It was not the violent, explosive light that had erupted like a supernova when Thanos snapped his fingers.
It was a soft, warm glow, like the sunrise.
The light poured from the stones, spread from his gauntlet, and flowed from his body.
Like a glowing river, it streamed across the ruins, over the ashes, through every inch of Manhattan.
The ashes began to move.
Not stirred by the wind, nor lifted by raindrops.
They rose from the ground on their own, spinning, gathering, and reforming in the air.
The gray particles regained their colors in the golden light, regained their shapes, regained their lives.
Tony Stark stood beside the wreckage of his armor, his fingers still outstretched, fragments of his mask still lying at his feet.
His eyes were closed, and his breathing began with its first breath from nothing, like a baby's first cry at birth.
He opened his eyes.
Steve Rogers's hand was still reaching toward Tony's armor.
His fingers touched the first piece of metal debris among the ashes that were reforming.
When his blue eyes opened, he saw his own hand and the skin on it changing from gray back to its natural color.
His shield rose from the ground and returned to his back.
Natasha Romanoff's electric batons sprang from the rubble and returned to her hands.
Her red hair grew back from the ashes, changing from gray to gold, then from gold to red.
No, it simply returned to how it had originally been, as if someone had pressed the rewind button.
Carol Danvers's silver-white hair turned gold again, and the energy beneath her skin began to flow once more.
She rose from the ground and looked at her hands, then at the comrades reappearing from the ruins around her, her blue eyes filled