Enemies in the Dark

"You're watching the sunset in this godforsaken place? That's unbelievably insane. I hope you still have enough sense left to listen to me."

A powerful voice rang in his ears. Thanos turned and saw a black silhouette wearing a blue cloak abruptly appear in the air to his left, its features impossible to make out.

His voice was ancient, and his figure flickered between substance and illusion as he scrutinized Thanos.

"Old man, you're lost. The temple is where you belong." Thanos withdrew his gaze at once, as though the man were nothing but an unwanted nuisance, and waved him away.

"Thanos, has your madness made you forget even the most basic respect for your elders? I am the patriarch of the Titan race—your grandfather!" The old man's voice was filled with authority, its echoes reverberating through the room.

Yet not a single guard outside came in. Thanos looked toward the prisoner being tortured by Ebony Maw in the distance. The prisoner's blood hung suspended in midair, frozen in the act of dripping. The pleasure on Ebony Maw's face and the agony in the prisoner's body had both been locked into that instant.

Only then did Thanos truly look at the old man. After a single glance, he shook his head slightly. "My name isn't Thanos. You don't even have a body anymore, yet you still talk about the Titan race? You're the sinner of your people, Kronos."

The grandfather and grandson's first meeting on this timeline was far from friendly. Kronos had no desire to discuss the Titan race with Thanos. In his eyes, he was the incomparably noble God of Time, already fused with the universe itself and one of its cosmic entities.

The Titan race had been nothing more than an insignificant stretch of his magnificent life.