Light.
Pure light, a color beyond description, spread from the ruins in ripples.
Wherever it passed, time stopped.
Charging Outriders froze midair, their claws inches from Wakandan warriors' throats. Falling energy blasts hung in the sky as violet spheres. The main cannon on Thanos's flagship stopped charging, its glow motionless at the muzzle. In that instant, the entire world—the entire universe—was paused.
Then the wave of light kept spreading.
Through the atmosphere, through space, through the Milky Way, into every corner of the universe.
Within its ripples, something began to change.
The first second.
At the center of the ruins, six-colored light slowly faded.
Bruce Banner knelt on the ground, his right hand still poised after The Snap. The stones on the Infinity Gauntlet had gone dim, and spiderweb cracks covered its surface. His right arm, from shoulder to fingertips, had turned strangely translucent, as though energy had burned it into glass. Muscles, bones, and blood vessels showed clearly beneath his skin, yet a soft glow enveloped them. There was no blood, no disintegration. His arm had simply... frozen.
Lin Xiao lay beside him.
A thin film of interwoven six-colored energy covered Lin Xiao's body, like an insect sealed in amber. His eyes were shut, and his breathing was almost too faint to detect, but his chest still rose and fell—slowly, impossibly slowly, once every ten seconds.
Shuri's voice came through the Communicator, thick with tears. "Dr. Banner! Mr. Lin! Can you hear me? Your vital signs... They're still there! But they're very weak!"
The second second.
The wave swept across New York.
In Times Square, a middle-aged man drinking coffee suddenly froze. His paper cup fell from his hand, spilling coffee across the ground. He stared at the bench before him. A young woman in pajamas, her hair a