POV: Kang the Conqueror
All was going according to plan.
Kang the Conqueror, future King of the Multiverse, Master of Time, He Who Remains (until he didn't)—stood on the balcony of his citadel, overlooking the vast expanse of his kingdom in the Quantum Realm.
Everything was perfect.
His legions were assembled, his technologies were primed, his power reserves—accumulated over untold years of meticulous planning—were at maximum capacity.
He just needed to locate that damnable woman, the one who could navigate the Quantum Realm's currents, the one who held the key to his escape and then he could leave this prison. Leave with his army. Leave with his weapons.
Leave to conquer.
Yes. All was going well.
Until it wasn't.
The first beam appeared without warning.
A lance of orange destruction, pure, concentrated energy tore through the sky above his kingdom and slammed into the outer districts. The impact vaporized three city blocks instantly.
Kang's eyes widened.
"What—"
More beams.
Hundreds of them.
They rained down from the quantum void like divine judgment, each one a pillar of annihilation that carved through his citadel's defenses as though they were paper.
"SHIELDS!" Kang roared. "ACTIVATE THE CITY SHIELDS!"
The defensive barrier flared to life, a shimmering dome of temporal energy that had withstood attacks from armies, from cosmic entities, from gods.
It held.
For approximately three seconds.
Then the bombardment intensified.
Thousands of beams.
Millions.
So many that the sky itself turned orange, the quantum void bleeding color as reality screamed under the assault.
Kang stared in disbelief as his shields—his perfect, unbreakable shields, began to buckle.
The reserve energy core, the power he had spent centuries accumulating, the fuel for his grand escape, drained at an alarming rate.
10% gone.
30%.
50%.
80%.
"WHO?!" Kang bellowed into the chaos, his voice lost in the roar of destruction. "WHO IN THE NINE HELLS IS ATTACKING ME?!"
He ran simulations in his mind, cycling through every possible enemy, every potential threat across ten thousand timelines.
Nothing.
No one in his vast, accumulated knowledge of existence had ever challenged him so brazenly. No one had this kind of firepower. No one had this kind of rage.
Time had no meaning in the Quantum Realm. The enemy could have fired everything in a single second, or over the span of millions of years. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that they were winning.
And then, as suddenly as it began, the attack stopped.
Kang stood in the smoking ruins of his balcony, breathing hard, his armor scorched and cracked.
He looked out over his kingdom.
Half of it was gone.
Just... gone. Vaporized. Erased from existence.
His foundries. His barracks. His research laboratories. His armies.
Gone.
But he was still here.
Kang allowed himself a small, bitter smirk.
"It will barely take me any time to rebuild," he muttered, turning away from the devastation. "I am Kang. I am inevitable. I will—"
"Sir," a robotic voice interrupted.
Kang frowned. "What?"
"Emergency evacuation protocols have been triggered."
"What? By who? I didn't—"
The floor beneath him opened.
Kang fell—not far, just into a reinforced escape pod that sealed around him with a hiss of pressurized air. Restraints snapped into place, locking him in position.
"OVERRIDE!" Kang shouted. "I COMMAND YOU TO—"
The pod launched.
It shot away from the citadel at speeds that would have liquefied an unprotected human, propelled by emergency thrusters that had been designed for exactly this scenario: catastrophic failure.
Kang's eyes went wide as he looked back through the pod's transparent viewport.
A portal was opening.
Not a small one. Not a doorway or a gateway.
A rift.
It tore through the quantum void like a wound in reality itself, bleeding orange light and wrongness, and from within it came a single, enormous blast.
The beam was the width of a city.
It struck Kang's citadel dead center.
And erased it.
Not destroyed. Not demolished.
Erased.
The citadel, the remaining half of his kingdom, his technologies, his legions, his centuries of work—all of it turned to dust in an instant. Atoms torn apart and scattered across the quantum foam, leaving nothing behind but empty space and the faint echo of what had been.
Kang stared.
His mouth hung open.
His mind, his brilliant, multiversal, time-spanning mind, struggled to process what he had just witnessed.
Everything.
Everything was gone.
The escape pod tumbled through the void, automated systems engaging stealth protocols, carrying him as far from the blast site as possible.
Kang sat in the silence, fists clenched, jaw tight.
He had only one choice now.
Run.
Hide.
Start over.
Rebuild from nothing.
His voice was quiet when he spoke, a whisper that carried the weight of a blood oath:
"I swear a blood debt to whoever attacked me. I will find you. You cannot hide from Kang the Conqueror. I will search every timeline, every reality, every corner of the multiverse. And when I find you..."
His eyes burned with cold fury.
"I will make you suffer."
Somewhere, in another universe, on a rainbow bridge connecting Earth to Asgard, Kara Zor-El sneezed.
She blinked, confused.
"Are you well, sister?" Thor asked, concerned.
"I... I think so?" Kara rubbed her nose. "I just had the weirdest feeling. Like someone, somewhere, is really mad at me."
Thor laughed. "You have just helped save two universes and defeated the Mad Titan's army! I suspect many villains across the cosmos are upset with you!"
"Maybe," Kara said, but the feeling didn't go away.
She shook it off and continued walking toward the golden realm of Asgard.
At that exact moment, a portal opened in the smoking ruins of Kang's kingdom.
Three figures stepped through.
Deadpool adjusted his mask, looked around at the devastation, and let out a low whistle.
"Damn. Someone had a really bad day."
Wolverine sniffed the air, his nose wrinkling. "Smells like ozone and... Infinity Stone residue?"
"Ew," Deadpool said. "That's like the cosmic equivalent of glitter. You'll never get that smell out."
Domino surveyed the wreckage with her usual calm. "Whatever happened here, we missed it by about three minutes. Lucky us."
"Lucky?" Wolverine growled. "We're standing in the remains of what looks like a temporal war zone, and you call that lucky?"
"Could've been standing here when it exploded," Domino pointed out. "Now that would've been unlucky."
Deadpool turned directly toward an invisible point in space, toward a camera that didn't exist, toward an audience only he could perceive.
He grinned beneath his mask.
"We're getting closer to my future wife, folks," he said, winking. "I can feel it. The universe is literally exploding with romantic tension. It's like a Michael Bay film, but with more sexual chemistry and fewer racist robots."
"Who the hell are you talking to?" Logan asked.
"The people, Logan. The people."
Domino was already walking toward the far end of the ruins, following some instinct only she understood. "Come on. We've got a Kryptonian to find."
"A hot Kryptonian," Deadpool corrected, jogging to catch up. "Let's not forget the important details."
Wolverine sighed and followed, claws still extended, wondering—not for the first time—how his life had come to this.
Behind them, the ruins of Kang's kingdom smoldered in silence.
And somewhere in the quantum foam, in a tiny escape pod, Kang the Conqueror plotted his revenge.
He didn't know who had destroyed his empire.
But he would find out.
And when he did...
The multiverse would burn.