The President stood by the window, eyes glued to the digital star-map shimmering on the wall. Galactus's energy signature was a swirling blot far beyond Pluto now, its direction angled sharply away from Earth.
Aide reports buzzed behind him like gnats: orbital observatories confirming trajectories, radar sweeps clearing, scientists cheering.
But the President didn't join them.
A quiet anxiety had rooted itself in the back of his mind, what if Galactus catches up? What if it returns?
What if Soren fails?
He exhaled slowly, burying the thought deep under layers of protocol and presidential poise.
From Cairo to Beijing, from Rio to Mumbai, Soren's name was everywhere.
In London, crowds gathered at Piccadilly, staring up at a news display
EVERLIFE'S DR SOREN MACALUSO LURES COSMIC ENTITY AWAY
EARTH SAVED?
In Lagos, children danced in the streets chanting his name.
In Tokyo, worshippers lit incense in front of a hastily printed image of Soren's face.
"Savior!"
"God!"
Talk show panels praised his sacrifice. Priests called it a divine miracle. Hashtags flooded social media. Some began to pray to him.
X~men Mansion
The mood was different here.
In the quiet halls of the X Academy, Jean Grey sat in the moonlit study, hands trembling slightly over a book of advanced sigils from Kamar-Taj. The candle beside her flickered as her thoughts drifted to him.
She pressed a palm to her heart, feeling a trace of lingering psychic warmth, his presence had always been like that. Fierce. Distant. Blazing.
Nearby, Logan leaned silently against a wall, arms crossed. Storm stared out the window.
And in the war room of the Avengers compound, Bruce Banner tapped nervously at a display of Galactus's trajectory.
"Do you think he'll come back?"
No one answered. Not Steve. Not Natasha. Not even Tony's pre-recorded A.I. projection. Because no one knew.
Even among gods, Galactus wasn't something you fought. He was something you survived, if you were lucky.
DEEP SPACE
Soren slowed to a hover, the silver surfboard pulsing beneath his feet. His cloak fluttered in the invisible winds of raw space energy.
He turned slowly, floating above a vast and eerily empty region of the cosmos. Stars blinked in the distance, but no planets orbited here.
Silence.
And darkness.
"This will do."
He didn't know where he was. It didn't matter.
The feedback tether to Everlife Medical Center told him Earth was now light-years behind him, safe.
Here, there would be no collateral damage.
The darkness around him felt like a void untouched by creation. It reminded him of the Dark Dimension's hunger.
Perfect for a battle between monsters.
He raised his head. Behind him, the cosmos warped, Galactus' duplication was coming.
The ancient cosmic intelligence raged in silence.
It had been taunted. Pulled away from feast after feast.
The imitation of Galactus's wasn't sentient in the human sense, but it was infuriated, on a molecular, metaphysical level. It could taste the power ahead.
And now, its prey had stopped.
To Galactus's construct, this meant one thing… dinner time.
Soren closed his eyes.
Within him, a vortex of swirling magic surged, power siphoned from Dormammu's realm, unfiltered and volatile.
Now, his veins glowed purple-black, like cracks in the shell of a collapsing star. His heartbeat matched the rhythm of an unseen war drum.
The surfboard flared beneath him, recognizing his will.
The void around him responded.
'RSAHWTHHH!!!!
And in the distance, Galactus's roar echoed once more.
The airless cosmos screamed in silence.
A black wave of matter, viscous and ancient, surged into the starless sector, rolling and churning like a billion broken screams fused into tar.
"Norrin Radd, if you run again, I will erase your homeworld from existence!"
The words weren't spoken, they slammed into Soren's consciousness. Ancient power disguised as simple language.
The silver-white energy armor peeled back from his body like mist curling from a blade, revealing his face to the void for the first time since this chase began.
Eyes steady. Brow unbothered.
"You still think I'm your Herald?"
The black tide halted for a beat.
The surfboard beneath Soren pulsed, reacting to the presence it once belonged to. But its master was gone.
What stood before Galactus's duplication now… was something else.
A pulse surged across the field as Galactus's avatar materialized fully, its form stretching across light-years of space.
A mountainous figure forged of hunger and celestial malice, shaped like a god, colored in shadow.
The airless battlefield shrank under its presence.
Dark matter whipped through space, creating a prison around Soren, walls that closed like a collapsing galaxy. Every escape route sealed. Space itself twisted inwards.
The beast was furious.
It had chased him across galaxies. Spent energy. Lost opportunity.
It had not come to talk.
"WHO ARE YOU?"
The voice clawed into Soren's brain… not in sound, but in essence. A broadcast of will that bent weaker minds to ruin.
Soren's own spiritual energy surged forward like a rising tide of starlight laced with shadows, far smaller in scale.
"You don't need to know my name."
"But if you dare set your hunger on my home, you'd better be ready to die for it."
The silence after his words was short-lived.
"DIE!?!"
The declaration came with no buildup.
The cage of dark matter convulsed, then collapsed inwards like a black hole gone feral. All light bent. All space folded.
It came for Soren in a thousand crushing directions, each blow capable of breaking moons.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream