The Root of Every Story That Makes Up the Marvel Multiverse: Concepts Related to [Rule-Level Items]

This was what Thanos could not understand.

He had fulfilled his Destiny, destroyed half the life in the Universe, and achieved the balance and salvation he believed in.

Yet why had the World's Favor not left him? Why did the lingering glow of Destiny still shroud him?

His mission had already ended. His path had reached its end.

He had laid down his weapon, disarmed himself, and willingly awaited the end of his days here.

By all reason, the moment he completed that final snap, his contract with "Destiny" should have been fulfilled.

The Universe had been "saved," and he, the tool that had carried out the necessary evil, should have been discarded, forgotten, even rejected by the Universe's own corrective force—as some form of accounting for the souls of that "half," or as a "cleanup" for the Universe's path toward a new balance.

But reality was that the favor remained, and the protection had not faded.

Even if he offered no resistance and bared his neck for execution, this world still seemed to be "protecting" him, resisting an external end.

It made no sense.

Had his understanding been flawed? Or did this "Destiny" itself contain intentions that even he, its executor, had never understood?

Or had his mission not truly ended after all?

These turbulent thoughts stirred in the depths of the mind he had believed understood everything. He did not speak them aloud, but they made his gaze even more confused than before.

In the end, he turned that confusion toward Tony from another world. Perhaps Tony could give him an answer.

On the other side, Tony Stark, stared at by Thanos with such a "sincere" gaze and expected to provide an answer, twitched hard beneath his faceplate.

*Why are you asking me?! Are you Destiny, or am