As the space inside the Mirror Dimension shattered again and again, Scott was quickly expelled from it and exposed to the real world once more.
This place was one of Wakanda's core strongholds, so the level of security here hardly needed to be stated.
The instant his figure reappeared, Scott was immediately exposed to Wakanda's surveillance systems.
At nearly the same moment, several points of light too faint for the naked eye to track had already landed on his body.
"Fenris, don't leave me here..."
Scott looked like he was on the verge of tears. A spine-chilling sense of danger instantly wrapped around him.
Without hesitation, he threw himself to the side, trying to escape the lock-on, but the points of light clung to him like shadows and kept him firmly targeted.
Pew!
A faint sound rang out. Before Scott's hand could even reach his ruby-quartz visor, the corner of his eye had already caught several dangerous red flashes lighting up in the distance.
"This is bad!"
Scott's breathing stalled, but in the very next instant, an invisible force field suddenly enveloped him.
The high-energy beams shooting in from afar silently dissipated in midair.
"Don't be afraid, my boy. You'll be fine."
Scott heard the Professor's warm voice at his ear. "Erik's force field will keep you from being discovered as well. Fenris is below, at the core of that vibranium meteorite. If you can't get down there, then wait here for him."
"Got it, Professor."
Learning that Magneto had been keeping watch over both of them the whole time, Scott finally let out a long breath after the scare.
Once those words faded, he turned his gaze into the bottomless darkness underground.
There, an enormous shadow loomed faintly against the glow from the rock walls.
Because Mothra's radiant wings were far too conspicuous in a place like this, Fenris had not chosen to fly down after dismissing the Mirror Dimension. Instead, he dropped straight toward the depths in free fall.
But very soon, a familiar force field wrapped around him, and a soft supporting force rose beneath his feet, lowering him gently toward the bottom.
"Scott's fine."
Though they were separated by dozens of kilometers, Magneto's voice still came through clearly in Fenris's ear.
"Thanks."
Fenris nodded.
His figure wove nimbly through giant rocks and countless twisting crevices. As the traces of Wakandan excavation grew fewer and fewer until they vanished entirely, he kept descending for what felt like an eternity before finally landing lightly on solid ground.
Within a vast, empty darkness, the mountain-like meteorite core was already right in front of him.
Standing at its base and looking up, Fenris saw that this irregular mass of stone towered at least fifty meters high. Under the dim fluorescence of the surrounding rock walls, it looked especially massive.
Deep underground, in this lightless abyss, almost no one could ever have come here. Even the Wakandans themselves had never set foot in this place.
"So this is the core of the meteorite that fell from the sky millions of years ago?"
Feeling that unprecedentedly intense summons pulsing through his mind, Fenris stepped forward slowly and laid a hand against the massive stone, which had rested in silence here for untold ages.
Hummm-
The instant his hand touched it, the Titan Index deep in Fenris's consciousness suddenly exploded with a violent tremor unlike anything before.
"What is this..."
Fenris froze. He had never seen the Titan Index react so abnormally.
Before he could make sense of it, a surge of scorching energy burst from the Index in the next instant. It flowed through both of Fenris's arms and poured into the vibranium meteorite without restraint.
The torrent of heat locked his hands firmly against its surface, binding him to the colossal object as though the two had become one.
Time passed second by second.
Then, very suddenly, a strange sensation rose in Fenris's heart.
In a daze, he felt as though he had become a giant stone drifting endlessly through the stars. He watched his body grow larger over the course of that wandering, though violent impacts sometimes chipped pieces away.
Ages turned. After drifting through the boundless universe for countless eons, a beautiful blue planet finally appeared before his eyes.
In the end, he failed to escape its gravitational pull. It captured him completely, ending his ancient and endless wandering across the stars.
As he tore through the atmosphere, an unknown force suddenly split his body apart into one large fragment, one smaller fragment, and countless scattered shards.
The larger fragment crashed toward the continent of Africa like a falling star, while the smaller one plunged into the endless ocean, vanishing without a trace, leaving behind only a faint and hazy resonance.
For Fenris in this moment, time had lost all meaning.
He stood in stillness as he witnessed countless cycles of seasons, the rise and fall of suns and moons.
After endless dawns and dusks, a group of dark-skinned tribal ancestors came to his side.
Using the vibranium that had scattered from him, these people first gathered into several powerful tribes, then eventually forged a unified nation.
Time flowed on. Seas became fields, and fields became seas. The rulers of that nation rose and fell again and again, yet Fenris remained standing through the erosion of the ages, unchanged.
Then, in the modern era, on a day no different from any other, Fenris saw four figures descend from the sky and overturn this powerful nation with ease.
Among them, he saw a face he recognized at once.
It was his own.
The features that had once been perfectly clear had grown blurred beneath the passage of millions of years.
He watched himself appear suddenly in this lightless subterranean abyss, drawing closer step by step as though guided by some special resonance.
At last, that hand rested gently upon him.
Dong~
It was as though the ancient toll of a distant bell echoed through his mind. At the instant Fenris's gaze met the meteorite's, a million years seemed to pass in the span of a snap of the fingers. Countless ages, changing seasons, and immeasurable memories all converged in that one moment and became whole.
That lingering resonance still echoed in his ears. The stream of heat pouring from the Titan Index had not stopped. And when Fenris finally opened his eyes again through the haze, the meteorite before him had become something entirely different.
Every ridge, every contour, every rise and dip now felt strangely intimate. This object that should have seemed cold and lifeless instead looked, in Fenris's eyes, like another version of himself reflected back at him.
It felt as though, with only the slightest summons, this gigantic thing could transform in his hands exactly as he wished, without the least resistance.
"I understand now."
Fenris spoke softly. In that moment, he clearly realized the true meaning behind the Titan Index guiding him here.
Then, in the next instant, another equally scorching power surged from deep within his own body and poured into the meteorite without reservation.
This was Fenris's own power, marked through and through with his imprint.
Crack.
The next second, a nearly imperceptible fracture sounded from within the meteorite.
Then came more, one after another, until the breaking sounds grew dense.
A faint heartbeat began to spread from inside the meteorite, as though some spiritual, living presence were being born within it.
(End of Chapter)
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