The Sanctum workshop, now a frantic crucible of Wakandan technology and arcane energy, was a fortress under siege. The inert body of Nexus lay on the slab, its Vibranium form humming softly, waiting for the final, physical matrix to be completed. Shuri worked with a desperate, manic focus, her Kimoyo Beads projecting complex schematics into the air around the vessel. A blur of silver, Pietro, now Momentum, stood guard, his eyes darting across every inch of the room, his kinetic energy a barely contained force field that promised to meet any threat with impossible speed. But the Eidolon, a god of nothingness, fought on a plane they couldn't see. It struck at their minds, a silent, psychological hammer that threatened to break them before the real battle even began.
For Shuri, the assault was an insidious violation of her purpose. She saw her mother, Queen Ramonda, smiling at her, a beautiful and poignant memory. But the smile twisted into a sneer, and the memory warped. She saw the destruction of Wakanda, the force field shattering as a monster she had created—a corrupted Nexus—tore through the capital. T'Challa, his face a mask of grief and fury, appeared before her. "You are the reason for this, sister," he accused, his voice a cold whisper that shattered her heart. "Your arrogance, your need to prove you are the smartest. You have destroyed our home." Then, the vision became a physical torment. A variant of herself, a cold, ruthless genius with blood on her hands, appeared in the forge. This variant's hands were covered in her own blood, and she was surrounded by the corpses of her family. "You had a choice, Shuri," the variant whispered, her voice devoid of emotion. "You could have saved our people. But you chose to play a god. You chose this. This is your destiny." The sheer weight of guilt and terror brought Shuri to her knees, her work on Nexus ceasing, her mind a screaming vortex of self-loathing. She saw herself as a monster, and the Eidolon's attack made her feel the death of every person who had died in that vision.
Pietro was not spared. He was a force of motion, but the Eidolon held him still with the one thing faster than himself: memories. He saw the faces of the people they had killed—not in a blur of motion and chaos, but with a horrifying, crystalline clarity. The boy from Sokovia, the man from the streets. He heard their final screams, their pleas for mercy. The psychic onslaught showed him the families he and Wanda had destroyed, the empty chairs at their dinner tables, the grief-stricken parents and orphaned children. A phantom of his father, a solemn, silent figure, appeared and simply pointed at the ghosts of the innocent. "This," his father's voice echoed in his mind, "is your glorious purpose? You run from your past, but you cannot outrun the lives you have taken." The sheer volume of grief and guilt, a psychic tidal wave that crashed against his mind, brought him to a dead stop. He was trapped in an infinite moment of sorrow, his phenomenal speed useless against the weight of his own conscience.
On the Helicarrier bridge, Nick Fury, his back ramrod straight, watched the monitors go completely flat. He was a man of plans and contingencies, but this was a war without rules. The Eidolon struck, not with phantoms, but with a single, brutal vision. He saw a reality where his past mistakes—the lies he told, the secrets he kept, the decisions he made in the name of a "greater good"—had not just led to a single loss, but to the complete annihilation of Earth. He saw his family, a wife and child he had kept hidden for their safety, being consumed by the same apathy that now threatened the world. "You are the reason for this, Nicholas," a voice that sounded like his own whispered into his mind. "You are the flaw in the system. The cancer in the code." His one good eye, which had seen so much in his life, now saw only the infinite, bitter truth of his failure. He stood paralyzed, a ghost of a man watching his life's work dissolve into nothingness.
In her private chamber, Wanda Maximoff was suspended in a swirling vortex of scarlet energy. The Darkhold and the Book of Vishanti, two ancient tomes of immense power, hovered before her, their opposing energies a blinding dance of darkness and light. She was trying to achieve a perfect balance, to absorb the knowledge of both without being consumed by either. But the Eidolon, a master manipulator of the soul, knew her better than she knew herself.
The psychic assault on Wanda began with a vision of her greatest failure. She saw herself from a timeline where her grief and rage had consumed her completely. This monstrous variant of herself, a being of pure, untethered chaos, was tearing through a reality, leaving a trail of destruction and death in her wake. She saw the phantom of a perfect, innocent family—her children, from a universe where they were never meant to exist—fleeing from her in terror. "Mama, please!" they screamed, their voices echoing with a raw, heartbreaking fear that Wanda could feel in her own soul. The psychic assault then twisted the knife: the variant Wanda, her eyes burning with a malevolent light, turned on her own children. She lashed out in a fit of uncontrollable rage and killed them both. As the two boys turned to dust in her arms, the variant Wanda looked directly at our Wanda, her face a mask of triumphant insanity. "This is who you are, Wanda," the variant whispered, her voice a chilling promise. "A killer who destroys the things she loves most. You don't create life, you only end it. You always end it." The psychic shock of the vision was so powerful that it made Wanda's physical body convulse. The books in front of her began to spin wildly, their energies clashing, the Darkhold's whispers of unlimited power and the Book of Vishanti's promise of peace warring for control of her mind.
Everywhere, the plan was collapsing. The heroes, the last hope of all reality, were being torn apart by their own minds. They were drowning in the ocean of their own grief and failures. The Eidolon's victory was a foregone conclusion. But in the psychic ether, amidst the cries of the broken and the torment of the damned, one person still fought. One person still stood against the endless tide. Dr. Stephen Strange, now known as Dr. Mindstorm, felt the psychic screams of his broken teammates, their pain and sorrow a symphony of discord that threatened to break his focus. He felt Shuri's guilt, Pietro's shame, Nick Fury's bitter failure. He was the anchor in the storm, the one person who could feel all the pain in the multiverse and not be broken by it. He was the only one left. And he was not giving up.