After Thanos died, Earth entered a period of unprecedented peace.
There were no alien fleet invasions, no artificial intelligence rebellions, no Hydra conspiracies, and no demons from other dimensions.
Even street crime rates had fallen, not because criminals had turned over a new leaf.
It was because everyone had seen on the news the man crushing all six Infinity Stones with his bare hands amid the ruins of Manhattan.
No one wanted to become that man's enemy.
The sunlight on the lawn of Morgan Manor was as warm as ever.
Tifa was baking cookies in the kitchen, and the scent of butter drifted from the window, filling the entire backyard.
Nymph crouched in the garden, her bare feet planted in the soil as she talked to a snail.
Her antennae swayed gently over the snail's shell as she tried to communicate with it.
But the snail seemed uninterested in conversation and slowly crawled onto a lettuce leaf.
Android 18 sat on the terrace railing, her head tilted back as she watched the sky.
For the past month, she had gone out every night to look at the star she had named "18."
The star could not be seen during the day, but she knew it was there, behind the clouds, where even the sun's radiance could not conceal it.
Her blue eyes gazed calmly at the azure sky, and a nearly imperceptible curve of relaxation touched her lips.
Alice was in the study.
She sat in Loren's high-backed chair, holding a book she had taken from the shelf.
It was not Pride and Prejudice, but a monograph on quantum physics.
Loren sat in a wicker chair in the garden, holding a cup of tea.
His silver-white hair had not returned to its original dark brown since he had injected the