the urgent final moments in the forge played out. The inert, graceful body of Nexus lay on the slab. The battle was raging outside, and the clock had run out. Bruce, looking drained, the light from the ten rings on his fingers now soft and steady, stepped back from the body.
"The emotional spectrum is infused," he said, his voice heavy with exhaustion. "The heart is ready."
Tony turned to Shuri. "We have to go. Our fronts are calling." He looked at the half-finished god on the table, then back at her. "It's on you now, Princess. You just need to complete the physical matrix, the final integration."
A silver blur resolved into Pietro, who nodded grimly at Shuri. "He'll be your guardian," Tony said. "No one gets in."
Shuri looked at the vessel, the weight of their only hope settling on her shoulders. "Mr. Stark... how will I manage this alone?" she asked, her voice betraying a rare moment of doubt.
Tony placed a hand on her shoulder, his expression one of absolute faith. "Because you're the smartest person I know," he said simply. "You can." He then turned to Bruce. "Let's meet for lunch after this, Banner."
Bruce managed a tired grin. "Why not, Tony?"
With that, Tony and Bruce turned and strode out of the lab, heading towards their own impossible battles on the Astral and Space fronts, respectively. Shuri was left with Pietro, the silent vessel, and the fate of all reality in her hands.
The chapter climaxed by returning to Stephen's internal battle. He was being torn apart by the psychic screams of trillions. He endured the final, most painful vision: a reality where his selfish actions had led directly to the death of Christine Palmer, the one he loved. He saw her face, felt her loss, a pain so pure and absolute it should have shattered his will into dust.
The Eidolon expected him to break.
But he didn't.
Within the inferno of grief, Stephen's consciousness did not harden or fight back with anger. He accepted the pain. He endured the screams, not by blocking them out, but by listening to them, using the infinite, shared grief as fuel for his own resolve. Each soul he had failed in another life became another reason he could not fail in this one.
We cut from the psychic inferno to the Helicarrier's main holographic globe. A single tear streaked down the cheek of the catatonic Stephen Strange. But on the globe, the golden, shimmering psychic firewall, which had been flickering under the assault, suddenly solidified into an unbreakable, adamantine shield. It radiated a calm, defiant light. His will did not flicker. The firewall held.