The chamber was not built for comfort. It was built to contain.
Carved from the black stone of forgotten gods, the walls whispered memories in languages lost to time. The very air pulsed with tension, thick and slow like coagulated blood. Shadows slithered without source or shape. The Scarlet King sat in the center, legs crossed, eyes closed, his form wrapped in silence and flickering red light.
He was remembering.
Not dreams, not illusions—truths. Pieces of himself scattered like broken glass across the multiverse, veiled and sealed by forces desperate to forget he ever existed. But now, those shards trembled. Threads of his essence stirred. They remembered him, too.
The thrum of power pulsed through his form.
Flashes danced behind his closed eyes:
—A black sun rising over a world of screaming prophets. —Seven thrones, each occupied by one of his sons—beings of ruin, born of hatred and silence. —A war of gods and devourers, with him at the center, unmaking creation by simply existing.
He inhaled.
Reality cracked a little more.
Beyond the chamber, Hela stood before a scrying pool formed of bone and ichor. She watched the Scarlet King with narrowed eyes, her expression unreadable. The power radiating from that room was not divine. It was not even mortal. It was primordial. It itched at the edge of her being, demanding to be known, to be feared.
She did not fear easily.
But she respected what she could not define.
He was awakening.
Inside the chamber, the Scarlet King opened his eyes. They glowed with the memory of apocalypse. Veins of crimson energy pulsed across his arms and chest like ancient runes.
The seals the multiverse had woven around him were loosening. He reached inward—not metaphorically, but across metaphysical barriers—grasping the threads of the bindings left by those who had tried to cast him from existence.
The Living Tribunal had whispered law into the folds of space. Eternity had sewn cages into the time-stream. The Celestials had inscribed fire-sigils into reality's foundations.
He burned them away with thought.
Power surged back into him.
Not just strength—but presence. His influence began to seep beyond the chamber. Dreams in faraway lands darkened. Myths cracked at the edges. Forgotten things buried under mountains and oceans stirred as his will brushed against them.
Then, from the depths of the void, he felt her.
She came like a whisper across the veil.
Death.
Not the queen of Hel. Not Hela. The true Death. The pale mistress, the eternal balance, the silent witness to all endings. Her form was ambiguous—sometimes a cloaked skeleton, sometimes a woman of infinite beauty wrapped in darkness.
She appeared in the chamber, if only briefly.
The Scarlet King did not rise.
"You've returned louder than before," she said, voice like the wind over graveyards.
"And I'm still not at full strength," he replied.
Death smiled faintly. "You never needed strength. Just hunger."
He tilted his head. "This universe clings to stories. Heroes. Cycles. It fears disruption."
"And you are disruption," she said.
"I will be more."
Their eyes locked, though Death's gaze was bottomless.
"Soon," he said, "I'll walk your fields. And not even you will be untouched."
Death gave a soft, amused sigh.
"We shall see, King of Red."
And then she was gone.
The chamber dimmed.
The Scarlet King stood.
Outside, Hela sensed the shift. The pressure in Hel changed. She turned away from the pool as the chamber doors groaned open and the Scarlet King emerged. His cloak trailed mist and heatless fire. The air bent slightly around him.
"I've fed on the cracks," he said. "The veil thins. It is time."
Hela didn't challenge him. She only met his gaze.
"Then shake their world, King of Red. Let them know what you are."
He extended a hand and tore open the space before him—not like a portal, but like ripping a page from a book. The tear revealed a churning crimson void between realms.
Before stepping through, he looked once more at Hela.
"When I return," he said, "this universe will be a stage in flames."
She offered a thin smile. "Make sure you burn the right gods."
Then he stepped into the rift.
---
The sky over Earth was calm.
But the minds of the sensitive—of sorcerers, mutants, prophets—were not.
Doctor Strange sat upright in the Sanctum, drenched in sweat.
In Sokovia, Wanda Maximoff clutched her head, red energy flaring uncontrollably around her.
Children across the world woke screaming of a crimson throne, of eyes in the sky, of a voice promising to end everything.
And somewhere in the vastness of space, the Phoenix stirred.
The Scarlet King had begun his descent.
The cracks in the veil had become a wound.
And Earth would soon bleed.